Tear Down is Complete!

Tear Down is complete at the house, so we are headed in the right direction.  We met the contractor at our house on Tuesday before we left to go out of town.  He walked through each room with us and asked what we wanted to keep the same and/or change.  He talked to us about load-bearing walls, changes to make things up to code, flooring, and the process over the next few months.  He was very detailed and made us feel really good.

We are thinking about not rebuilding the office, but combining it into part of our bedroom.  It was only an 8x8 room, so besides collecting bills and dust, it did not have a specific purpose.  We had talked about making it a nursery also.  After talking with him, we are planning to combine those 2 rooms and add a bigger closet, which will be so nice!  For any of you who have a 50+ year old home or have seen a Cape Code style home, the closets are the worst part!

As I told a bunch of our family this week, I can see the next few months being very overwhelming for me.  I like to research, plan, and know that I am getting a good deal on my purchases.  This won't be the case!  When you decide you want to remodel or build a new house, you have time to do all of those things and get the best bang for your buck.  With the insurance company (and the desire to get back into our house), you only have a few days to make most of these decisions.  When we left on Tuesday, the contractor gave us a homework list.  One of them was to pick out the color shingles for our new roof.  He needed the decision to be made by Friday... so we had 4 days and were going out of town for all 4 of them!

It is also crazy in what order they need us to make decisions.  Here was our homework on Tuesday:
*Decide if we want drywall or plaster (because most of our walls were plaster)
*Decide if we want to keep the office or combine it into the bedroom
*Pick out shingles for the new roof
*Decide where we wanted hardwood, tile, carpet, etc.
*Pick between two types of windows (We had 24 hours to make this decision)
*Pick out a new front door
*And lastly, pick out new shower hardware!

The projects are so wide spread and all over the house!  Needless to say, we've been noticing things in other people's house much more.  After we went to Tampa for Mark's sister's graduation from Med School, we came to Atlanta to meet Olivia, our new niece.  We drove around my parents neighborhood looking at shingles.  We studied Susan and Phil's new kitchen and bathroom.  We asked people's opinions about tile or hardwoods in the kitchen.  Every house we went to, we looked at their shower fixtures!  This will be our lives for the next 3 months.  I am glad that we get to make these decisions, but do know how overwhelming it can be for me.  This would be a huge prayer request as we choose all the details for our house and have to go buy all new contents too!

Finally... the housing news!  The contractor mentioned that he thought we might be back in the house by late August or the beginning of September.  I am planning for things to probably take longer than he is expecting.  My due date is September 13th, so we are just praying for God's perfect timing.  Also we get to move into our new rental home this Monday, May 9th.  The insurance and furniture rental company moved all of our rental goodies into our house on Thursday.  My brother, Daniel, met him over there since we were in Tampa.  He had a great time moving around furniture and looking at all our of rental goods.  Somehow I think he ended up with the king bed and extra TV in his room!  All of these things make us very excited, even though we will really miss living with the Urbanowicz.  They have been so great to us for over a month now.

As you can see, things are moving along well here in Pittsburgh.  Thanks again for all your prayers and love!