No Furlough = No Extra House Work

I had to travel for work again this week – this time it was Phoenix. And with my luck, it rained almost the entire time I was there…in the desert. After each trip I don’t have much energy for housework due to the long (4+ hour) plane rides leaving me so drained.

When I got back to work on Friday, everyone was scurrying to try to get all our hardware in a safe configuration for the potential government shutdown. Almost everyone at work was predicting at least a few days off of work this week – and actually looking forward to having an unplanned vacation. We were already dreaming of what we could accomplish with extra days off! We stayed up late on Friday to watch the news only to be disappointed when the President announced that the shutdown was averted. Darn!

We had a pretty good weekend but didn’t get a whole lot of work completed on the house. On Friday we went to a friend’s 40th birthday party and played volleyball. On Saturday I went to the dentist (ok that part wasn’t fun), we went for a run, to a moving sale, and out to dinner. On Sunday we went to our local high school’s musical (Little Shop of Horrors) and went for a bike ride.

You may notice that we got quite a bit of exercise this weekend. Normal renovation work makes you very strong but does little to help your aerobic capacity. We want to get in better shape for the vacation we have coming up – it will be a much better trip that way. Hopefully we can keep it up until we leave!

With our vacation looming, we have been hesitant to start any big projects (bathrooms, basement, landscaping) because we don’t want to come back to a major construction zone. We feel like there will be plenty of time this summer to live in dust and debris!

One thing that we accomplished this weekend was sorting and organizing our tools and hardware (and consequently cleaning a section of the basement). If you remember, our upstairs was previously used as our tool crib – it was a complete disgrace! Our guests needed to use the upstairs so we moved all of it to the basement and then we walked away (very carefully since there was only a small walkway out!). Below are a couple pictures of the post hide-everything-in-the-basement activity.



We always get frustrated because we can never find the tools that we need for a particular job. Even though it was like pulling teeth, we spent a good portion of Saturday to work on a remedy. We removed everything from the boxes/bags/piles, sorted everything, and then found an appropriate sized box, drawer, cabinet, etc. to store everything. We don’t have a workshop yet but this will allow us to be slightly more organized – we may even be able to go to the “Electrical” box to find gang boxes or to the “Pliers” drawer to find a needle nose pair. My mother would be so proud!

The after pictures below show much more available floor space – but obviously we still need to go to the dump with that big pile of debris near the door!



Hopefully this week will be a combination of exercising, refinishing our furniture (it’s still not done!), and cleaning/organizing the rest of the basement.