3 houses........

We have been spending most of 2.5 years remodeling a house for my mom to move into across the street from us, pictured above. My husband retired and we got that great idea when the elderly neighbor's house came up for sale about that same time. It was a huge job and actually we still are still not totally done on it. You know you always have little things to do, but the interior is done. It takes forever to get things just the way you want them, and we are slow and feeling older by the minute! :) During that little endeavor I had 2 carpel tunnel surgeries, my hubby had a knee surgery, and while he was still recovering and also working on the house...he broke his foot....Finally we got her moved in late summer a year ago, but we still had to get all of her 54 years of accumulation sorted out ,what you want and that that needs to go bye bye, and moved to the new house....then work on her house to sell it(pictured upper right). We haven't even started that yet... I am just about ready to start on the house I grew up in then......guess what........

WAIT A NEW YORK MINUTE!

Hubby jumps in and starts on our basement remodel! Hey we gotta get it going for our company to have a place to stay!

Okay, send me right on to the nut house will ya!

We are gutting it and starting over to give me some extra storage for my office and hobbies. It is very 1960's ugly and has the potential to be really neat. For months my husband would try to talk to me about making decisions on what I wanted to do and I would cry and say I don't know....boo hoo! I was just too overwhelmed! I have always dreamt of the perfect room for myself, but when it came time to do it....I just wanted to run! The basement has always been our guest quarters, it has a bedroom, bath, and a huge family room with a fireplace with a large window wall, but the main function of it's use is it is my work room + office. We are getting new furniture and will also use it as a media room. I am a gal of many interests, I sew, paint, scrapbook, make jewelry, upholster, on and on... it takes tons of storage just for my "stuff". I am totally misplaced now I don't know where anything is...at least my computer came up to the bedroom for now. Well we started tearing out the ceiling yesterday and just like always with a remodel, you never know what you are going to get into..... that is just a given! What seems easy turns out to be hard and what seems hard is usually easy. Well no one ever told us about this sort of a surprise......

Yes, that is hubby in his anti dust garb....who ever knew that a ceiling would be filled with tons and tons of sawdust! I mean tons and tons right on top of your head every time a piece of sheet rock comes down! Could you believe just how much first fell out when hubs pulled down that first sheet? No wonder I could never keep the house from being dusty! I guess when they built our house they would just sweep the sawdust from the sub floor installation down on top of the basement ceiling sheet rock....oh and there was mortar in it too from the upstairs fireplace... Now I know why you have to watch ever little thing when they are building a new house, I guess contractors thought why clean up when you can just hide it! So that has been hiding between our upstairs floor and the basement floor for 48 years! They must have been calling it insulation! So I am going to be vaccuming for the next 48 years to get it all out of the house!

to be continued................. :)