I think we thought we’d have time to blog on our break between Christmas and New Year’s. Instead we got sick, worked ourselves to nubs, and didn’t blog a stitch. Too busy working on the house all day (which days are very short this time of year) and then too exhausted to do anything beyond the very basics of keeping us and the kids alive.

So what DID we do with 6 days of manual labor? Well, we started with a list of approximately 7 items that eventually grew to 22 items. I prefer to refer to “To-Do Lists” as “Possibilities Lists” as one can pick and chose what to focus on. This has made one half of our marriage way less stressed.

The biggest thing we did was hang drywall on the ceiling of the second floor in an attempt to try to seal some amount of warmth in the house if we needed to run a space heater. It would make working there more pleasant for us and some of the glues, caulks, and other construction materials don’t work/work well below 40 degrees. (like me!)

This work was greatly eased by a drywall lift we bought off a co-worker who had used it for his garage. Such a game changer! Drywall was the one job I was most looking forward to hiring out. I really hate doing drywall, but hanging it isn’t so bad if you don’t have to mud and sand and mud and sand.

The other big and important thing we did was flash the chimney and the top of the bricks on each gable. And we could only do this because THE MASONS FINISHED!!!!

They finished the chimney so we could flash and roof, they finished the front, they finished it all!!!!! It was an end-of-the-year miracle. The guys were pretty motivated to get it done on the 28th as they were working past 5 in the dark, by the light of their flamethrower (I’m not even joking about that last part).

So the biggest things WE got done were flashing, roofing, and drywall. But we’re prepped for the next stages of water and gas service, fireplace install, furnace install. And that’s all a combo of some work by us, but also a good amount being done by others! The masons still need to clean up their tools and we’re desperate for the porches to be poured as it’s holding up other construction we need to get crackin’ on. But we are starting off 2019 with a lot of work that WE need do, so the race is on. We’re still hoping we can move in by end of July.