The awesome contractors have left. I’ve never seen anyone work as hard as these guys – they arrived shortly after 8 am every day, worked steadily until 5 pm, with only short breaks for coffee and lunch. It was so much fun to come home each day and see the progress that they made. I stayed home a couple of times in order to make decisions and choose materials as they worked, but also felt completely comfortable leaving them at the house while we went to the office.

We’ve kept busy this summer cleaning up all of the drywall dust – seriously, that stuff gets everywhere – painting the walls, doors and trim, installing the closet hardware and moving our furniture back into the new rooms. As money and time permit, we’ll continue to find artwork and frame photos for the new walls that currently look very bare.

It’s NICE having proper rooms and closets. The upstairs looks like a real house rather than some weird loft, and I derive great joy from how neat and tidy the rooms look now that we’re able to put stuff away properly.