Garden Door Before and After

I haven't written in the last several days for a very good reason. We have been working side-by-side with my dad from Friday morning at 8am until yesterday around 4pm. If you read my last post you would know that I was lamenting my lack of participation in the physical reno work. Well, I got more than I wished for, and indeed, beware what you wish for.

Here was the schedule:
Thursday evening: Go to Ikea for 2 hours to work on kitchen plan
Friday 8am: Take Chuck to daycare, go to house and work on stuff until my parents come with the garden doors and we take the truck to Ikea (thinking, oh so foolishly that we'll need the truck).
           9:30am: Door arrives with my parents after an hour of loading it at Windsor Plywood. It's HUGE. We unload with much cursing (ok, mainly me).
          10:15am: Say "see  ya!" to my rents and off to Ikea.
          10:30am: Ikea debacle. Order kitchen, fight with employee in kitchen department over changes other employees made that were wrong. Talk with other customers about how dumb Ikea is. Fight over who gets the crappy employees to help them first. Cry. Order kitchen. Told it will be 2 hours to get it in physical form. Sigh. Go to Jugo Juice, get lunch, eat in truck going back to house.
         12:30pm: Meet my Uncle and new Aunt from China who arrive right then. Hugs. Start demo for garden doors. Alien masks on, pry bars and chisels in hand. Freak out. Cry under mask from worries we should not be demo'ing anything.
           1:00pm: My friend Jen shows up to help my mom clean walls upstairs.
           2:00pm: Reach the 6" of wood beneath the plaster. Back in truck to go get kitchen.
           3:00pm: Sit in parking lot at Ikea pickup crying and MUCH cursing checking off 126 items for kitchen. This was actually a SMALL kitchen. 126 pieces to check off. Horrid! Horrid!!!
          3:45pm: Meet mom and Jen at daycare to get Chuck. Leave with Jen back to house.
          4:30pm: Sit almost crying in car with Jen at house telling her how we're totally screwed. Just enough lamenting that we don't have to help unpack any of the 126 pieces of the kitchen into the living room. Hmmm....well-played Jack.
         5:00pm: No idea what I did until 9pm. Probably washed and sanded stairs. More wearing of the mask. hate the mask with all my might. It smells like my bad breath/B.O.
         9:30pm: Leave to go home.

Saturday 8am: Coffee was had I think.
The rest of Saturday I don't remember. I know I sanded 16 stairs repeatedly wearing the horrid mask. Justin and my dad tore a hole in our wall and my dad tells Justin the house, without a temporary wall in place (which I said we should have built) sank 1/8 of an INCH when the hole was taken out. Header goes in very quickly following that. I learn this much later.

Door went in around 7pm maybe? I can't remember. Maybe not at all?

Sunday 8am: Starbucks with mom and dad.
 Door was put in at some point. Many hours spent shimming and straightening door by my dad. Justin spends most of this day drywall sanding and seems to be sprialling into a drywalling depression. Myself I spiral into a sanding depression with my stupid f'ing mask on. I remember Justin taking a load to the dump and coming back from Home Depot with more shit at some point. There was crying behind my mask at some point while sanding. And cursing. And Justin yelling at me on the stairs while I wore my mask to "drop the attitude already!" and I remember dad going outside to give us a moment. I cried because I wanted to be like other women who don't do reno work, and have a husband bring home flowers in a mason jar in an antique box to me. (I saw this happen in my condo the other night while the 3 of us rode up looking like laborers and smelling like pig manure.)


Sunday 4pm: Mad rush to finish door and drywall and I stained the stairs by this point. We meet Uncle Ken and my new Aunt Yun at Earls for dinner.

Monday 8am: Last coffee. Dad doesn't have one because he was up all night with stomach woes. We're starting to crash big time. No one talks.

             12pm: Mom brings Charlie to the house and they're all leaving. I have poly'ed the stairs once. The door is done. The drywall isn't. I leave. Justin stays. I go to the paint store to pick up samples. I get sick to my stomach in the paint store with Charlie with me. Fabulous.
                1pm: Carter comes by to help Justin sort out the kitchen.
                3pm: Justin's mom comes into town. We go back to the house to show her it. I paint the samples on to the walls. Carter leaves. I leave. Marion leaves. Justin stays.

              
Tuesday 8am: I am "sick" from work and end up polying stairs at 10:30am with much whining, crying, fussing and carrying on. I start putting together ONE of the 126 kitchen items. I take one hour to do the corner cabinet.

              3pm: Back to daycare to get the little guy and go home. Justin to get his hair cut.
              6pm: Justin entertains a guy looking to buy his dobro guitar. Then goes back to the house to meet the electrician for the final work. Polies the chimney and the stairs one. Last. Time. Dear. God.

Wednesday 8am: At work. Leaving for vacation at noon.

Are you ready for this? Kitchen coming along!

Okay, I'm trying to be super positive, but truth be told, I'm sad that I sit at home writing about this while Justin "gets" to work. No, it isn't glamorous work, but I wanted to do this together, not have other people going over there to take my place (thanks other people! You are loved regardless). It would take way longer with a girl at this point, especially with a girl who knows nothing about drywalling, but still. I also feel a bit like a prisoner in my home. I had some a hankering for chips tonight but no chips would be available without leaving the baby sleeping and walking a block. Yeah, I seriously considered. Even "phoned a friend". Who told me to go. Which meant I had to stay (that friend is always like "girl! I would go to the club once he was in bed! GO!" Well, she's not like that, but you know.).
So I sit and eat and get fat and Justin works, doesn't sleep and feels a strong sense of satisfaction. Good for him.
Here are the long awaited results (I mean in the sense that you don't care about me, you want to see before-and-after porn, I know, I'm like you).

Well, you can't see the floors because they're covered in plastic, which, by the way, are doing dick-all to protect them in any way. We suck. And I'm going to bed. My captor, Mr. Baby, has been teething and waking screaming at 5:30am and wants that to be morning time, and so it is. And so I'm losing patience. No sleep equals depressed renovator (or mom, or workerbee, etc).