Its been a long time since I have been alone for more than a few days at a time. I think it has been at least 4-5 years since I have spent an extended period of time alone, and yet, here I am spending a week alone at home. Before anyone gets any crazy ideas, this was a planned event, my wife and son going to Florida to visit my wife's mother with me staying behind to work on our house and get projects done that could not otherwise be done with my wife and son in the house. Most importantly, its my son we are concerned about as we live in an old house that most certainly has lead paint on any surface that has not been refinished. So this week I am spending alone in Connecticut working on our house. It all started yesterday with a trip down to Newark, NJ to drop my wife and son off at the airport. We were actually a little concerned that they might not be able to go due to our son getting a stomach bug on Friday and spending all day Saturday pretty much sleeping with a low grade fever. Sunday morning though he was essentially back to normal and we decided that it would be OK for them to make the trip. All in all, our son did amazingly well on the plane despite the fact that he is only 16 months old. From what I heard, he got a little cranky at the start of the flight but soon fell asleep and didn't wake up till they were starting the descent into Florida. As for the rest of my day yesterday, I got home relatively quickly from NJ and began work on our house.
We were originally planning on re-doing our guestroom, gutting it complete down to studs and floor joists, and then putting it all back together absent the lead saturated plaster and creaky floor. But the project was a little more expensive than we anticipated and decided instead to work on some other smaller projects. Well, the smaller project we decided to work on was redoing our hallway/stairwell which was also in dire need of some TLC. The ceiling was short, about a half inch above my head on the top landing, and the walls essentially looked like crap. So yesterday I sealed off the stairwell/hallway with plastic and ripped the ceiling down. I didn't go crazy and attempt the walls because that would not have been a project that I could have completed by the end of the week. So I will raise the ceiling about 6 inches, insulate the ceiling which it previously wasn't, and re-do some electrical work. There are a slew of other smaller projects that I will be attempting to get done, but for now, I will be dealing with putting our stairwell back together. That is today's project at least, re-frame the upper part of the walls and ceiling, put in new lights, re-route the heating duct, sheetrock, skim coat walls and tape ceiling. You get the picture, I have a lot of work in store for me today. I was planning on working half days during the middle of the week, but after yesterday, I think I might have to take most of the week off just to make sure I have our house back to normal by next Saturday when my wife and son return. So, that being said, my blog posts will be shorter this week as I attempt to crank out a lot of work. Yesterday I finished working at about 10 P.M. and now I am ready to go again. Keep checking in though for updates on what I have gotten done as that is the brunt of what I will be writing about this week. Till tomorrow, enjoy the day and lets hope I get these projects done.
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