Chaos

So all the various permits and public utility approvals came through and contractors riped a hole in the front of the house a couple weeks before Christmas.

I've sanded joint compound, leveled floors, ground down concrete, installed tile, painted walls, glued down floors and chased contractors doing the heavy work . . .

Here's Mac getting in on the grouting action:

Now, the basement looks like:

We still need to install the living room floor and finish it, paint the bedroom, get the plumber to finish the bathroom fixtures (shower is a helpful copper pipe sticking out of a lovely new tiling job), tile the kitchen counters, seal the bathroom and kitchen counter tile. In the mean time, all four of us are living on the second floor and sharing one bathroom and poor little Bug keeps getting exiled to the travel cage in the bedroom to protect her from dust and fumes. And, the living room looks like:
Those are kitchen cabinets for upstairs (You've seen pictures of the hideous plywood and rusting metal things with 50 coats of paint that we have in the kitchen now). We got a great deal on used cabinets but we probably won't get to install them until after graduation in May which is when we a planning a complete kitchen redo (The boxes of linoleum tile on top the cabinets are for the floor and the countertops will be made of a similar pattern as the bathroom tile above to use up leftovers. + We think the whole color scheme will go well with the purple paint that Paul picked out.)

And, school starts up again this week. Oh, and I got I job - only 20 hours a week, working for the Washington Regional Network for Livable Communities.