What's up? A ceiling, that's what...

It seems like my days have been filled with aborted blog attempts. I have at least a half-dozen drafts saved - activities and events keep drawing me away from the computer before I can assemble my thoughts.

Today the kids and I are fighting disappointment. Our plans have been cancelled due to weather and we have all retreated to our own corners of the house. The girls are reading books up in their room. Munchkin Boy is reading comics from the paper and playing SIMS on the computer. I'm thinking of baking. The smell of fresh bread sounds like a good way to cheer up on a snow day, even though we didn't get a whole lot of snow here. Mostly it's just cold. It's 10 degrees out right now. Brrr...

However, things are not nearly as chilled here as they could be. We were able to spend much of the weekend working on our project room. We now have four walls and a ceiling! Inuslating the attic is the next pahse of the project, but the walls and ceiling alone have already made an enormous difference. I'm not sure we would have survived the negative temps they are predicting without them.

Middle Munchkin has been documenting our efforts, so I thought I'd share her pictures. The room is not done, but we are so much closer!

Working on the south wall. This was kind of cool because we could see where the original doors and windows of the house were. Munchkin Boy wondered where the bathroom must have been, seeing that it is currently on the outside of what would have been the orignal house. So then we had imagine where the outhouse might have been, before the days of indoor plumbing.

The kids really enjoyed the tear-down portion. Munchkin Boy found swim goggles an excellent way to keep the dust out of the eyes.

I don't know how she managed to get so many pictures of me sitting there looking like I was doing nothing!

New light switch -- giving us a way to turn the lights on and off at both the bottom and the top of the stairs. We are really moving up in the world!

Putting up the ceiling. We now have a 9 foot ceiling on the southeast corner of the room. The northwest corner, however, only measures 103-3/4 inches!

This is the north wall after we had insulated it. The sliding glass doors are not ideally located, obviously. We love looking out here, but north is not the ideal location for such openess. We are still contemplating alternatives for better insulating this wall of the house, but this is a vast improvement over what we had... which was nothing.


Lots of mudding to be done, cracks to be filled. But we are very pleased with the results so far. Yep, I went ahead and hung the calendar because I am lost without it.

Another view. This gives you an idea of what we ended up with. This really isn't a very big room, but it sure has taken a long time to get this far. Of course, the wiring and electric are all new and VERY worth it. We love the lights and there will eventually be a ceiling fan in the middle of the room. Another few months and maybe I'll be able to show you pictures of the completed room with paint and all.

As Munchkin #1 has said, the cool thing is that we've done it all ourselves.