The Very Beginning of The End

If you ever find yourself wondering why in the world it has taken us five years to even come close to having a bedroom in this church house, today is a perfect example. We woke up and immediately met with a contractor to bid out the drywall job in our upstairs. Whenever a contractor asks you if you paid a lot for your place, I'm pretty sure it means he is trying to figure out if you are going to get the rich person bid or the regular-guy-like-me bid. In case you are wondering, we are regular guys like him. I'm not sure if he got the picture, though, because it seems like we got the rich person bid. Either that, or he has a three-step scale and didn't realize he should step down to the poor person bid for us. Because his bid was so far out of our league, I can't even believe it. Let me just say that two days ago we turned down a bid for less than half his price. All this is to say we are cheap. So cheap that when we get outrageous bids like that we just throw up our hands, say screw it, and do the work ourselves.

That's what we did today. We dropped everything else and started hanging, taping and mudding the drywall in our soon-to-be bedroom. If you are reading this you are probably not caught up on the upstairs situation so let me give you the lowdown.

I can't seem to find a picture of the very beginning, the before, but it was fine and great. It was lovely, really. People who saw it would say it was like being in an Anthropologie store, which is basically the best compliment you can give me. Then there was the fateful day when my darling husband was like,

I wonder what's above the ceiling here?

This is the part of the horror film when you're yelling at the screen, DON'T GO IN THERE, FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD!

So then we decided to take down the rest of the ceiling and replace the sub-floor.

Really, I don't know if we so much as decided, as it was the next logical step to us. I've heard it said that the biggest mistake you can make in remodeling a house is to not go deep enough. To be clear, we never make that mistake.

In the end, it was the right decision to raise the ceiling, add a skylight and heat. This will probably end up being the best room in the house. This, which is the upstairs bedroom, which used to be the pastor's study when it was Granby Presbyterian. 

After the first round of demo, we buttoned her up for an appraisal, which you can read about here. But don't look too closely because she isn't finished. 

Then we got the brilliant idea to tear down all the drywall and re-insulate. That was also not regrettable in the long-run, but still...

Back to today. We are finally at the place where we are ready to put up drywall again. That is, we finished electrical and plumbing and weeks of insulation itchiness. And I do mean WE finished all those things. I don't know if we really are just cheap or control freaks or total idiots, or what. But we have a really hard time hiring out work.

So today we are putting up our drywall and it is so exciting and amazing. This, here, is the start of the really satisfying work. All the stuff before was time and money spent behind the walls, where you'll never see it. That is totally worthwhile, of course. It is important to our house and it is character-building. But this is the pudding in which the proof lies. This is the visible sign of the invisible truth that our house is becoming a home; that we are moving forward and, dare I say, finishing something. I am so excited. I just can't hide it.