Creating a blank slate

HOME.

Such a great word, such a great place. Stace, Cora and I are so thankful for God's protection of our house. The electrician who fixed the wiring today reiterated how lucky we are that the whole place didn't go up in flames.

We appreciated our house when we moved in last year, after living in such a tiny apartment and feeling so glad to have been able to sell our condo in a down market. But that really pales in comparison to our gratitude now, moving back in, knowing how it so easily could have gone a different way.

The construction team was here bright and early Wednesday removing the bath/shower, tile floor and ceiling. Today the electrician fixed the wiring and another worker painted out the attic to kill off the smoke smell, and then put in the drywall for the new ceiling. On Friday we'll have new insulation sprayed into the attic.

And of course, now that we're in the middle of rebuilding the bathroom, we realize that we never took any good photos of the ghastly state it was in when we bought the house.

Top photo shows one of the two good-sized areas of missing paint on the wall (I'm trying to show the size with my hand.)
Second photo shows the continued quality of workmanship with the paint job - see the peeling paint along the corner? And the painter's tape left up along the ceiling, some of which was holding up long dark hairs. Classy. There are many other details of how bad it was, but I'll spare you.

Next three photos show the current state, with the room becoming a blank slate. First photo shows where the cabinet, sink and mirror will go. Next shows the tub/shower area, freshly painted with the odor-killing paint. Then the attic and half the new ceiling, before the second big piece of drywall was installed to complete the ceiling. You can see the new housing for a new extractor fan.

Lastly, our clothes and linens arrived today from the dry cleaning company. There are another eight boxes in our bedroom. I have my work cut out for me! Another blessing for us is the fact that I don't work outside the home. I can't imagine how much harder this experience would have been if I had been trying to get Cora off to day care and myself off to work while staying in the hotel, not to mention dealing with moving back into our home in a couple of hours in the evening.

In Cora news, we started the next session of our "My Buddy and Me" city class on Wednesday, and Cora and Stace have started taking parent/child swimming lessons. Fun stuff!

And for more fun stuff, watch the video - this is from England, with Stace teaching Cora to talk English, and to talk Somerset with the final phrase.
(For my American readers who are unfamiliar, Somerset is a rural southwestern county, with a distinctive manner of speaking that you don't hear very often on English programs we get here in the States. "How be on" means "How are you?")