Quick Saturday afternoon ramble

I'm just as disoriented as I was a couple of days into the shutdown: it's almost as hard to readjust to the old normal as it was to the then-new normal. No question, it was awesome to be back at work; it was awesome to do work, to see everyone, to be back among my work "family." And I'm the kind of person who frowns upon the concept of work family in theory, but in reality, my coworkers do make a sort of family. We missed each other, and it was wonderful to be back together again. The whole experience gives me all the more compassion for unemployed people who haven't gotten their jobs back. I also understand how happy dad was to get back to work, and how happy he was to be welcomed back like family.


I'm not the quickest person in the world, and I was slow to realize how long the shutdown would go on. As a result, I didn't get out of town, because I didn't know when I'd have to be back, and I didn't start any prolonged house projects until this past week (well, I started and finished painting, but getting the contractors in started the last day of the shutdown).

I've written before about how house projects beget more house projects just on a motivational level because you get that much closer to the house in its ideal form. That's how my decluttering kick snowballed: it started with one thing, which reminded me of another, and once I got a taste of how good it felt to be less cluttered, I could only keep going. It was the same for home improvement projects: the insulation was long-planned and budgeted for, and came in just under budget only because the salespeople were very honest about my needs (for example, they discouraged me from having the walls insulated, even though it was recommended in the energy audit report, because there's so little space between the brick and the wall). Another advantage of getting specialists rather than general contractors.

With the insulation done, I've had to get the holes in the ceiling and walls fixed. And I may as well get a light fixture that's been bothering me since I bought the house, replaced. And while I was home, I thought I'd get estimates to get the floor replaced. Flooring was not budgeted. But it's gotten to the point--similar point as where I was with fencing a couple of years ago--of "at what price my sanity"? Every time I look at the upstairs floor, it bothers me. Every time I step on it and it squeaks, it nags at me. So once I got a decent estimate (less than half of that of a general contractor), I decided to just do it.

Which leads me to this: do I get the walls painted in the upstairs hallway (and over the stairs) before I get the floors replaced? Do I also get my downstairs bathroom floor retiled, particularly since the old tiling clashes spectacularly with the new paint color? What about the kitchen floor, while I'm having work done? I could probably do those last two myself; the only issue is cutting the tile around the fixtures and/or getting full tile under the fixtures (youtube tells me you can just lift the toilet up and then caulk it back down to the new tile).

How did all this happen? I'm not an avid homeowner; I'm missing the HGTV gene. I'd rather be hiking, or reading. I'd rather spend money on travel, or even clothes. But I've come to appreciate just how much I'm a creature of my surroundings (see above, re: being nagged by my squeaky flooring). So I keep home-improving.