April 6

More progress on the house today, thanks to my mom who watched the kids, and our neighbor Terry who came over and helped us more than we ever imagined he would. 

We had originally hoped to have the room fully drywalled by the end of the day. Unfortunately, we ran into a few obstacles that delayed our progress, so we ended up getting it about halfway drywalled. 

We invited Terry over to critique our progress right before we started drywalling. Instead of critiquing, he gave us a primer on drywall installation, began helping Chris hang drywall, and made some electrical updates. Awesome!

So what set us back?

See that gaping hole where there used to be a brick fireplace? Yeah. Our original plan involved the fireplace remaining intact. But the brick was laid on top of the wood floors, and to remove the wood we had to remove the brick, and then the whole fireplace surround started falling down... So now we're renovating that, too! Yikes!

So what started as, "Let's replace that ratty old linoleum with some hardwood" somehow morphed into "Let's tear out the linoleum, tear out the dining room floors, tear out a wall, remove all the paneling, add insulation, redo the fireplace, wire the fireplace for a future TV, add crown molding, and paint everything."

*sigh*

But in the end, it will be fantastic! I'm just not really sure when that end will come.

Lily doesn't mind, though. She's loving all the Grandma time!

And really, I have no reason to complain. We are so, so blessed to have such an amazing neighbor who was willing to spend half his day teaching and helping Chris, and a wonderful mom who was willing to spend more than half of her weekend taking care of our kids. So hooray!