Home remodeling and discovering I might be an OCD neat freak just like Grandma always wanted me to be!

2 weeks. That's how long this floor remodeling is taking. 2 full weeks. My house has been any combination of looking like a nuclear bomb went off in it and we are all refugees. Craziness has ensued in almost all forms of that word. Send help. Preferably in the form of chocolate cake because I can both indulge in eating it while throwing it in my husband's face (the mess doesn't bother him one bit, neither does getting two weeks off of daddy duty) both of which are fabulous forms of distressing! ;)

So back up about 15 years (guess I'm dating myself now huh? LOL) My Nana was an old fashion, strict, busy bee of an Italian grandmother. At the ripe age of 13, I was drafted into the most kick-your-ass-learn-to-be-a-furture-housewife school around, AKA Cleaning my Nana's house once a week for $10 (pretty sure illegal mexicans got better pay then me.) This wasn't granny sat in a chair and cross stitched while I dusted for an hour, no this was all day, Nana breathing down your neck, smack you upside the head if you didn't get that dirt in the corner that you had to have super human (or super old lady) vision to see. Brutal. Loved my Nana, but she was brutal. Some friends have fond memories of her yelling things at me down the halls of our church, like the time I took my shoes off while teaching RE, "Christina! If you keep that up, all you're heading for is to be bare foot and pregnant!" Thanks Nana. Sorry that was off subject but hopefully some of you are laughing over that story right now ;) Ok so I repressed as much of that as I could but when I got married and set up house, I would have "fits" where I would become my Nana and clean all day long with a toothbrush and my super human vision.

Now cut back to the present. Any one who has been to my house up to this point would probably think I was some kind of awful house keeper. We live in the house I grew up in, my parents struggled financially pretty much my whole life, so new carpet was never in the cards. Take 20 year old, builders grade carpet (the super cheap stuff), add over 20 years 7 kids, 4 dogs, 2 cats, 1 rabbit (yes you read right) and you get.... gross. There is no other word for those carpets and linoleum. I could spend all day on my hands and knees and they wouldn't have looked clean. So I've been fighting a loosing battle for the last almost 6 years we have lived here.

Now over the course of the Remodel-that-never-ends, these beautiful wood floors have been laid. Excited doesn't even cover it! I feel like Steve the monkey from Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, "EXCITED!!" But now I feel the Nana waking up. My poor husband has not had to deal with a side of me he only thought he knew! I have been following him around like a crazy person, cleaning, organizing, and twitching. It's still an impossible task at the moment because he is cutting planks (which cause ridiculous amounts of sawdust) and moving the furniture and knick-knacks from one side of the house to other, plus the girls keep bringing toys down because they have been banned to their tiny room until we are done. Loosing battle, but I keep trying!

New floors of non-grossness?? EXCITED!!!

Let me just share with a few photos from this remodel-o-doom ride we have been on for 2 weeks....

This took 3 days to get this far.. ugh.

Living room finally done! Furniture still everywhere.

Family room finally done! Couch un-sitable.

This is how close we are tonight, we are so close it makes me twitch!

This has been my kitchen for the last 2 days, I have literally cried over it because I'm so insane!

Now, now. I know my husband has been doing 1,000sqft of flooring all by his lonesome, and I know I sound ungrateful so let me just give him one lil sentence of props ;) I adore my husband, I am extremely proud he has undertaken this and is rocking at it! He knows I'm crazy and loves me anyway so I know he will totally ignore this entire post as it has crazy juice all over it and he won't be able to read it anyway!

He should be done by tomorrow, which means I still have all weekend for him to resume his daddy duties, take my lovely lil monsters away from me (I adore my children but 2 weeks of them non-stop and trying to keep them out of power tools is a bit much for even Mother Theresa) and I can get lost with my Clorox, brooms, and mops and clean this house within an inch of it's life! It will be heaven, like finally itching that scratch you haven't been able to reach, but crazier.

It speaks the truth!

4th of July

Just another holiday weekend for mommy!

You know what's fun? Take one massive floor remodel + 4 crazy monkey children + 1 overworked, under paid daddy + 1 mommy trying to keep said monkeys out of said daddy's power tools, and just for giggles, + 1 holiday involving things blowing up! Throw it all in a giant martini shaker and that's been my weekend, I'll take it extra dirty please ;)

So it took J three days to lay the floor in the living room, mind you working by himself, I think that's pretty good. Pretty sure I was on the verge of loosing my mind from the clutter but I did my best to not let my OCD splatter all over my overworked, under paid husband and simply stick to curling into the fetal position and rocking in a corner at night. One of my very best friends was kind enough to take us in for two days in a row so we wouldn't be refugees, passing out from the heat as we wondered from splash pad to splash pad in the loverly Oklahoma summer heat! Her daughter made a point to tell her mom that if we were going to be there every day, we might just want to move in because it would be easier, LOL! I agree K! My OCD wanted to take K up on that offer, still does Hahaha

Ok thanks for invading our home for 48hrs, buh-bye!

The flooring process has slowed dramatically, my husband's hands might fall off at the wrist soon I'm told. I told him I don't have time for that so make sure he has his duct tape handy. The hall and kitchen also have fun angles that my angle perfection, watchmaking, OCD husband is driving himself crazy over. Lay your bets people, do his hands fall off or he lands in a padded room from OCD first?? I'll take that hands because I'll be damned if he gets to vacation in a padded room without me! ;)

Jason decided to take yesterday off and spend it with the kids and I. He made a massive breakfast of blueberry pancakes, eggs and bacon, almost none of the kids ate any of it and opted for "chocolate waffles" (aka Eggo with Nutella) *deep sigh* At least they didn't take my coffee. The afternoon was mostly spent watching movies and doing their best Risky Business impressions of the new floors in the living room, also resulting in the phrase "My butt hurts!" being said a lot. We had BBQ brisket, rotel dip w/chips and pickles for dinner (fancy stuff) My children ate rotel dip with spoons, maybe a pickle or two, Lotty acted like she was choking to death after taking one bite of the BBQ, resulting in 30mins of coughing, drinking water and tears. Can we call that dinner a fail yet? On to explosives! Snap Pops were a huge hit, only minimal throwing at each other was had (Winning!) Sparklers were an interesting under taking, 3 of the 4 loved them (Lotty thought we were insane!) and only 1 minor burn was had (Naty had to test the "when the sparkler stops, drop it, don't touch" theory of her crazy parents, who know nothing) Next was Smoke bombs. Can we talk about smoke bombs for a second? Who thought of these? Who thought they would be fun? Oh must have been a boy! Because the girls and I had the same opinion that lighting a colorful ball that then shoots colorful, awful smelling smoke for all of 3.2 seconds, not so fun. Then Jason being a boy, had to buy M-80s. 100 of them. That was the "smallest package they came in". Then being a boy, he proceeds to light them and drop them in a soda bottle, full of water. Cut to exploding water all over. Including me, as I was being the responsible party trying to sweep up the Snap Pop mess, thanks for the warning babe ;)

We took the girls to watch the river fireworks, being a sensible people, we didn't sweat it out all afternoon with the entire city population to watch the 30min (disappointing IMO) fireworks show. We got our redneck on and drove to the top of a parking garage and sat in the back of the suburban! The girls were mildly impressed and thought wandering around the dark parking lot would be more fun, so I spent the better part of the show convincing them to stay put and fighting the urge to throw my husband's iPhone off the roof so he would wake up and help. Good times ;) The girls fell asleep on the way home (winning!), we pulled up to the house, went to take out our sleeping angels, our neighbors two doors down set off Satan's firework complete with earth shattering boom, woke up all the sleeping angels who then became overtired devils. Thanks neighbors! (Fail!) Moral of the story though, we got everyone tucked into bed, including 1 very scared dog, they all went back to sleep easily and woke up with smiles on their faces this morning! They had fun and that's all that counts! :) Now anyone wanna come finish my floors today for free??