It hit me today, all of a sudden, how quickly we are coming up on Christmas; this was followed immediately by the realization that there is still an awful lot of work I want done to the house by then. If it was any other Christmas I might not be so anxious, but in my family we rotate who hosts, and this year it’s my turn, and I would like the house to be in slightly better shape before my entire family descends on our doorstep.

Luckily the contractor called me this morning, with good news about our options for installing some sort of exhaust fan in the laundry room / litter box room, so he and Richard set up a day for him to come over (and Richard to work from home so he can be there to let the guy in, and herd the cats if necessary). He figures it’ll take about a day to tackle a lot of the little items we wanted taken care of, plus while he’s there we can also talk about some of the larger projects – repairing and replacing the back deck, and building and installing the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves we want for two walls of the round room downstairs.

Of course, we can’t have the contractor start working on either big project until we make some decisions of our own. The current back deck is covered with some kind of heavy duty linoleum in a truly hideous faux stone pattern – that has to go, mainly because the wood underneath is rotting through. And while we’d love to replace the entire deck platform with something solid, so the area underneath stays dry, there’s just not very many options out there that either don’t involve more ugly linoleum, or aren’t insanely expensive. So we’re going to go with just the basic treated redwood decking.

The other decision to make focused on the library shelving – whether or not to paint the shelves or stain them (it makes a difference in the type of wood he will use). Ultimately we decided we both would prefer stained, even if it’s a little bit more expensive. So this evening Richard and I headed off to Home Depot to pick out our favorite stain colors (and make a decision on the type of wood to use). Amusingly, the entire focus of this little room is being based solely around how the colors and the woods will work with the colors and style of a picture we both love, that’s been framed and waiting to be hung in our someday library for several years. But all of this does mean that if I want the contractor to get those shelves built and installed (with all the accompanying molding and trim), I first need to get in there and finally prime and paint the walls which have been bare and ugly since we ripped off all the old wallpaper weeks ago.

Posted for NaBloPoMo.