It really is kind of a roller coaster over here, isn't it?

I'm noticing a trend: bitchy, whiny post followed up by extremely positive days. Interesting.

Today I spent most of the morning cleaning and tidying the upstairs. 5 buckets of water later, we can walk around in bare feet. I also did a number on the spare room, so it no longer looks like this:

Where's the bed?

Instead, it is ready to receive a visitor this weekend - Kristy, we will squeeze you in, by hook or crook! Not bad, eh?

 Perfectly acceptable, no?

My mood has rebounded 1000% because of the reduced chaos up here. Renovation tip #2305: take the time to CLEAN UP! Sometimes (and this happened to us over the past couple of days) it seems like all there is time for are the big messy projects, and of course they take longer than you think but if you don't take some time to stay on top of the chaos, there is no relaxing at the end of the day. Just more stress. You can't sit anywhere and not see insanity - brutal. I also tidied up the computer room and sun room so there are FIVE rooms with CLEAN FLOORS (incl bathroom) which we can now be in where the renovation isn't smack in our face - hood fan and pantry goods in the spare room notwithstanding.

Continuing the vein of cleaning up, my mom is competing for a 'Mother of the Year' award, and I have to say that Addy is also going above and beyond in the 'Mom's Fiance' category. The other day Mom was here and asked if we would be offended if she mowed our lawn and tidied our yard. This was funny because we were just comforting ourselves that at least our neighbours are also doing renos, so we could at least stand together while our yards became more and more embarrassing. Not anymore, though! Now it looks perfectly respectable! We can even see the chairs in the bushes - they were hiding behind grass before.

And now for a few pictures from the past week or so:

Vancouver - with 3 of the most amazing women I know. I have to say, this whole wedding thing has really brought to my attention the number of incredible friendships I am blessed to have with strong, beautiful, talented and kind women. 

 Chimney! Gone! This is what you call 'balloon framing', in case you were wondering. The exterior studs go all the way up from the first floor to the roof. Old school. They don't do this any more, at least partly because they don't make 2x4's this long any more. 

 Rubble. I guess in one way it's kind of good our metal got stolen, because before this pile of bricks there was a huge pile of wood that came out when the beams went up. Jake chain-sawed it up and put it in the bin to make room for this mess. Any guesses on how many buckets of bricks and plaster there are? Our auto bins are going away on the 25th, and we are determined to do as much illegal dumping in them as we can before then. Take that, city.

 Sky light! But it's gone already.

This was at 9pm tonight. Scott was working on electrical, and Jake wanted to cut out the last huge opening before having to give our long-term-loan sawsall back for a while. He succeeded. It looks REALLY good.

Jake and I looked through a few old pictures of the house today and were both blown away by how much it has changed already. The only thing really left is the floors, from what was there before. Incredible!

And now, to bed. This cold has really come into its own over the past two days. I've had some pretty disgusting sneezes - not that you wanted to know that...but too late now!