A Honey-Do List for Upstairs

The kids need to move upstairs, y'all. Not only do they need their own rooms (all three are in one downstairs, and Noemi is in our room), but I need my own room! We need the space too. We're all tired of being cramped downstairs. So we've been working upstairs and it's progressing quickly on Jeremy's side of things and slowly (so, so slowly) on my side.

He's the builder and I'm the cleaner and painter. I would like to trade, but he's terrible at painting. (And quite honestly, who knows what I would do to the building side of things.)

So to get the kids' moved upstairs, we need to:

1. Insulate. We needed insulation, in every space we could get it! We lost a ton of heat upstairs this winter because there was no insulation up there. This went fairly well. Jeremy started pulling down the bedroom walls but found that instead we only had to create two new attic crawl doors in the dormer room. He stapled up the walls with the bats of insulation. The rest of the floors needed to be blown with insulation and Jeremy did some cost comparison between doing it on his own or hiring it out. Turned out to cost almost the same. So we paid some guys to come over and fill our attics with insulation. The house already feels warmer. Awesome!

The insulation did add to our list a bit. Jeremy had to build a platform in the attic so that we can put down some flooring boards and use that space for storage. He also has to build doors for the two new attic doors, and the last thing is to put in an actual full-size door in the stair hall to the back attic for our storage.

2. Build attic doors. Right now, the attic access to the storage area is through the boys' closet. It's just a tiny cut through that would be difficult to get all of my rubber maids through. So we're going to put a small door into the attic at the back of the stair hall. It'll be 28 inches and 70 inches tall, so we'll be able to store our things easily. The new holes in the dormer's walls also need doors built.

3. Check the wiring. Thankfully, this had already been done! They left some old wires in the attic, but every time Jeremy followed the old wire it had been cut and replaced. So that was nice and easy. (Of course, Jeremy was the one crawling around the attic following wires, but it was easy for me.)

4. Clean, clean, clean. Oh, my. It is such a mess! I'm easily overwhelmed at this project, but Eowyn has been a big help. And sometimes just having someone else to work with you makes all the difference. We've gotten the girls' room cleaned because Jeremy is finished in there. He's got to finish the doors before we can clean the dormer room and the stair hall. The boys' room is next though.

5. Paint. It's been almost a year since I painted our bedroom with its beadboard walls. The rooms upstairs have beadboard walls and ceiling. Which is wonderful, unless you are trying to paint it. But it's amazing what some paint is doing. We're working in the girls' room. The ceiling and trim are getting the white Alabaster treatment, and the walls we found the perfect old-fashioned pink called Malted Milk. (Noemi is thrilled that she's going to have a pink room.) The boys' room color is still not nailed down. But after 3 samples, we've got to be getting closer to finding the right color. (I hope!)

6. Buy some furniture. The girls have their furniture. The boys have bought one bed so far. Gideon found it at an antique store and it was only $20. We couldn't really pass up that deal. We need one more bed for Esmond and a chest of drawers for their room. Plus a couple of nightstands would be nice for both rooms. I don't mind doing this one at all. Except I don't have all the time in the world to go antiquing.

7. Decorate! I can't wait for this one! We'll be making these rooms so pretty and they'll have closets to put things. Everything will have a place so everything will be able to be put away. We will literally be gaining three rooms!

As you can see, Jeremy's list has shrunk considerably. Mine is just getting started. I hate that the first thing I have to do is the thing I really detest doing. So in the meantime, know that I'm supposed to be cleaning and painting and I'm probably hiding somewhere hoping Jeremy will just go do it.