It Isn't Nesting... It's Panicking

When Ray and I bought our house, I told him I wanted us to have all the remodeling done within 2 years.  I wanted to be able to enjoy our house... not always be working on it.  Fortunately our baby is due exactly on the 2 year anniversary of when we signed on the house, making the desire to meet the goal even more... desirable.

We've only got the basement left with the first item on the agenda being replacing the ceiling.  The old ceiling was a suspension ceiling with really old ceiling tiles.  The kind of tiles found in old schools with pencils and spit wads dangling from them.  It also had fluorescent lighting, so it really looked like an old school's ceiling.  We debated on what to do with the ceiling (sheetrock it, refinish and paint it, put in a newer suspension ceiling) and putting in a newer suspension ceiling won out.  Theoretically that sounds easy, and it would have been if our house was perfectly square... but like every other house on earth, it isn't.

To make a long and boring story short, today I worked like the devil and got a huge chunk of it done.  I'm shamelessly proud of myself.

Why I'm so shamelessly proud:
1.  Dusted off the 9th grade geometry skills
2.  Stopped only once for 15 minutes to eat an orange and peanut butter/jelly sandwich
3.  Did serious manual labor and have blue, bruised knees to prove it
4.  Ingeniously figured out how to do all this with only 2 hands.
5.  Didn't stop working until 8:30pm
6.  Swore only once
7.  Did it.  I did something I've never done before and I did it well

Since I was working on it alone, I didn't have anyone to take pictures of me.  But that's okay, I figured out how to use the timer on my camera... like I said "shamelessly proud of myself."

Ceiling and suspension grid partially completed

Tiles still needing to be put up... except now most of those boxes are empty

The corner where I collect my tools

First crack at using the camera timer

Second crack... I got a kick out of the perspective in this shot.  It looks like I'm Gandalf in Bilbo's hobbit hole

Third crack... sporting a plumber's crack if my shirt weren't tucked in

Using the little saw to cut through tiles... not sure my pants are even still on.
Once the basement is finished, this patio is the next project

After inhaling the sawdust, ceiling tile powder, dust, and cobwebs for half the day,
I finally put on 1 of the 1,000 bird flu masks the home's previous owner left for us in the furnace room.
I guess I'm starting to get paranoid because I actually worried I might get Hantavirus
or someday find out I have mesothelioma.

Tadaah!
It looks much more impressive in person