To help me remember

I had planned to do better documenting the house transition, but it has happened in the midst of so  much busy-ness that it has fallen by the wayside. In addition, I don't currently have a decent camera. I have been trying to use Bethany's old one, but the battery life is so short as to render it useless.

But I do want to make a couple of notes while I remember.

While I was washing dishes at my lovely, shiny, white sink I thought about what an improvement it is over the old one. It is deeper, it looks better, the faucet is more functional and shiny. It feels good to wash dishes in it. Which is a good thing, because the dishwasher is a non-functioning, moldy, soon-to-be-garbage space filler. (I want to pull out the island where it is housed, but not until spring, and I don't want a gaping hole.) I also have a new, properly functioning disposal. It feels so luxurious!

I am enjoying my new stove. And my new refrigerator. And the copious amounts of REALLY hot water put out by my new water heater. I can do laundry just off my kitchen, and not have to brave the basement, thanks to the new plumbing and electrical work that we had done. Okay, so we can no longer walk out the back door--probably a good thing since we pulled out the rotting, termite-infested steps--but we'll deal with that in the spring.

In the not-glamorous, but comforting category, there's a new sump pump to replace the old one that didn't work. And in the made-my-life-so-much-better category is the new tub and shower in the main bath, even though the rest of the bathroom still needs to be ripped out--except for the toilet, which was also repaired after we moved in--so that I can breathe when I'm in there.

We should have ripped out the rest of this bathroom while we were in destruction mode.

We have two rooms on the main floor that are painted and happy. We have three bedrooms that are painted, and one that is primed. We still have some celings that need to come down and the aforementioned bathroom work to do, plus a shower to rip out and replace on the first floor. And the kitchen. And curtains. But at least now we're starting to get to the stuff that I had planned to do when we bought the house.

Someday I might even get to think about making it homey.

Living room bay window. Progress.

31 Reviewing

There are SO many bloggers doing the 31 days. Hundreds. It makes it a bit overwhelming to try to find gold nuggets in the pile of rocks. However, I do have one strong recommendation. If you only read one extra blog this month make it Life in Grace.

I'm sure many of you already do. I know many of us shed tears with Edie when she lost her beautiful home. This month she is doing 31 Days to Rebuilding Your House and Heart as they move into their new home. She's already had me crying, but she also has me thinking about what I want our house to be like when we get past make-it-a-place-we-can-live-and-not-get-sick and get on to making it home.

I'll keep looking for some other nuggets, but this is a good place to start.

31 What?

There's a 31-day blog thing going on. And I am not joining in, unless it's for 31 days of blog reading, because some of these topics sound pretty interesting.

Maybe I'll do 31 Days of telling you about the interesting things I find on these other blogs.