A New Phase

This weekend, we start renovating again and I have the usual pre-renovation excitement, which rapidly deteriorates into renovation frustration as the weeks pass by.

We last downed tools in August 2009, after completing the huge back deck just before our wedding in September.

This is what it looked like just before we got the walls at the end up. It looks much the same now, only with couches and odds and ends scattered around it.

Dan and I have developed a renovation pattern in the 4.5 years we've been working on this house.

We generally avoid doing serious work on the house for six months of the year, when the tropical climate here makes doing much of anything quite unpleasant.

As winter creeps up, we plan the next phase, then Dan works like a demon to get it done by August.

I am not generally allowed to participate with much manual labour, owing to the fact that my handiwork is generally sloppy, half-hearted and has to be re-done by Dan afterwards.

He's a perfectionist. I'm not.

Instead, I handle the house work, cooking, gardening and chores that we usually share.

Come September, we're thoroughly sick of living in a construction site and are ready to down tools again for another six to eight months and slow down again.

Hopefully, this will be our last phase of renovating this house. We need to paint the exterior, we need to landscape the gardens and we need to paint and tile the downstairs interior.

Then, we plan to put it on the market and move on.

I have come to love this house since the back deck went on, but I'm really excited to be done with it, sell it and start a new phase of our lives.