Tuesday, September 16, 2008

I'm done! (kind of)

No, I haven't finished writing another book. I haven't even finished editing another book. Instead, I finally finished with my mother-in-law's basement. My husband and I moved her into the house next door in July (yes, this is a good thing!) and immediately started finishing off her basement to give her more space for the things she loves, specifically her crafts and sewing. Knowing that our time would need to be spent helping her move and prepare her other house to sell, we made the decision to hire a contractor.

Overall, the contractor was okay, but.... Let's just say, I'm used to running the job myself. When we finished off our own basement, I hired all of the subcontractors, bought and ordered all of the supplies. I did everything from sweeping up after my brother while he and my dad were framing the basement for us to screwing in drywall. And let's not talk about painting. I'm more experienced than I would like to admit...and I have the wardrobe to prove it.

I had hoped that using an experienced contractor would make this process easy this time, but it wasn't to be. Instead we stumbled over one delay after another. What took my family four weeks to do, the contractor took more than twice that long. Now, I realize that eight to ten weeks is pretty normal for finishing off a basement, but I'm not a very patient person. This is why when our contractor didn't show up for the last day of the job, my husband and I went over to Mom's house and finished it ourselves. The contractor had a valid reason for not being there, but we were ready to be done.

Now we just have to move everything into the newly finished basement. Have you ever seen what a ton of fabric looks like? Believe me, I won't need to hit the weight room for a work out for a while yet.