You done yet?

A lot's been done in the past couple of weeks. We painted the bedroom. Wednesday the kitchen floor was put down. We have a toilet now. Yet, there's still so much to go. Everyone keeps asking me, "so is it almost done?"

Depends on how you define done.

We're using the new family room now. but the light over the table is a simple bulb currently. We've got the new kitchen floor. but there are no countertops on the new cabinets. The bedroom and the old family room are awaiting carpet, and the dining room contains piles upon piles of temporarily stored crap. We've got buit-ins to build, dining room wiring to do, more painting, and lots of cleaning.

That's just the obvious stuff, and that's also just the inside. There's grass to plant, construction stuff to clean up, yada yada yada.

So yeah, we're almost done. But really, I'll call it done when we rent a Rug Doctor and shampoo the dust and grime out of the carpets. It'll be done when we've moved into the new bedroom, our office has become an office, and our canned goods no longer have a need for temporary refuge in a sweater box under the bed. It'll be done when I no longer get up from the computer desk and hit my head on what was once the dining room chandelier.

This weekend was a productive one. Our new family room couches were delivered, some college dude came and took the old one off our hands, and a custom-ordered area rug arrived. Unfortunately they all came in that order, making logistics somewhat of a concern. But we like the end result.

In addition to the deliveries, I managed to start Mantown this weekend. Mantown is my workshop. My castle. My refuge. My fortress of solitude. The place where I'm planning on spending most of my time once my kids hit their teenage years and start having "female" issues. Every guy needs a Mantown in their house. When my sister and brother-in-law renovated, he decided last minute to build his own Mantown by taking over a corner of the basement, framing it up into a box with a door, and sticking about 75 electrical outlets on the wall so he could charge his cell phone, camera, volunteer fire department gear, and cordless cigar humidor. With mine, I made sure to include an escape hatch, the double door that sneaks me out to the back yard and around to the driveway where I can make a quick getaway. So this weekend I built myself a workbench and shelves, and began hanging tools on the wall. I had the foresight to tell the builder not to hang drywall in there, but rather hang pegboard directly onto the studs. It was a moment of brilliance. Every square inch of wall space can have tools hanging on it. It'll the anal retentive woodworker's dream. Heck, I might actually even build something in there. But let's not get crazy.

Another question often asked of me is if there were any good horror stories during the build. Well, other than the water leak on the morning of July 4th, it's gone quite smoothly, oddly enough. Everything's been in budget, even. Although I have to say the plumbing's been an adventure. From the kitchen sink clogged with whole grains to the toilet that leaked as soon as it was put in, I'd say it could have gone better. But no, there's been nothing devastating, no horrors on the order of a Romero film.

Today and tomorrow are Bob The Builder's final days on the job. Installing trim, doorknobs, and window hardware. Cleaning up tools, insulating a crawl space, and hanging the shower door. He's got just odds and ends now. Pretty soon we'll be able to move furniture in. And that's when I find out who my real buddies are. I still haven't figured out how we're getting a 300 lb. eliptical machine from the basement up to the 2nd floor. I wish we still had that crane.