Demo Day

Wow - can't believe it's June already. Been crazy, crazy busy. Kept saying to Mike "it'll slow down in June" and every time I said that, I sent out another contract...so I had to stop saying that, LOL!

Anyways - we've not only been busy on the stationery front, but on the home front too. As I've mentioned before, we're going to renovate the first floor of our house this summer and turn it into a press room for Ella. Well, Friday I came home to this in the driveway:

Mike had already started pre-gaming the basement/first floor for Demo Day Saturday, and removed the carpet. He also took the opportunity to get rid of the old toilet from our mini-makeover on the guest bathroom, and old mailbox from our new 'box project.

First though, let's take a look at how this room looked when we moved in:

I like to refer to this look as "Vintage McDonalds." Anyways - when I got home I rolled up my sleeves and pitched in a bit - taking down the railing to the second staircase and removing the heat shield around the wood stove/fireplace area. Mike continued taking down the drop ceiling tiles which I totally refused to touch unless I found gloves somewhere. Ick. When we were done, the room looked like this:

{ Pi was disappointed her hiding spot was going buh-bye }

{ view of the second/back staircase from the kitchen }

Saturday morning, Mike's father came down from New York to have some father-son-bonding time ripping apart our den. Mike was convinced they would be up all hours finishing, but I knew they would cruise right through. I was going to assist - but my Mum just moved back up from Florida and was stranded at her house without a car, so I decided to stay out of the way and went to help her run errands.

For once (I'm counting), I was right! Mike and his dad plowed through the demolition and when I got home at 5:00, the den now looked like this:

And these two guys were taking a well-deserved break in front of the full dumpster:

We couldn't be more grateful that Mike's dad came down to assist - call me crazy, but I think the den/basement/whatever looks better this way. Right?

Now begins the arduous task of building the room back out. There's a list a mile long of projects that need to be completed before I can move the press in and get printing. Originally we were going to do all the work ourselves, but now we're thinking about subbing out some of the tougher, more time-consuming jobs. It would be great to come home from work one day with some projects actually completed!

What do you guys think? Did we bite off more than we can chew? With Mike working 80 hours a week, and me working 70, will this room look like this a year from now? I seriously hope not!