All we lack is finishing up.

I wish I had more time for posting about the things we accomplish here at the end. They're small tasks but we're plugging through quite a few of them every evening. Things are getting very real around the house and while I in no way intend to air out laundry on this blog, I think it's an important process for Paul and I to document all of it. The good, the bad and the ugly. I am turning this blog into a book when things calm down, thanks to Blurb, and I want the stories inside of it to really reflect what we're going through. Mainly because, one day, I'm going to get this bug again, and I need a reminder of what it took to get to this point. So I feel the need to really document what we feel and what we think.

Right now, what we think is, this was a really good idea but we were really stupid for doing it. We're exhausted. We're tense. We're snippy with each other. We just want to finish. One year from now, maybe even six months from now, we'll be happy we did this. I mean, in all honesty, we're happy we did it now. But I think we'll really feel that it was the right choice for our family a little later.

This past week we made quite a bit of progress. The tough part about the end of a job is just finishing. Most final tasks are not quick wins. They are long lead time items, like painting trim.

Paul has been installing trim like a mad man. It's everywhere and it makes such a huge difference. He reinstalled doors, framed and installed the door to the closet in the master bedroom and it looks really good. He's pretty proud of it. I'm pretty proud of him. The entire 2nd floor is done, sans some closets we will use leftover pieces to complete. The living room, the largest room on the first floor, is done and all other long pieces have been cut and dry fitted into place in the other rooms. The tough part is getting it painted. I need to ramp up my speed and patch and paint behind him. I'm still only on the first two rooms upstairs.

Our to-do list is still long but that's because the same task is written for every room. I hope to finish the second floor trim painting tonight, it's a tall order, but necessary. The first floor won't be a peach because I still have a lot of paint cut in to do for the walls and I will need to be able to focus. Some minor tile and grout work in the kitchen, some cabinet trimming, some cleaning and we'll be calling this bad boy done as far as our lender is concerned*.

A common, very common in fact, statement that is thrown out in my Monday morning Architecture meetings is, "all we lack is finishing up".

Well, all we lack is finishing up.


*A side bar conversation on this topic is coming.