Progress - but it's slow!

So January was carpet for the living room. I thought we were progressing hugely when I spontaneously painted the living room.

Carpet though, has stalled. It is crawling forward at a snails pace and it isn't really my fault! Nope, I can't take the blame on the January goal.

First off Home Depot took forever to get here for our quote. Then AB signed us up for a Costco quote - and then they showed up at the wrong time and begrudgingly rescheduled us. Unfairly begrudgingly so, IMO, because I would have not scheduled the appointment during one of my recurring weekly meetings at 11am. In fact, I specifically recall talking to the scheduler and saying "oh how nice it will be to be home at 2pm, a full hour and a half before my kids get home!"

So then Home Depot gave us our quote and AB balked. Ok, so I balked too. Way higher than we thought - and when you look at the quote we kind of wonder exactly how much waste they were planning on having? Our room is 18.5 x 19.5. And they wanted to order 49 linear feet of 12' wide carpet. WTF? Why do they need 13 feet extra? To make up for the free install deal? Shadey much?

So yesterday AB decided to sign us up for quote #3 that came in about $800 cheaper than the Home Depot for the highest end "can't possibly ever stain this carpet". So anyways, getting the last two measures and final quotes this coming week and then the carpet is special order. We will be lucky to have it done by the end of February, early March more likely. I guess that's ok. Gives us a few more weeks to trash the current carpet.

My current February goal is my sewing "nook". Shelves just need to be cut (AB...) and installed (AB...) and then I can put all my sewing stuff in. Looking at a ribbon rod (where did I get all that ribbon?) and a thread rack. AND AB is talking about adding onto one of the shelves a custom flip up sewing table. Really!!

Unless I want my February goals to suffer a similar delay fate as January I need to figure out how to dangle the carrot. I was thinking if I moved all the fabric into our bedroom - and put it on AB's side of the bed... I keep telling him it's no big deal, just show me how to use the multitude of saws in our garage. I can do it!

So I am already thinking about March. And I have a March must do that came to me today as I plugged my phone in and tried to back it up to the computer.

I succeeded about 5 hrs later after deleting random programs and crap my son has put on the computer. But truly, the vast majority of the space on the computer is from photos. My photos file is out of control.

I am not sure how to tackle it, but I need to sit down and organize the computer. Remove photos that suck. Create a file to save my favorites. (For eventual insertion into a photo book... when the kids are grown, I expect.)

So there, March goal is on deck. Organize and reduce the memory of the computer that I really, really do not want to replace right now.

Mid-Month Progress

So my January goal was to deal with the flooring in the living room. Hideous. Awful. Bad. Nasty. Icky. We have carpet, it is just old and falling apart. You can hardly vacuum in there without pulling out long threads of loops. That conveniently wind themselves around the roller of the vacuum and then require you to sit and pick them out. So much fun.

We have honed in on carpet. Low hanging fruit. Truly "we" (AB) would probably (really) rather have hardwood. But we lack time, money and the desire to install it. And honestly I favor, for that room, carpet. It's the room where we roll around with the kids.

We have decided on style and composition and now just need to make a decision between the Home Depot "free install" (but carpet costs more) and the Cost Less Carpet, less expensive carpet but pay per square foot to a third party installer. I am leaning towards the Home Depot install only because when we were selling our other house and replaced the linoleum we went with one of Cost Less Carpet's recommended installers and he did a crap job, then refused to come back and fix it. Just not something I want to deal with.

So now we are doing the waiting and measuring and scheduling.

One of the Home Depot guys asked about paint on the wall. Yes, there is paint on the wall. No, he asked, fresh paint? Because it needs to cure a week before we install.

No, the paint isn't fresh, we told him and went about our business.

Then it dawned on me. HALF the room was painted a year ago or so. HALF the room hasn't been painted since we moved in.

And it doesn't look bad half painted. And in fact, I had only kind of given thought to someday it would be nice to paint that other half of the room and even knew what color it would be - the same neutral we used throughout the rest of the first floor.

Then I had a revelation! (AB loves my revelations.)

WE HAVE TO PAINT THE REST OF THE LIVING ROOM BEFORE THEY INSTALL THE CARPET!

We are going to spend a small fortune on super high end carpet, I am NOT going to want to paint that room for the next several years and risk (even with drop clothes - I am messy) a drop of paint on our beautiful carpet!

So January has become carpet and really quick finish painting the living room.

Today (and yesterday) I am hope with the kids as they have days off from school. Today, I tape and prep. Friday, we buy the paint. Saturday, I paint while AB takes Leif to his chess tournament. And hopefully the toddler naps better that day then he is today.

I really did get a lot of stuff done around the house today though. I picked up the play room. A small feat in itself. Days is how long I expect it to stay picked up. But while I was doing that I had another REVELATION!

My February goal. It's a revelation because AB is involved.

They always tell you at work that your goals shouldn't involve other people because that is out of your control. Yeah, yeah. I get it.

So here it is. My sewing stuff is in a bunch of bins and plastic drawers and stuff like that. I need a place to put it all and I have identified the perfect place! I just need a bunch of shelves installed. See that little inset area? It is a perfect nook for some "built ins". And I could even have a shelf dedicated to my sewing machine. And oh oh oh - imagine a table that folds down to CREATE a sewing table!

Ok, I know. Crazy talk. I just need the shelves. Then I can use that folding table over yonder...