Housewalk, Shmousewalk

Those of you who see me even every once in awhile are probably sick to death of "Housewalk" talk, but I've got to get some things off my chest. Our house is going to be in a Housewalk a week from Saturday. Every spare minute we've had has been spent "working on the @#$ house."

We've been finishing the kitchen finally. (New cabinets 2 years ago, then the work stalled.) Oh, and by "we", I mean Lee's dad and Rick (our handy-man). Ok, we've done some of it too. We got the faux-tin ceiling installed. (We= Rick, again). We've got the trim hanging out in the basement waiting for someone to stain and poly-urethane it. (Someone=Lee).

Funny story related to the ceiling. Well, not so much funny as "Oh, that could have been SO much worse." We went away last 2 weekends ago - we had a 3 day weekend. We left on Saturday, and Rick spent 11 hours putting up the ceiling in the kitchen. At some point, he closed the closet door where we keep the litter box. SOOOOO, we arrive home LATE Monday night. I look at the closed door and say, "Crap." Indeed. We went on a poop search. Found one pile in the dining room, in the corner, on the hardwood floor. It looked like it was furtively placed... our poor cats. That cleaned up ok. The basement smelled like a zoo... uh oh. There are various area rugs down there that could have been used, but our cats apparently are awesome... they peed behind a door on the concrete. Some bleach and baking soda took care of that. As soon as we came home, we opened the door to the litter box and they ran immediately in. It warms my heart to know that they'd rather hold it, than go on my (new!) rugs or my (new!) couch.

Ok, then, last night as I was finishing sanding the last room to be painted, Lee says "Are we taking this Housewalk seriously enough?" And I laughed, because we've been spending every moment of the last month working on the house, talking about the house, buying parts for the house... And I thought he was kidding. Apparently he wasn't. He's wondering what peoples' expectations are. Are they coming to see the house decked out for Christmas? Are they expecting perfection and a well laid table? I guess I'm just assuming that they're like me, and like to see architecture, see how people live, how people decorate, and think about how I'D decorate it. It's not gonna be perfect, and items keep slipping off the bottom of our list as we run out of time. I was going to plant mums out front. HA HA HA HA. Don't judge us by our front yard, please.

This Saturday will be spent deep cleaning. We've kept things picked up, so it should go ok. Then we'll just need touch ups next Friday. I'll probably photograph each room as it's done. Might post 'em if anyone is interested.