Tag Archives: house

Making progress already (12w5d)

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Inspiration struck me last night as I pulled into the parking lot to get some bits and pieces for dinner. Home Depot was right there – so why not go in and see what they can do on carpet?

Turns out, they can do a lot. And our Home Depot card can do a lot for us there too. While re-carpeting the house isn’t gonna be cheap, it won’t be as much as we feared. (I really like the idea of re-doing the whole house in one fell swoop instead of leaving the bedrooms with the old carpet.)

So I have a measuring appointment set for next weekend – which gives me less than two weeks to whip the house into shape. I think I can do it, but it’s not gonna be easy. I’m praying that at the stroke of 14 weeks (2nd trimester) I’ll get this huge burst of energy that will make all this craziness much easier to tackle.

The timeframe is looking like mid-late February for carpet installation, so we’re hoping we can find out the sex of the baby, figure out a nursery design, pick paint color(s) and actually get the painting done before the new carpet goes in. Would be MUCH easier that way. (Here’s hoping the little critter cooperates at next week’s appointment!)

Oh, and a note about carpet vs hardwood/tile: Paul’s father has really terrible allergies and asthma. So every house they’ve had has been fully tiled, with little to no carpet at all. We’re glad that works for them, but personally Paul and I hate it. We LOVE carpet, and are both absolutely in love with the idea of laying on the floor, playing with our baby. We have absolutely no desire for hardwood or tile anywhere but the kitchen and bathrooms, regardless of how easy it is to clean. Plus, I shudder to think about a little one learning to walk on tile. The softer the landing pad in that case, the better methinks.

So on Friday we’ll head over to Home Depot and take a good look at the carpet options available to us in our price range. What a way to spend our 10th anniversary, right? (We’re both taking the day off work to spend together.) I assume Mr. I-Wanna-Paint-Our-Whole-Bedroom-Red will have some interesting ideas about color. (Our bedroom, btw is now a lovely shade of goldenrod with hunter green in the lit alcoves, thankyouverymuch.)

Feels good to be making progress – like I’m finally *doing* something.

So much to do! (12w4d)

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Now that the holidays are over, I really feel like I can turn my focus to preparing ourselves and our lives (HA! like that’s actually possible!) for the arrival of our baby. And holy cats, is there a lot to do!

My house is cluttered. I will admit this. I’m not a packrat, but Paul and I like our stuff. Well, this has gotta change. Currently we have a guestroom with two twin beds, a dresser and a bookshelf. We also have an office/storage room that serves as Paul’s workspace, pantry overflow and general storage. It is frequently a disaster area. And then there is our garage. We’ve been meaning to have a garage sale for *years* and just haven’t gotten around to it.

The time is nigh, my friends. The office will become the nursery, so everything stored in there has to go somewhere else. The guestroom will become the guestroom/office, with the focus on being Paul’s workspace. The current guestroom gets used for guests about 5% of the year. So why should it be configured as nothing *but* a guestroom 100% of the time? We’ll be replacing the two twin beds with a twin trundle bed, and adding a desk/workspace for Paul where one of the beds was. The guestroom will still accommodate two people, just in a somewhat cozier fashion.

The garage will be cleaned out. This is gonna be a family effort, since Paul’s parents and grandmother have been using 1/3 of our garage for their storage for a couple of years now. We had to give them an eviction notice… cuz we can’t spare the room anymore! So once their stuff is out (hopefully soon) we’ll begin sorting through the garage with a focus on getting rid of at least half of what’s in there. A garage sale would be best, because cash is good (and cribs aren’t cheap from what I’m reading….) but I don’t know if I want the hassle. Maybe a huge tax-deductible donation to Goodwill or Shadetree would just as good and easier/quicker on us.

Pantry storage will move from the office into the garage, along with just about everything else that was/is stored in the office right now. It’s a really daunting task, but it’s kinda exciting at the same time. I’m sure it will be cathartic to Paul and I to unburden ourselves of a lot of the stuff out there. (We’ve been wanting to do it for a long while, but when it’s 100+ even at midnight several months outta the year, and there’s no place to actually sort the stuff… it gets easy to put off.)

But maybe even before all of that starts: Carpet. We have got to replace the carpet in at least the front half of the house. The contractor cheaped out on everything possible when building our house 10 years ago, and the carpet is really, really showing it. (Also nearly 7 years of an indoor/outdoor dog traipsing around doesn’t help.) Even when freshly shampoo’d, I wouldn’t want to set the baby down on the carpet, even on a blanket.

So we’re looking at replacing the carpet. A good friend of ours (Sibyana) is an insurance adjuster with lots of experience, so she’s going to help us with measuring and whatnot to make sure we’re getting a good deal. Sibyana also swears that we can pull up the existing carpet ourselves and save some money there on installation. (I wonder just how much we’d save vs. the headache and mess of doing it ourselves.) So that’s exciting and terrifying. At first glance, this carpet thing doesn’t look cheap at all.

And once the carpet is in (which we gotta do sooner rather than later so it can air out for a few months, right?) we can talk about painting the nursery. No, I have no idea what color. We haven’t even gotten to the point of talking nursery design/decor. Neither of us sees the point in “what-iffing” ourselves to death before we know the sex. Once we find out what it is we’re having, I’ll go off the deep end, I’m sure. Right now, I’m leaning towards not having a central “character” or anything. No Winnie the Pooh or Noah’s Ark. But who knows, maybe that will change when we find out. (I’m hoping to find out at the next appointment, at which I’ll be almost 14 weeks along.)

And all that is just physical prep for the house! Then there’s classes we really should attend. But that’s another show.

This is a huge list. It’s stuff we’ve wanted to do for a long, LONG time. But now we have a really good reason to do it all, and a deadline. I’m a little worried (OK, a lot worried) that I’ll end up on bedrest or something horrible at 8 months and won’t be able to do anything else. So I feel like I need to set an artificial deadline of like 3-4 months to get all this done. Which means we’re gonna set a whole new definition of Spring Cleaning at the Gorman house this year!