Construction Zone: Attic Treasures

Aside from a bit of twittering and a scant blog comment here and there, I've barely been online this past week, and it's been very disconcerting. I really miss blog hopping and reading what all of you have to say--whether it be book reviews, book discussions, author news, as well as those fun insights into your personal lives. As of right now, I see I've got 230+ unread blog posts waiting for me and am already suffering from blog withdrawal. 

So what have I been up to? Well, mostly the construction project at home has me so busy, you'd think I was building it myself! The guys are making great progress. on the addition. The first floor is framed and the framing of the second floor starts tomorrow morning. By the end of the week, they will be ripping off my old roof and joining the two rooflines together as one roof. I imagine this week will be very noisy and very messy, but it will be neat to see the new shape of the house when the roof is finished.  

This is the view from the driveway where there will be steps to a small covered porch. The door will be the opening to the left, adjacent to the existing dining room windows. 

Here's a view of the back of the house, with the first floor framed. The large opening to the left is for the set of french glider doors that will have a full length sidelight windows on other side. The opening to the right of that is for the window of my father-in-law's future room.

So that's what the workers have been doing--what about me? Well, with the upcoming roofing job, we were faced with the gruesome act of completely emptying our attic. Ugh. We had one of those on site pod storage units delivered last Monday, and I started packing up clothes and books. My husband then took a day off and we completely emptied everything from the attic into the pod. Fortunately, when we had central air installed about six years ago, I combed through our things and donated or threw away a lot of items, and I was very good about only putting things in the attic that we wanted to keep. That's not to say that it wasn't a lot of stuff, but at least it was fairly organized. Most things like clothes and holiday decorations were stored in those plastic containers, but there was also luggage, some cherished children's books and toys I can't yet part with (like Goodnight Moon, Corduroy, and the toy kitchen and barbies that got played with daily for six or seven years straight), the girls' bassinet (awww!), craft supplies, college textbooks (Electromagnetic Fields and Solid State Circuits? Please. Like I'll ever read those textbooks again?) and assorted other items like a milk crate of old LPs circa 1975 to 1986. (I think I need to download The Lexicon of Love by ABC, circa 1982, onto my iPod this week. I love that album.) Fun stuff! ;) 

We also started moving furniture and belongings from our bedroom and the dining room into the pod as well, since as soon as the roof is done and the addition space is weather tight, the construction will break through into our current living space and those spaces need to be empty. Of course, the house is a mess right now because we couldn't get it all done in one day, and our weekend was busy with outside activities, so I haven't done any more packing since Friday. From my kitchen, I've only packed up my cookbooks, so I'll have a lot to pack there, too. I'm hoping to do that job at the very last minute, because I plan on cooking until the night before the kitchen is scheduled to be gutted. 

Needless to say, I still have major work cut out for myself tomorrow and the weeks to come. I hope to catch up with all of you during the week! :)