Twas the Month Before Christmas

Twas the month before Christmas and all though the house,
Not a thing was in order exclaimed my lovely spouse.
The tools were strewn on the floor without a care,
And lumber and parts all over from here to there.

The walls were all the sanded leaving dust on the bed,
While paint stuck to our arms and sawdust in our head,
And mamma with her paint bush and and I with my hammer,
Had just settled in for a long work day lacking of glamor,

When out in the bathroom there rose such a clatter,
It sound like the nail gun had fallen off the ladder
Away to street I flew with my bucket of trash
While Melinda stood sanding the door molding and sash

I spoke not a word but went straight back to my work,
While she filled nail holes with putty in the old woodwork.
But each of was heard to exclaim with all of our might,
Why do we do this each year and get into this plight.

It seems like every year we make ourselves a promise that THIS YEAR we will not be working on the house after Thanksgiving so we can concentrate on getting ready for the Christmas Eve Party. Every year it seems that I break that promise and we have a torn up house from the remodeling and we both get stressed out to the max because we have so much to get done prior to the 24th.

This year was extremely difficult for the remodeling effort. We tore out the main bathroom in late January and a week latter we had freezing weather for 3 days which froze all the water lines because there was no way to drip the water in the old bathroom area.. I spent two days under the house in freezing weather to run some temporary water lines as I planned on removing all the old plumbing anyway.

Latter the gas lines needed to be replaced before I could continue plumbing the new bathrooms (we are making two out of one) This had to be done so I could run the new gas line up the wall where the old door way to the hall was located because we built a new set of stairs to what will be the second floor master suite later. So five Saturdays were spent under the house running all new gas pipe because the old one was installed in 1939 and we needed larger lines to accommodate a demand water heater and later a gas generator for the house.

Now it is June and the Texas drought and killer heat wave kicks in and even though I thought I would be able to work from the comfort of inside the house, I still needed to do the rough in plumbing. Of course we had to hire a plumber to *finish* my work because the city no longer allows homeowners to pull plumbing permits for gas lines. It took the plumber just 1/2 and $1,100 to do the easy part of the tie-ins. Well that took a budget hit of 2 bathtubs plus other parts needed to get the rough plumbing in. And as we are paying this as we go that delayed us two months to build funds up again. Thank you Dave Ramsey for getting us out of debt! We are aggressively paying down our mortgage with a target of being completely debt free by December 2013 so the budget for remodel is only $500 a month.

So now we are into September and we spend two glorious weeks in Idaho and Utah visiting my youngest and oldest sons and families. So nothing really gets done until late September, Then Stake Conference & General Conference weekends.

Now here is what happens each year. My favorite season of the year is Fall and I always get a burst of energy when the cool weather starts settling in. That is when I explode into full metal jacket renovation mode. Stand out of my way I am a Home Improvement maniac during the Fall. Typically this takes us though Thanksgiving week when I have to shut myself down to get the house in shape for the Party. This year I got a bout of sinus infection that stopped up my ears for over 5 weeks so I felt like crud. So once I was resurrected from the dregs of despair of ill health. I was ready to move forward. So I finally finished hanging the drywall where the old hall door was and under the stairs. Now Melinda kicks into full *mud dauber* mode to start slinging mud on the walls in preparation of painting the walls in the Dining Room because we need to move the Genealogy Tree bookcase on that wall to make room for the party.

So now here it is after Thanksgiving AGAIN and I have succeeded once again to have the house in an utter state of chaos and it looks like a war zone with all the sheet rock mud sanding all over the place. I always wind up putting Melinda in undue stress every year, but somehow we always seem to pull it off. One of these years, One of these years, she is going to send me to the Moon and I can visit Alice Kramden..