Hanging Up The Hammer

We're pulling the plug. Giving up the ghost. Throwing in the towel. We're tired and need a rest period. Time to make some changes.

As much as I desperately want to get the living room finished, there's still too much to do. One hundred and twenty-five mile trips (one way) to the big city for supplies on icy roads and working outside just isn't fun or safe this time of year. Time to make some changes.

We've been doing the power saw cutting in the garage because it's either been too cold or wet to set up and do it safely outside. This has made a terrible mess with sawdust in every nook and cranny of the garage and everything stored in there. It will take a major clean up job to get it back to less than the despicable state it is now. Plus with all the tools set up in the garage, there's no way to get a vehicle in there for inclement weather protection. Time to make some changes.

Papa Pea and I have been losing brain cells from too much pushing. We're both getting a little flaky and unable to make intelligent decisions or even remember where we stashed important materials and hardware or that special bottle of liquid libation purchased for the holidays. (Now THAT'S serious!) Time to make some changes.

I now has this fantastic, beautiful kitchen but because of our continued push to finish the rest of the house, I haven't even had the time to cook or bake the way I want in it yet. (Well, phfffft! That's downright silly, isn't it?) Time to make some changes.

So . . . we've made the decision to shut down on the remodeling for about three months. Until milder weather arrives. We're taking the pressure we've put on ourselves off and are going to spend the rest of the winter months recharging our leaky batteries. (As our daughter would say, "Sounds like a personal problem to me.")

It will also give us a chance to coax the old checkbook balance back into a healthier state. Along with our bodies and brain cells, finances have been taking a pummeling in the last year we've been seriously working on the house. They say money can't buy happiness, but it can buy building supplies!

The kitchen is completely done except for the new exhaust fan over the cooking stove. That's going to involve punching a hole either through the roof or out a wall so we'll tackle that in the spring.

The living room has all the paneling up on the walls and the trim work is done around all the windows and doors except for the pocket door that will close off the stairway up to Papa Pea's office. The permanent stairs are installed and the stairway is enclosed. The ceiling is still the joists upon which the office rests. The floor is plywood. But we've temporarily installed the wood stove in there with fireproof Duroc on the floor and walls behind it and will use the old furniture we have in a (halfway) comfortable arrangement. I can't tell you how nice it is to have a soft chair to plop into after having nowhere to sit other than at the kitchen table for months.

At any rate, this decision we've made to stop the remodeling push for a couple of months seems like a really good one to both of us.

No early alarms in the morning.

No waking with the feeling there are things we MUST get done that day.

No staying up late at night to catch up on the "everyday" things after a full day of remodeling work.

Days with no lists.

Good food without sawdust in it.

Lying under a quilt snoozing in the afternoon.

Time in front of the open fire reading.

Time in my quilt studio.

Evenings watching a DVD with a big bowl of popcorn.

A snowshoe hike. Assuming we eventually get snow, that is.

Doing all of the above until we're re-energized and ready, really ready, to pick up hammer and saw and brush again. Sounds good to me, so bring it on!