My house, but no longer woeful

Today is the day that I get to start loving my house again. When Jeremy and I decided to buy this house it was because we loved it. We loved the look of it, we loved the floorplan and we loved the potential it had to be even better than it already was. But then problems with some of the finish work, squeaky floors, and dissatisfaction with choices we made began to feed to a growing sense of disillusionment about homeownership. After months of wrangling back and forth with the builder, includng our hiring an attorney to put a little fear into Richmond American's post-construction department, today the repair work began. (A little aside to say that once we started to deal with the right people at Richmond American things got done a lot faster and they have really gone above and beyond the call of duty to make us happy by agreeing to fix certain things, like the tile, that they really weren't obligated to fix. Most of the problems with our house boil down to the following lesson: don't build a house in the winter. Too many things can go wrong!)

Anyway, last night Jeremy and I spent the evening moving any furniture on our tile floors off of them and into our dining room. Today the tile workers came in to re-grout the floors. Although they have yet to clean up the grout--it's still drying--I can already tell that I'm going to like my tile 100% more than I have in the past. I'm thrilled with the job. I can't wait until they're done so I can take off my shoes and socks and walk around without feeling the edge of the time cutting into the bottoms of my feet.

The middle of April is going to see some major changes in my house. First we are having the carpet ripped up to fix all of the squeaky floors. Yay! If this was all we were doing I'd be thrilled, but since we're going to have all of the carpet removed we thought we'd do a few other things. Next we're going to have all of the walls textured on our bottom floor, except for the master bedroom, as well as up the stairs into the upstairs landing. The drywall contractor liked the tall niche above our fireplace so much that he offered to do Ventian plaster in that area for free if we would agree to allow him to refer people to us and possibly let his prospective clients come to our house to see his work. Uh, yeah! We're also going to have our little half bath Venetian plastered. With all of the plastering going on we're also going to have to have the majority of our house repainted, which I'm excited about, since the paint color that I chose has been one of the primary misgivings about my design choices. I'm going to lighten the color slightly and have the ceiling painted the same color as all of the moulding. Then depending on the bid amount, I may have the painter also paint all of the upstairs bedrooms, the bonus/scrapbooking room and the master bedroom/bathroom painted. I know Jeremy doesn't want to do all of that painting, and while I would do it, I don't think I want to commit to that project while almost 7 months pregnant (when this all happens), or with a new baby in the hosue. The only downside to all of this is that I'm going to have to move out of my house for two weeks to get all of this done. It will be worth it, though when I get to move back in to a house that will feel, and probably smell, new!

Finally, my craftroom furniture came today. I'm postively itching to bring it upstairs and set it all up, but I must resist. It would be silly to set it all up only to have to take it down in three weeks. Besides the furniture will be easier to move while in boxes. Also, if I wait until the house is ready to move back into and I've really been good with my spending this month I'll have money to decorate my room as well. Can you tell I'm trying to convince myself that I want to wait here?

OK, now, this is the real "finally." I want to thank my friends who so generously offered to come help me move. You guys are so sweet, and know how to take such good care of a girl! I think this weekend I'm going to finish up all of my unfinished projects, and begin purging/packing. I want to reduce the amount of stuff in here significantly to eliminate clutter. I'll still call if I need help, but I think I should be able to handle this one. You guys are the greatest!