Love it or Change it…One more week, really??

Love it or Change it…One more week, really??

Close your eyes and imagine yourself sitting on a leather wrapped seat, wobbling a bit as the legs search for solid ground on the cobblestone pavers beneath it, do you hear it? That Mexican melody playing in the background, not sure if it’s salsa, or ranchera, or bolero, but you know those distinct notes. Our house has been wrapped in that sound as surely as it’s been wrapped in plastic for four weeks.

The intent last weekend was to take Monday off to eliminate one night stay in the hotel, returning that evening from the desert to stay back at the Marriott, the house would be cleaned as per our usual scheduled cleaning, at least as much as could be cleaned, and perhaps by Tuesday or Wednesday we would be able to move back in from the hotel. As the miles passed beneath the tires and we got closer to the house T kept trying to convince herself and me that maybe we would be able to just move back in now and not have to go to the hotel at all. So much time spent living out of a suitcase and in hotels was not alluring her to do so when our house was right there. I was obviously hoping the same, but only cautiously encouraging her, knowing that when we left on Friday there was still much to do before it would be inhabitable with the fur kids. The pervading dust and bits of construction debris seriously worried me, both from the specter that they would track the filth back upstairs to our newly cleaned habitable area, and that the cats could easily ingest something harmful — and anyone who knows Rolo, knows that there is a high likelihood of such an occurrence.

We arrived home to a kitchen filled, and I do mean filled, with everything including the kitchen sink (literally), there were boxes containing cupboards, islands, appliances, and you guessed it, the kitchen sink!    

Everything and the kitchen sink!

However, the upstairs was pretty good. The housekeeper had washed the floors, cleaned away most all of the dust and put our bedroom furniture back in place, and the washer and dryer were hooked back up! All we had to do to stay in our own house was wash the bedding, sheets, and cover, vacuum the floor space downstairs that we could, push all of T’s bookshelves (still full of books) back into place in her office, then clean that space as well. We had the whole upstairs, except for the master shower which still needed the outer drywall and door applied, the dining room, and T’s downstairs office. They had even made enough space in the garage to park the car, even if they did put the double oven right behind my bike — I’m not even going to think that T’s bicycle trainer that was put beside my bike may have scratched it — they would have been very careful about that, right? I can’t ride during the week anyway, Delilah should be free of her plastic shroud and double oven wall soon. We could manage and stay home! The Marriott didn’t even charge us for the late cancellation – another positive notch for that chain in our books!

We worked through the evening getting the house to a point we were comfortable having the kids run around out of the purgatory of the upstairs rooms while we were there to supervise. We moved bookshelves, washed floors, dusted, and picked up; washed the sheets, covers and rest of the laundry that had stacked up in our suitcases, and remade the bed. By the time we were ready to fall into an exhausted heap on clean bedding it was after midnight — but we were home! It smelled fresh, the kids all had room to roam, and we could admire the progress made to date on the reno.