House Update

With less than two weeks remaining before our home study house visit, our place was a disaster area and I had given myself stressed-induced shingles. Also, I had to go out of town for six days to attend and speak at the New York Chocolate Show (not such a bad gig in and of itself, but the timing was pretty bad).

As a reminder, this is what our house looked like when I was at the peak pain point in the shingles cycle:

And this is what our entry way looked like full of fixtures destined for our 2nd floor bathroom:

I was more than a little nervous about the whole thing, but our social worker, V, assured us that she understood the challenges of renovations and that she had other clients in the same situation.

On the day of our home visit our living room looked like this:

Not as bad as you expected, right?

Let’s take a few steps back, shall we?

Now we can notice a few oddities. First of all there’s a shelf in front of the opening for our pretty fireplace. Also, there’s the lovely brown paper runner all along the floor. When V walked in she said, “What a pretty carpet.”

But what about the bathroom fixtures in the entry? Well, we did get them moved upstairs.

Of course, the hole in the wall right behind the entry way bench is a little noticeable.

And we had this little issue going on, too:

The paper on the ceiling? Oh that. It keeps the ceiling from falling onto the floor.

And finally let’s peek into the dining room:

Well, it’s better. It’s still largely the storage room until we can move upstairs, but we managed to clear a little out. Two large dressers went upstairs, a rocking chair got moved to the future nursery and a few smaller items (dining room chairs and nightstands) went to the basement.

All in all, V did not seem concerned about the construction zone. It may have helped that we baked those cookies, though. Never underestimate the power of chocolate.