Generally, I enjoy listening to the podcast of Arthur@AmeriNZ. But on a recent episode, Arthur was describing what a mess his house was, and the fact that he can’t do X until Y is done, and he can’t do Y until Z is done, et al. I nearly shrieked – and not with joy – because it’s pretty much what’s been going on with us.
It’s been going on SO long that the chronology has gotten to be a bit sketchy. As I recall, a couple of years ago, we decided to get the attic insulated. There is a bunch of stuff up there, inevitably. The easiest way to go about it was to move all the things in one half of the attic to the other, which we did, which naturally made that side almost impassable, and difficult to find things in, as you might imagine. Then we waited. And waited.
Our contractor had some emergencies that he needed to do for other people, and a couple for us.
Finally, the contractor did the work on half the attic, in relatively short order. We painted the one side and it looked lovely, as attics go.
So now it’s time to insulate the other side; this was November 2010. Of course, everything that was in the attic is now on the OTHER half. The attic is stripped down to the studs. And we wait and wait. The contractor has flood repairs to do for others. He also – and this is important to do in good weather – replaced our roof.
Next time he comes here, he’ll be work on…our foundation, which he also has to do in decent weather; the curse of an old house. Then, he’ll finally get to insulating the OTHER half of the attic.
We might have sought another contractor for the attic save for the fact that the job was already 2/3s done.
Oh, and when I said that all the stuff is in the attic, that’s not entirely accurate. Some of it won’t fit up there right now. So there are things in the guest room, which has been a tidy, and occasionally untidy, mess for about 24 months. Once the other side of the attic is finished, and then we paint it, the living quarters of the house will be MUCH nicer. Maybe by next summer.
And once the attic is passable, it’ll be much easier to sort what’s there and we can decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to toss, without having to live immediately in it.
It is too easy to ignore mess in parts of your house you don’t use regularly. In our case, it’s the garage, generally used to store everything and anything except our car.
The problem is that the roof has developed a leak, so we had to have a grand sort out to make room for the buckets catching the drips. The easiest way was to dispose of as much as possible, either at the recycling centre or through the local Methodist Church thrift shop.
But just when everything was tidy, someone needed to borrow our tall ladders because of a problem with their roof. They normally hang on the garage wall and getting at them meant moving everything to the middle of the floor again. Which is where it has stayed while the ladders are on loan, leaving just a slim passage through to the garage doors.
The weather has finally broken here, so next week I’m going to tackle our garage. We actually need to rent a storage place for a month or two to get the stuff out that we want to keep so we can get to the stuff that we want to discard. Fun! We’re on a clutter-free kick, though, and we’ve been purging the house recently, so I’m looking forward to sweeping the garage free of all the stuff we don’t use.
I have a basement with this problem. A problem we have been “working on” for about a year! Someday……
I like to report an anonymous comment that I have been getting on my blogs which is offensive to half the American population. I am not American, and is still very angry with it. I have deleted the comment on my blogs, and I wonder if you have received any. I won’t bother to mention the name because that would promote him further.
Ann- I know EXACTLY what item you mean. I’ve gotten it, either in an e-mail or in a spam comment.
However, it also showed up in the comments last week in ABC Wednesday. I deleted it, of course. If you should see it there again, please let me know.
See, this is why Lex and I are apt-dwellers. I remember well the days of my folks’ attic, stuffed to the gills, and the basement, crammed with stuff that collected mold. Congrats on making changes for the better in your house, Roger… and thank God you don’t live in Conklin…
I didn’t get the smarmy post above… yet. But thanks to all, I will know it when I see it. Thanks, Roger! Peace, Amy
http://sharplittlepencil.wordpress.com/2011/10/29/ballad-of-the-one-percenter-political-poetry/