Wednesday, October 15, 2008

The renovations continue


The contractors have been hard at work putting my house in order (literally, rather than figuratively!) after the fire and hurricane damage of some weeks ago.

I've moved my bed into what was the fire-damaged study, and they're busy stripping and preparing the walls of my bedroom and the spare room for painting, which happens tomorrow. The flooring contractors will also be here tomorrow, to put down new vinyl in the kitchen and bathroom. Monday sees the carpet go in, by which time all the walls should have been painted. The new ceiling tiles have all been installed, new door-locks are in all the exterior doors (complete with deadbolts), and hopefully by Tuesday evening the interior of the house will be just about completed.

While the carpet goes in, the contractors will tackle the external repairs and renovations (new gutters, replacing some roof shingles, painting an outbuilding, pressure-washing the house, and so on). I had a garden services place come in for a day last week and completely clean up my garden, including removing all the twigs, leaves and detritus deposited all over the place by the hurricane, and trim my bushes and plants before the winter. It's looking pretty good out there now.

By the end of next week, everything should be in place. Lawdog's coming to visit for a few days over that weekend, to help me unpack and sort all my books (and be fed lots of good Cajun cooking!), and we're planning a little blogger get-together here on Friday night. Ambulance Driver and Xavier will hopefully be in attendance, and I'm taking them all to my favorite Cajun restaurant, to be followed by much inane chatter (and the consumption of adult beverages of choice) in my newly-decorated living-room. Should be fun! I'll see if I can get Lawdog to wear his pink gorilla suit, and take a picture of him in it.

All in all, the past five weeks have been fun, if very disruptive and exhausting. I'll be glad when the renovations are over. I feel a bit like the English comedy duo, Flanders & Swann, in their 1958 song 'Design For Living', which has been a favorite of mine for many years. Here it is, for those of you who don't know it. Click the 'Play' button to listen.





Peter

2 comments:

Gwyneth said...

Delurking to say that I absolutely love Flanders and Swann. My current adictive mind candy has been the Hippopotomas song. Mud Mud and all that.

While I'm at it I might as well add that I'm glad to hear the cleanup is almost complete, living in limbo is rough.

Jason said...

Don't just get a picture of LawDog in that suit, get video of his rendition of "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" in it. Do this, no matter what you have to do to get it - the world needs it!