Disaster Area!

We now have 5 construction workers working in the house. I am not quite fully moved out. It's a mess!

"Uncle Earl" is painting, and so everything has to move when he gets started in an area. This has turned what was 'orderly stacks of stuff' into jumbled piles in the middle of the rooms.

Mike and Keith are working on replacing my sliding doors and windows. The first step there is to tear the old one out. They have had to grind on the concrete here and there to get the new one to go in properly (mess, noise, dust, etc).

"Mikey" is working on turning the wall between the kitchen and living room into a bar. This will all look really good when they're done, but for now it's REALLY a mess. I think Mikey really likes the tearing out part.

The 5th 'guy', Courtney, is taking all the closet doors off to be cleaned and painted. She is also in charge of logistics, and is the 'runner'... "Courtney, run down to Home Depot and buy us..."

They are all using Nextel Walkie-Talkie cell phones and so they're continually talking with the boss (my brother Jimmy), who's running 3-4 jobs at the same time. He popped in for a day here to see how things were going and remind the "boys" that "this is my sister's place you are doing, so do a really good job".

Meanwhile, Dave and I are trying to get other things done (boat stuff, health and financial stuff, taxes, etc, and stay on top of our 5-ring circus. We are not in charge but need to be there to answer questions ("Do you want rounded corners or square corners on your countertop?" "Which tile goes in which bathroom?").

We decided that the new tile in the bathrooms clashed terribly with the wallpaper in 2 of the bathrooms. In one, the wallpaper was stuck pretty good, so we just painted over it (after proper priming and prep). In the other, I got assigned the task of removing the wallpaper. At last! Something I can contribute to the mess. That's what I spent all day yesterday doing.

One of the interesting things we've had to deal with is juggling the bathroom situation as they remove toilets to do the tile. We essentially have 7 people living here (the guys are staying at the house during the reconstruction, since they've all come down TDY from St. Augustine). We are on the boat, but using the bathroom facilities in the house. We are down to one shower and one working toilet. Sometimes there's a line!