It's our House-A-Versary

We’ve lived here four years today. You would think one would be settled by that time, but not us.

We moved from here:

To here

(my apologies for the really crappy photo merge. I clearly do not have the skillz.)

When you look at the reasons on paper, the new house fits:

Sunroom with spa – check

Extra building for Vern’s shop - check

Closer to work for Vern - check

Lots of open, flat acreage – check

Creek running through the property – check

Smaller ranch style house that is easier to maintain – check. SCREECH. Wait. Easier to maintain? If it’s easier to maintain, why are we still working on it?

Like I said, on paper, it fits. In reality, not so much.

But still – four years. That’s 1,460 days. 35,040 hours. You would think that we would have accomplished a little more.

Sure, we’ve finished some projects, although most aren’t obvious to the naked eye.

We did have that nasty car accident that took several months out of our lives for doctors’ appointments and rehab. (My husband is a very good scrapbooker's husband because he remembered that we had a disposable camera in the car and continued to take pictures while they were extricating me from the car and onto a stretcher.)

And then there were those two transplants I had. Never ending doctors’ visits to Chicago for those. It has been three years for one eye and two years for the other, and I don’t even have the stitches out yet.

Life also got in the way – family stuff, kid stuff (I think we helped our daughter move three times in those four years), vacations (not nearly enough of those), cash flow issues (not nearly enough of that either), and just life in general.

But, we’re now on the fast track to finish this house. Or at least put a wrap on the biggest part of it. Nine months. If I could grow a human being in nine months, surely we can get some closure on some of these outstanding projects.

Here’s what we have finished already:

• The front porch
• The master bedroom
• The drainage/sump pump issue that flooded our basement

Oh. My. God. That’s it? That’s all we’ve actually FINISHED? This isn’t looking good.

On the other hand, we’ve started a lot. More than a lot. Pretty much everything else is in some state of undoneness (pretend it’s a word because it fits, okay?)

Here’s what we have to start and/or finish:

• Sunroom
• Family room
• Pantry
• Laundry room
• Second bathroom
• Deck
• Kitchen
• Dining room (formerly known as the living room)
• Main bathroom
• Guest room
• Craft/sewing room
• Shop

Okay then. That should take a while.

Did I mention that we are doing all of the work ourselves? Just the two of us? Although if you go by the pictures, it’s really just one of us, because Vern can’t seem to get a photo of me working on any projects that actually identifies that it’s truly me. He seems incapable of actually capturing me both looking at the camera and working at the same time.