Cancer is Stupid…

… Really really stupid.

BUUT today is such a proud day!  DD has finished her Taxol treatment!!!!!!  This means that she has finished the chemotherapy phase, and after a 3 week break will start radiation.  For those of you who I keep up with personally, because DD is behind Soonie in her treatment schedule- this means that both of my loved ones are Chemo free!!!  Way to be, if ya ask me. Big H keeps us updated on days she has treatment through a group text.  It is a great method and probably saves him a lot of time and trouble.  This is what happened today:

It just makes me laugh.  When I think about BigH and his hand in all of this, I cannot even imagine what he feels like.  To be in the thick of it, with the person you love the most- but not be able to have any affect on how things play out, would totally stress me out.  But he has been able to keep a mildly humorous perspective.  I think he, and DD, are fully resting in the fact that the Lord’s hand is guiding this little detour of their lives.  I only hope my heart would be capable of such peace.  Husband and I often joke that we see a lot of similarities between his parents and us.  He obviously is like his dad, and I am a lot like DD, especially for not being blood related.  We get and understand each other in a very “Type A” way 🙂  Watching them weather this storm in their lives as we navigate our first year of marriage has given me such encouragement and hope for where we will be later in life!

So like I said, she gets a 3 week leave of medicine then starts her radiation.  Soonie is in her 2nd week of radiation and has been doing splendidly.  It give me hope DD is on the upswing!  Soonie was able to get her hair colored last week and it is like a super cute pixie cut length right now!  We keep telling her to keep it like that, but I doubt she will.  It makes me feel good that I’ve got such strong women on both sides of my family.  If the Lord blesses me with a daughter, she is going to make it just fine.

As any AU fan would say “We’re half way there, woah-oh livin’ on a prayer.”

Here’s to the power of prayer!

Did ya hear?

WE WON THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP!!!!!!  That is why we are holding up the #1 in the fam jam pic, ya know, because we ARE THE BEST TEAM IN THE NATION!

What a super fun and exhausting weekend.  I cannot even explain the feelings and emotions.  At least for the rest of this year, no one can say anything.  We are the best.

I could write an entire blog about the ups and downs of being an Auburn fan, but I will spare you all.  To those of you who are, you know what I’m talking about, and to those of you who aren’t… well, frankly I feel sorry for you.

It really should have been a great day for everyone but I doubt some of our neighbors were actually cheering for us 🙂

Regardless, 5th year in a row the Champ came from the best conference in America, the SEC, and the second season back to back for the state of Alabama!  Not too shabby. (I think the stats are right, if not someone else me know and I’ll correct them!)

That explains the no-house-post because since I’ve been gone it is a mess!!  Next on the list: our bedroom.

The Den

Ok, well I’ll give the den a shot and see what y’all think!  I got the throwup bug this past Friday and hope that is something I never have to experience again… ever.  I’m still sore from well, you know, the uhhh yeah.  So I’m sitting in my chair in the den, first time to leave my room since Friday night, resting up to renter the world tomorrow.

The den has been a REALLY fun project for me.  When we first moved here, ya know- last year on Halloween, figuring out this spot was pretty tricky.  See it’s kind of deceiving because when you walk in it feels really open but it’s hard to arrange.  This time we went with a different set up and I have been loving it.  It makes the space flow so much better and lives ten times better! So here is the shot from the back of our dining room (the distance is so short I had to back up that far to fit it in! HA)

Notice: the dining room chair kinda flows through! It picks up the green in the padding of the cane chair (we’ll get to that later).  So like I said I have loved getting to work on this room!  You never saw the before, and that is just fine with me haha.  We had used hand me down furniture from my parents.  Which let me tell you, I was VERY grateful for.  Very very thankful to move into a house and have furniture! Because the Lord knows that we couldn’t buy any furniture.  It was hard however though, because I felt like I was living in someone else’s house.  All you newly-wed/mommy/food bloggers you know what I’m talking about.  It’s a theme of how to make a house feel like a home with a hodgepodge of hand-me-downs.  So this time around, Husband and I were able to save more through living at home and he came around to the fact that it would be a good time to get some things of our own.  I think he had seen just how sad I was living in a game room with salmon, sky blue and maskin tape walls and wanted to give me a pick me up.  So he said the word and you know me, I had completed the tax in a few hours!

So first came the couch:

Me likey.  I love the light color.  Some of you may be worried about having a lighter couch.  It’s kind of a linen-y color which I love.  Now, you also can’t forget ‘ole Jackson.  Our old couch was a honey-caramel color and the yellow lab light hair showed up.  This couch is a bit more forgiving of my vacuuming… For some reason, I have a thing about couches with 3 cushions.  No real reason, it’s just a personal thing.  I really wanted a bench cusion, but since the bankett at the dining room table is I thought 2 longer cushions would be a compromise.  You can sit and not get that “woah I’m sliding into the crack” feeling.  I LOVE the high arms.  It gives a real sturctured feel which I love.  Also since it is at an angle to the TV, it’s great support to lean against if you want to stretch out.  Lastly, can we just talk about my faublous pillows?! The stitching on the green ones remind me of cowboy boots for some reason, and I like it.  If you know me, you know I love textures and layers- these pillows really add that, individually and to the whole room.

Once we (my mom and I) had decided on a couch, it was time for some chairs.

I tend to have a very structured and more modern taste, even though sometimes I wish I didn’t.  But I knew Husband would want a good comfy chair to lounge in as well.  So my theory, do what you like and what works.  So that is why these chairs have no physical or visual relationship to each other!  I got the green chair from the same store as the couch.  It’s really neat up close, its a weave of teal, caramel, linen, and blue.  I love the way it feels when you sit in it.  Ladies, I would highly suggest an armless chair!  I am writing this sitting here now.  Not having the arms makes it easier to type on the computer, they don’t get in your way.  It’s got a wide seat so I can pull my legs up and feel just as cozy.  I have loved it.

The chair and ottoman was a gift to us for Christmas from my in-laws!  I totally hit the jack pot with my mom and dad in-law.  They are so great.  She knew I was working on getting some new things so she said that she would gladly get us a piece for Christmas and we talked about an amount.  The chair and ottoman were a perfect fit for budget and time!  I absolutely love the pattern on it.  It’s raised and give such great texture, there is also a bit of a sheen on the fabric you can see a bit from the picture.  It gives the chair a lighter look and I love the visual interest.

The last thing on the list was getting something to put under the TV.  You just can’t have that thing floating on the wall.  With our tiny room, I needed something that didn’t take up a ton of space, visually or physically.

I got the console on sale because it had some scratches on the top, but nothing that looked terrible.  Just added to the overall farm character of the piece.  I have LOVED those ottomans under the console.  They are great to pull out when you need extra foot rests of seating and when stored, take up no space and look fabulous just sitting there!  I’ll get a handle on the wires eventually…

So there goes the bare bones of the room.  Here are a few shots of the fun little diddys that really make the difference in the house.  A mix of old and new, just like I like it…

First on the list…

Birthday lamps and end tables!!!  One other thing that was convenient in the timing of this whole moving in thing was that my birthday was coming up in a few weeks.  I died over these lamps in the store upon seeing them.  They were meant to be in my den.  Through a fabulous family giving small birthday gifts I was able to get enough money to purchase them!!  I pooled other birthday money to get the end tables.  I like the shape on the top, interesting but not obvious, the legs flare out a bit at the bottom and there is a shelf which adds a nice look.  They are a great height and check out those cuties in the frame!!  Cutest niece and nephew God ever made.  Timely in the AU gameday wear for the CHAMPIONSHIP coming up next week.  Ok back on task…

The next fun diddy are the screens behind each lamp.  You can see a good shot from the full view of the den, and here is a close up of each:

Pretty sweet huh?  These were such a random find!  My grandfather has recently remarried and moved into a new house.  So my Mom and Soonie had been cleaning the remainder of my grandmother’s things and sorting through stuff that needed to be sorted through.  One night mom’s car died up at their old house and because my Husband’s worst nightmare is to have left me unprapared for any situation in life, I had jumper cables and went to jump her car off.

I wanted to go in the house and just see things since I knew we wouldn’t be back in there.  Kinda sad when I think about it now, we didn’t grow up going there, but still it was weird.  It was where my mimi spent her time sick and the last place she had life.  I remember after she passed all the cousins gathered on her bed where we would visit her and talked about growing up memories.  It may be dumb, but I just wanted to give it a proper goodbye for some reason.  We were walking around and on the back stair case by the kitchen there were these 6 panels of paintings.

My grandmother had a very Asian flavor in her decorating.  Pictures, screens, kimono prints etc.  It touched every room of her house.  At first I thought “Woah those are huge and Asian” and kind of laughed beacuse the were so like Mimi.  Mom and I both made a face like Oh Mimi… But the bottom one of the two above caught my eye.  I said mom, these are the colors in my den… do you think this would look ridiculous in there?  At this point I had nothing to go on the walls.  The others were more red, green and clay colors- not the best look with my things.

Then when we were leaving my mom was like wait a second, I remember there being one more that didn’t fit on the wall so Mimi just put it in the attic.  We both looked at each other and went up to the attic to search.  Then we found the beauty on the top.  How fabulous is that padoga?! And those brown bloomy things under the rock the man is sitting on? I literally die over them every time I walk into my den.  My mom checked with Soonie and she said it was fine that I could have them!

Then came this painting:

It used to sit in my mom’s house and now sits above my chair 🙂  Growing up my room was on the opposite end of the stairs from my brother and sister’s rooms.  A lot of times I would use the front stairs that go to the front door instead of the back stairs by the den that were by my brother and sister’s rooms.  This painting was over the door to my dad’s study by the front door.  I would see it going down all the time and think how pretty it was.  I mean those flowers look like they are about to drip off the painting and onto the floor!  Mom moved a lot of things around in her house while we were living there and it worked out that she wasn’t going to put that painting back up.  We held my then fabric samples up to it and it was a great match!  I love having it now!

And the last thing, the cane chair that was also from Mimi’s:

This chair was in my grandmother’s house. The one that we grew up going to. The one where my dad grew up.  It was covered in a different fabric and when they moved into the newer house she had it recovered.  Who knew years later it would be a perfect fit in my room!  Mom got this when they split up the rest of her things and she’s letting me use it here since it just matches so perfectly.  It fits great nestled next to the console by the TV.  It kind of rounds out the room and completes it to me.

Alright, I think that’s it.  Let me know what you guys think!  I’d love some feedback and if you care to see more!  Also any questions? Just fire away!

Don’t You Wish Your Home Looked Like This:

I know I don’t.  I snapped these on the way out of my house this morning.  Junkity Junk everywhere!!  It is starting to kill me.  Slowly and painfully.  For perspective: I have already unpacked most all boxes that we packed up.  And it STLL looks like this.  I’ll have to post finished shots when (IF) I ever get it all finished.  I need to redeem myself.  So if you’re worried about your house or think it’s too messy, this little lady has got you beat!

False Alarm

Woah. Night before last was bananas.  Let’s recap:

I had gotten home last night a bit later than usual from work.  Husband had stopped by BigH and DD’s house to do some work related things and she, like any good mother of boys, sent him home with food.  Tons.  Of.  Food.  She has had great support from friends bringing her meals while she’s been in treatment and she really has too much to even eat, so she’s been sharing the wealth.

She also sent Husband home with this:

We both have a love for Ginger Ale.  From my understanding {Facts provided by Husband, which are not always reliable.  He has a problem with remembering details sometimes… love ya hun!} this is the kind of ginger ale they have at the hospital.  DD doesn’t like to drink it because it makes her nauseous.

Sidenote: A common thing when going through these types of treatments is psychological nausea.  My Aunt Soonie can’t even go on the floor for infusions without feeling nauseous.  Her nausea is real, but it is caused by something unreal like her thoughts & feelings of knowing this is where she gets Chemo, and the Chemo makes her nauseous.

So DD was thinking that it only made her nauseous because that is what you drink where she gets her chemo.  Well I was very excited and since we haven’t been to the store we are slim pickins’ on food and drinks.  I popped a can open and took a gulp.  Then, IMMEDIATELY regretted my decision.

Woah.

If you know my sister and me, you know our gag reflex is sensitive, and severe.  I will admit hers is worse than mine, but we’ve both got it.  Bad.  Last week for Halloween she had to bring me her son’s inflatable Buzz Lightyear wings to blow up because when she blows things up she gags.  If I even smell Peanut Butter or Shrimp, I’m done.  Ask any of our friends.  When I swallowed that stuff I immediately ran to the sink, gagging and guzzling water from the kitchen facet.  Ew.  Then it hit me, a wave a Nausea.  I mean like seriously, I haven’t been out for the count, that bad, that quickly.

We had planned to hang all of our curtains and blinds in the den/dining room, but I couldn’t even stand up without feeling sick.  So I retired to bed and barely made it through all of Modern Family.  I was out like a light at 8:30 PM.

Then the next thing I know…

We get woken up by this noise that sounds like our alarm but it wasn’t set (we are sill waiting on one contact to be put on the window upstairs so that we can turn it on).  In a hazy frenzy we are running around trying to identify the terrible noise and turn it off.  Then we realize:

IT IS OUR SMOKE ALARMS!!!!!!  All of them are going off at the same time in a manner and decibel level that made you want to bust your own eardrums so you didn’t have to hear it anymore.  I haven’t felt that level of fear in a long time.  As we’re running around the house trying to find out what is causing them to go off, the last 4 months are flashing through my brain like I’m getting ready to repeat them.  No sir. That option is simply unacceptable.  In our sleeping stupor we finally figured out that there was nothing to cause the alarms to go off.  No smoke or smoldering.  It was just some sort of malfunction.  Joy.  Love those things happening at 2:30 AM.  Love it.

The next day, (yeterday) Rooster sent the electrician over to check things out:

He thinks the one in the basement went off because it is close to the furnace and the fumes from running the heat for the first time in a while may have triggered it.  We’re going to watch it the next few days and see if it happens again.  Fingers Crossed not.  Just another day in our life…

Old Habits Die Hard

Now, I must admit.  It is weird to live in a house that you used to live in and it feel so different.  Our dining room is the same, we’ve changed the den and guest room, and our bedroom is finally complete!  I’ll take some pictures for the handful of you dying to see!

It’s been funny to watch Jackson get reacquainted with the space.  As you remember, he is our yellow lab I inherited with marriage.  He’s slowly and surely growing on me.  It’s like he kind of remembers where everything is in the house but second guesses himself all the time.  He runs past doors, goes in the guest room looking for his kennel when it’s in the bathroom right now (we were waiting for the new hardwoods to dry so we put his kennel in the bathroom since it’s stone), you get the idea.  Since there have been so many construction people in and out of our house for months there are all these little scent rabbit trails I can tell he picks up on.  He will walk to the kitchen then immediately turn around and head somewhere else in the house hot on the trail, then it just stops and he looks confused.  But there is one thing he didn’t forget: Our Saturday Morning Routine.

Husband usually gets up Saturdays to go to the shooting range; he lets Jackson out to run around and then leaves him in our room with the door shut when he leaves.  I am obviously still asleep w hen all of this happens because I hate mornings.  Jackson usually then curls himself up in a ball by my side of the bed on the floor until I wake up a bit (ah hem, few hours) later.  I cannot tell you how many times I have woken up and stepped on him getting out of bed.

Well this past Saturday morning, our first back in the house, I woke up, looked down and saw this:

It was like we had never even left.  For a few seconds I kind of forgot the past 4 months.  It felt like the Twilight Zone.  In those few seconds this loud, messy, hyper, sock-eating, fence-jumping fur ball was telling me that we have made it through the deep waters.  Things may be a bit chaotic still, but we are all gonna be just fine and I’m gonna get my groove back, one Saturday morning at a time.

We’re In!!

We made it! BrotherH and his wife came to help us! All we did was move in our bedroom and kitchen boxes so I can start putting things away tomorrow! I would post a pic but I’m I’m bed and exhausted! More to come tomorrow!!

Fasten Your Seatbelts…

This is gonna be a quick update!  And probably a long post, so don’t say I didn’t wan ya!

I didn’t want to blog about the fun stuff (ie: moving and decorating) without writing about what all it took to get here.  As much as I seriously wish I could just block out the last 4 months, I can’t.  The headaches, frustrations and countless times I had “reached my limit” need to be out there.  Not only for my memory-obsessing personality but also for people out there who may find themselves where I am (God forbid) later in life.  It’s not fun, but I can see positives that have come from it.  I would not say Jim and my 6 months has been especially “Normal” per say.  We’ve had a lot to deal with, a lot of stress, uncertainty and have had to learn to trust. Trust each other & trust the Lord.  But that is a whole other post.  If we can have this much day-to-day fun under these circumstances I am really looking forward to getting back to the groove of what every other newlywed couple of ours is getting to do!

So here is the progress:

I’m pretty sure the last time I left you guys (probably hanging in utter suspense, ha.ha.) they had taken the walls down and the ceiling out upstairs to start sanding the burnt char studs and clean out all of the burnt insulation.  After they did that the first thing was to cover the joists with Kiltz, which is pretty much a higher grade primer.  Traditionally you use it on the joists in the ceiling to block out the soot odors and such. But Rooster wanted to paint the whole entire inside of the upstairs just to be safe.  So the inside, being the studs, frame, and all structural part that are usually behind the sheetrock, look like this:

Looks like Tom Sawyer came & white washed our whole house!

Where Jim stored all of his treasures

Better view of the whole upstairs

Then the next step is re-wiring the house.  The man to the right in the picture above is our electrician.  He marked where the plugs were going and remarked the lights.  We added a few more plugs around the room for safety’s sake.

After that the walls went up.  Well the sheetrock.

After the board went up they had to “mud” it.  Which I learned means patching over the nail holes that hold the board to the studs and then patching over the seams between each board so that it makes a smooth surface when they paint over it all.  This all took about a week or a week and a half.  After that Cornerstone came and fogged the house.  This is essentially like a bug bomb of sorts, where it releases gases and neutralizes and remaining odor and makes sure the walls are perfectly clean for painting.

Then we hit a hiccup.  After all of that when we were going in to pick paint colors, we still smelled it… SMOKE. It was still there!  Now if you know my family you know that my mom as the nose of a dog.  She can smell ANYTHING.  After my first house fire when I was little, mom became her own smoke alarm.  We always joke and make fun, but I’ll share this little side story to show you how she proved her worth to us, so bear with me:

My dad was doing a graduate program at Harvard when we were younger.  I was in 8th grade.  That year he graduated so the whole fam when to Boston for the celebration.  After the graduation we stayed up there for a few days to have a fun family trip.  One night we were up in our hotel, on the 30th floor (can’t remember the number but it was waaaay high up) and my mom keeps telling us she smells smoke.  None of us smelled anything but mom insisted.  She was leaning out the window sniffing trying to identify the source of the smell.  She kept persisting and we kept mocking her telling her she was paranoid.  Well, as the mother usually does- she won out and we went downstairs to ask about it.  Also, because she is a life long girl scout she made us take our purses and special belongings with us.  So we get on the elevator and rode it the lone 30 flights down.  RIGHT when the doors open firemen in full gear come toward us and the lights go out.  Total blackout.  I felt terrible for the wedding reception going on in the ballroom! They had to cut it short.  In the dark we found the lobby manager and asked him what was going on.  Apparently there was an UNDERGROUND ELECTRICAL FIRE THAT SPANNED 3 BOSTON STREET BLOCKS and no one was aware of it until the entire 3 blocks had a blackout.  Then when the firemen checked the stuff underground, which is procedure, that is when the discovered.  Little did they know if they had asked my mom hours ago, she would have been able to tell them.  So, seriously, since that day if she ever said she smelled smoke, no one in my family questions her.

Back to present day: Obviously my mom walked in and her nose started scrunching like a bunny because she could smell it.  We walked her all over the house like a hound dog and she deduced that the smell was only in the front of the house and kitchen.  Once you got to the back of the house where the stairs started to go up to where the fire actually was, the smell was gone.

For a while we were really perplexed as to what the deal was.  If you remember, we took out the whole wall in the den under the fire as well.  We called Cornerstone since, you know, they are the experts at this.  They told us it happens all the time and once you get the fresh paint on and finish the place out, the smell goes away.  Yeah right. We were NOT going to finish the place if it still smelled.  So they came back and smoke bombed the place again.  We had high hopes, but once we could go back in, the smell was still there!  At this point, even the untrained noses, such as my own, could smell it.  Cornerstone told us to keep finished the room and the would bomb it one more time after everything was done.

My first instinct was no way jose and it made me feel better that dad and Rooster felt the same way  After about 2 weeks of the troubleshooting my dad told Rooster to take out a piece of the ceiling.  And there it was… the ENTIRE ceiling of our first floor was totally black with soot!  The insulation looked like a sponge that had soaked up all the soot and smoke.  Great.  The whole ceiling had to come out.  Which tacked on another 2ish weeks to this whole process.

Check out that really black piece in the front. Sick.

Ceiling Sheetrock. If you look closely in the back you can see where the lines of the studs kept the soot from hitting that part.

Burnt rafters at the very top of our vaulted ceilings.

Kitchen with no ceiling. The whole house looked like this.

We think that the water from the firemen’s hoses washed soot all over the inside of the ceiling.  It was the total opposite of our white washed upstairs, it was as if someone had painted it black.  So new sheetrock had to be put up there as well, then mudded, skinned, and prepped for painting as well.

Essentially every surface in the house got a new, fresh coat of paint which I was excited about.  Our landlord/cousin’s aunt on the other side of the family was really like and basically let us pick what we wanted as long as it wasn’t wacky.  I picked a warm tone for the walls called Wheeling Neutral.  We lost the faux finish in the front living sections so I picked a color that was similar to the hues of the faux finish.  Then I did a lighter neutral called Manchester Tan for the cabinets, trim, and under counter surfaces for a soft, subtle contrast.  It looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

So the painters got to painting and then the new carpet was rolled out in the Master Bedroom.  Then they Put down the baseboards again and painted those, did last minute touch ups and painted the trim in the closets.

The carpet I chose was thicker than the one we had before, so they had to come a bit of the doors off the bottom so they would open and close over it.  Sounded kind of scary to me, but it is standard procedure.

While they were doing the carpet the finish of the wood floors was stripped off.  There was a lot of water damage in the front of the house from the hoses, and then when our freezer thawed out totally when the power was cut to the house, it left a big sitting puddle in the kitchen.  This past Tuesday they put the first stain coat and one poly coat.  It had to dry for 48 hours so today they are putting on the last poly finishing coat.  It will sit today and tomorrow and tomorrow night…

WE GET TO MOVE IN!! (I still cannot even believe it.)  So there you go, 3.5 months of work in a few paragraphs.  Wish the real process was only that long!

Yikes

It’s been a while.  We have really been covered up lately between the construction and family stuff.  A lot more than I expected.  Here is the mini update:

For 4 of our 6 months of marriage we have been living with my Parents.  Husband has officially lived with my parents twice as long as he’s lived with me.  You gotta admit, that’s kinda funny.

Construction definitely had some hiccups, but that is to be expected.  Nothing too bad.  I have some pictures on my phone that I’ll post later about the electrical wiring and the wall board going up etc.

The house looks really great right now…. it’s kind of funny that we took all of the effort, emotional stress and worry among other emotions to end up with a house that looks exactly the same as before! But it looks really nice.  AAAAAND…..

WE GET TO MOVE IN TOMORROW!!!!  Did ya hear me?

WE GET TO MOVE IN TOMORROW!!!!!

Yup.  I could not be more thrilled!!  The last coat of the hardwood sealer is going on this morning so it will sit tonight and Friday.  We are kind of pushing it trying to move in tomorrow afternoon.  BUT I simply cannot sleep in the gameroom one more night.

This date was also the very-last-emergency-worst-case-scenario-date that Uncle Rooster gave us so I’ve been holding out for so long.

Our plan is to move the bedroom stuff tomorrow through the back of the house so we can go straight on the carpet and not the hardwoods.  We are also going to try and move most of our kitchen boxes in that night as well so I can start putting those up and away Saturday morning.  We will get to move the rest of our furniture in on Monday.  And for the even better news…

We got new furniture for the den and I am TOTALLY in love with it.  We had been using a lot of hand me downs from my mom, so fortunate to have been able to, but they all weren’t totally my style and I never really sat in there because I didn’t love it.  I would always watch TV in our bedroom because I love the way it looks and feels since I picked everything out 🙂

Well the timing just happened right now and Husband finally came around to it.  We thought it would be good to go ahead and get new furniture so that it would be ready to move in to the house when we could.  That way we didn’t have to move in the old stuff and then a few months from now move all that out and new stuff in.  I am so grateful and thankful!  I’ll take some before and afters so y’all can see the progress!

I cannot even believe that tomorrow night I will be sleeping in a house, in an actual bedroom, with my husband and without my parents.  Who would have even thought….!!  I can hardly stand it.

Thank you so much for your prayers, support, and messages you’ve sent me over this time.  It has truly meant so much and really helped us stick all of this out!

Next time you hear from me I’ll be in my cute little house!  Probably frustrated with all of the junk I have to put up 🙂

Today is the day

THEY ARE STARTING ON OUR HOUSE TODAY!!!!! WOOT WOOT!

Since the last post I wrote about them gutting the upstairs and evaluating from there.  It turns out there were a few “uh-oh’s” in the roof as Rooster had suspected.  So it will tack on a little time for that before they can start the build out.  There will be like an 8’ft square section of the roof that will need to come off to fix a few beams for structural soundness, and then they will start rebuilding the upstairs.

While the roof and beams are being fixed the guys will sand down the studs.  Most all of them got charred but just on the edges, nothing to compromise the structural integrity of the wood so it’s safe to sand it off.  This gets rid of the odor and will keep it from permeating through the new sheet rock to be put up.  It also saves TONS of money since you don’t have to buy new lumber.  Then Cornerstone will come in and nutralize the home.  It sounds similar to what a bug bomb would be…?  They will come in tomorrow and fumigate the house.  No one can go in or out and no doors or windows can be opened for 24 hours.  Remember, since we are renters our insurance only covered our possessions, so when the crew came they didn’t clean anything that was part of the house, just our things in it.

After the studs are sanded and the house is odor bombed, we will be full speed ahead!!  I am so afraid to even say it outloud.  eek!