On and On and On It Goes

It seems to have taken forever to get moved into our apartment where we will reside until the house is remodeled.  As expected, it has been a bit of an adjustment going from a full house to a tiny one-bedroom apartment...and most of all, sharing a bathroom.  We have never shared a bathroom, ever.  We have been sharing a bathroom for two days, and already I am irritated about the toilet seat always being up when I go in there!  

We also have a coat tree Don has refused to part with, which is in the hallway by the only bathroom, and it is burdened with all his coats, and on top, his Mad Bomber hat.  About a dozen times now, I have nearly screamed coming out of the bathroom, thinking someone is standing in the hallway preparing to finish me off!  

All in all, though, we seem to be adjusting. The humans are adjusting much better than The Royal Dachshund, the senior citizen, Annie.  She seems a wee bit disturbed that she is now being fed in a tiny upstairs apartment.  Really, that is all she is concerned about, her food dish.  I think she thought maybe she was going to lose it in the move.

Now for some photos from yesterday's final day of moving.  

The first picture is of a contractor's garbage bag full of socks.  Don has never thrown away a pair of socks, and now he is having to throw away about twenty-five pounds of old socks!

And then the other pictures here are just of the nineteen-fifty-five version of our house, shag carpet and all!  I will shed no tears as the walls come down and the carpet comes up!  

I don't know why the pictures always go to the top of the post, but well, you get the picture!  HAHA!  I know that was not hilarious, but I think I may be going a little crazy, and I know I'm tired!  

Keep checking in to see how we are doing!

Purge Day One

Yesterday the contractor called.  He's about ready to come down here and finish listening to all our wishes and dreams for our new downstairs, which means we have to totally purge.  Today we started with the pantry.  I cannot believe the amount of food we have!  The canned veggies alone could feed an entire army!  After we get our new kitchen, I have decided I will learn how to cook.  

Sadly I did not take a before picture of the pantry, but did take an after picture.  You can use your imagination.  Every ounce of shelf space was full.

Now here is where Don and I differ as far as the accusations about which of us hoards the most.  I hoard stuff like canned goods and plastic bags, you know, for the Zombie apocalypse.  Don hoards coats given to him by his company, which he is two years retired from, for the past forty years.  There is an argument to be made for doing that, but his argument is just that he thinks he might someday lose the weight to be able to get back into them.  Dark blue fleece?  Please, baby, trash!  "Why are you keeping this old jacket?"  "Your mom gave it to me."  "She's dead, dude.  I've never even seen you wear it."  (Though I did tear up a bit that he had had that sort of connection with my mom).  

And the Charlie's potato chip can that has been empty for twenty years?  What purpose? Well, "I might want to put something into it someday."  "Dude, please, toss it."  

That huge plastic trash can.  "I'm afraid to pick it up because the plastic is so brittle it will just fall apart all over the floor!"  "How old IS that thing??"  "I don't know, maybe thirty years?"  So we picked it up and babied it into a contractor's bag where it immediately fell into four pieces.  Some things just cannot be saved!

Honestly, though, it feels good to purge sometimes.  I just dread starting the closet in the unused bedroom where I have stored massive amounts of things I can't bear to part with after giving Don such grief over the forty-year-old thermos bottles, coats, and such.  I am not an organized person.  I am an ADHD woman who has a lot of trouble throwing away, putting away, organizing, or even finding everyday items like by scrubs for work and my jackets and shoes.

Here I am adding a few photos of the way the living room, bathroom, bedroom, and kitchen look before the rebuild.  My boss, Bev, actually reminded me to be sure to take plenty of before and after photos so we can look back on them and see how far we've come as adults! 

Goodbye nineteen-sixties shag carpet!  Hello two-thousand-sixteen living!  

Remodel Here We Come

Don and I have worked our whole lives and have never once remodeled the house.  Now, theres not a thing wrong with this house other than the fact that the carpet is shag from the early sixties and its been literally years since anything was repainted or updated in any way...unless you count the time my mother gave me her really ugly duck curtains for my kitchen when she remodeled years ago, and I disliked them so much I gave them to Don for his kitchen back when we owned two separate houses.  When he showed interest in the ugly duck curtains, I also graced him with her goose figurines and a wooden wreath with another goose on it.  He loved them and immediately put all that in his kitchen.  The curtains are way too short for the windows and really look as old as my mother was when she passed them on.

Two years ago we decided to combine our houses, and I moved in over here with Don and let my son and his family move into my house.  For one and one-half years I was so relieved to be living with Don that I either blocked out or ignored the duck/goose theme going on in the kitchen, but about a thousand episodes of House Hunters later, we have both begun to reevaluate the need to change everything up and so, starting in January 2016 we have contractors and plumbers and electricians and flooring experts coming in along with the most important person, the kitchen designer, to shake things up a bit.  Luckily the contractor, who has already been here to look things over and plan the estimate, did not just sit down in the middle of the house and start laughing or crying but assured us that he can definitely fix this!

For several weeks at the end of the Holidays, I will be blogging here everyday or so to keep you updated on the progress and to have a diary for myself of what we started with and where we ended.

So here we go!  We will either love each other more or totally despise one another by the time this is over.  We have already had a major disagreement over the fact that Don wants to put our beat up, uncomfortable, ugly furniture back into our gorgeous new living room at the end of this.  Men!  Hopefully I will get my way with that argument because I will move out if we do not get comfortable new furniture!