The Punch List

According to Wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_list)

The Punch List: A list of tasks or "to-do" items. In U.S. construction industry, a "punchlist" is the name of a contract document used in the architecture and building trades in the United States to organize the completion of a construction project.

According to me:
The Punch List: The list of final tasks that is taking the contractor forever to finish, resulting in me wanting to punch someone something very, very, very badly.


The good news, though, is that after six months of living in a one bedroom apartment with a family of five humans and four cats, we finally moved back home on Memorial Day (May 25, 2009)! Yay!!!

That was over three weeks ago, and the very next day I wanted to make a celebratory post here on my blog to let you all know, but clearly I never got around to it. You have all have been great at showing support, encouragement and interest throughout this project and I know some of you have been waiting for a progress report from me for a while, so I'm sorry for keeping you in suspense for so long. Considering the fact that our house was emptied of everything except the refrigerator, piano, and an armoire for the last several months, moving back in has been a huge project in itself. All the cleaning, moving furniture, unpacking, arranging and rearranging of stuff, assembling furniture (I love IKEA!), not to mention all the regular stuff of running a household, plus the busy end of the school year stuff with the girls like dance recitals, field trips, girl scout camping, an award dinner (My oldest daughter's Cadette Girl Scout troop that I co-lead with a friend-- completed a huge service project they've been working on for two years and consequently earned their Silver Award in May!), has been keeping me extremely busy. Needless to say I haven't been spending time online. I have been reading, though, and actually owe a couple of ARC reviews I promised to authors and publishers, and I feel so badly that I'm late with them. Plus I have no idea what you guys have been up to--reading or writing or whatever. I'm just so happy to be home in my almost, practically, but not quite, finished home. Would you believe the work still isn't finished? Any day now...

It's been nine months this week since we broke ground on our home addition and renovation, and despite the original projection of 6-7 months, work is still in progress. For a while it seemed as though it was never going to end, but at least now there is maybe one more day worth of work on the inside and a day or two of work on the outside. Almost all of the delays on this project can be contributed to electrician issues and as of last Friday, all the electrical work was finally finished. If we fail final electrical inspection on something and that blasted electrician has to come back, I will be absolutely--- I don't even have the angry word to describe how I'll feel. Let's just say it won't be pretty. But the important thing is that we're home at last. What a relief! I'm loving the new spaces and the old spaces and it's absolutely wonderful to be home. Now to finally finish unpacking so I can get outside and do some gardening.

Pictures to come.