OK, so. It’s all been a challenge, but the major home renovations are finally done.

Before and After shots – the ‘before’ is on the left

There’s still a lot to do – we are going to print my photos to hang on the walls, and there’s still furniture to replace or move  – but the main, really destructive stuff is done.

I tried to come back home once the floors were installed, but there was so much construction dust everywhere that my lungs got very irritated again – so I spent the last week while the house was being painted at a hotel.

We took out all the seriously outdated wallpaper, and replaced it with a soft, subtle beige by Sherwin Williams called “Kilim Beige.” You can’t see it really in this shot of our living room, but above the wainscoting it’s actually beige, and below it is white. The contrast doesn’t show up well in the photo, and it’s pretty subtle anyway. Truth be told, the paint ended up being lighter than I thought it would be, but it is quite pretty, and our house is old which means we have small rooms, so anything much darker would have kept the rooms feeling small and cramped, so in the end it’s fine.

We also replaced all that nasty wall-to-wall carpet with laminate flooring, FINALLY. I’ve been wanting to do this for years, but we were too cheap and lazy to get it done.

The color in some of these photos also looks more pink or red than the wall paint is in reality. Oh well.

My health is slowly on the mend – I am still coughing a lot, but at this point I just think it’s going to be a slower recovery than I would like. It still wakes me up at night sometimes, but not regularly, and I am seeing a pulmonologist regularly who says my lungs are clear and there’s nothing else going on but inflammation, and I’m just going to have to keep taking my meds and being patient. I also screwed up my back sleeping on the floor for the two weeks I tried to stay at the house, and my sciatic nerve is a mess. But I’m seeing a chiropractor for that and limping around for now while that recovers.

Slowly but surely, things are getting back to normal, and I have a lot of life and work stuff I need to get in order since everything has been all over the place since early March. But I am definitely ready to get back to normal and not live out of a suitcase anymore!