What a month...

The title of this post is pretty much the understatement of the century. This has been the most trying, most RIDICULOUS month of our lives. But the story has a happy ending...

My last post was November 2. Well, November 3, I felt a little funky. Some light cramping, etc. I called my doctor and she said to go to the hospital if it got worse or didn't stop. So, of course, because I am a workaholic and can't set boundaries for myself, I stayed at work. Came home and laid down for a little while, and then, just as a precaution, Eric and I went up to the hospital to get things checked out.

So, I'm in the exam room at the hospital and the nurse and resident come in to check me out. They take a look, and immediately go get the doctor, who informs me that I'm fully dialated. And that I will be having a baby before leaving the hospital again. WHAT!??? The baby's due date was January 29, so we were talking three months early, plus, I was just not prepared to hear that. I wigged out. Called my parents, who were leaving from Montana the next morning and told them that they should head to Indy instead of Michigan.

That began the worst night of my life. They put me on magnesium to stop the contractions, and tipped me upside-down, head below my feet, to try to keep the baby inside. Magnesium is the worst drug in the world, and I was on such a high dose. It made me pretty crazy for a while. Then a doctor came in at 3 in the morning and told me about all of the problems the baby could have. Fantastic.

I ended up staying upside down in bed for about 6 days, and ended up having an emergency c-section on November 9, when beautiful baby Harper Stuart Matson was born. Sweetest baby in the world!!!!

Anyway, while Harper was safe in the NICU, I started recovering and eventually went home the Friday after delivery. That following Monday, though, when we were visiting Harper, I felt something weird in my incision. We turned around and checked back into the hospital, where I learned I had several hematomas, including a massive one in my tummy area. They also had to open a part of my incision. Awesome. This malady required that I be transferred over to the big St. Vincent's hospital, which, compared to the Women's hospital, is like Motel 6 and the Westin. Ugh. I was in the hospital for about a week with this issue, and also had to start daily IV treatments at the outpatient clinic when I finally got out.

It was at one of these treatments, the week of Thanksgiving, where the doctor became concerned that I was short of breath and that my heartrate was high. Turns out, I'd developed a pulmonary embolism. So, back to the hospital for another week. This was a weird week, part of which I spent in a deep funk, convinced that I was never going to be well again. I also yelled at several doctors and dropped a lot of f-bombs at them, which enabled me to get released to go visit Harper at the women's hospital. Generally, I like to settle my disputes reasonably, but the temper tantrum/ass-reaming I gave in this situation was effective.

Apparently, this last malady was quite serious. I didn't really realize that at the time, and I'm glad I didn't, because it just would have enhanced the foul mood and bad emotional state I was in basically all week.

Things are better now. I'm medicated to the gills, and have weekly check ups, but I've been out of the hospital for almost two weeks, which signifies to me that I'm over the hump. I'm walking upright (anyone who thinks that c-sections are a piece of cake is delusional--try getting up without any ab muscles), my incision is healing, embolism is apparently resolved, though will require follow-up.

But all of this was worth it, as we have our Harper, who has had so few problems that we are all a little stunned, including her doctors. As of today, she weighs 3 pounds 13 ounces, which is more than a pound more than she weighed when she was born (13 of those ounces have been gained in the last week!). She's still in the NICU, but she's in a big-girl crib, and is learning how to bottle and breast-feed. She's perfect. It's like the health issues were allocated between us, and I got all mine and all hers. And I am totally cool with that.

So, meet Harper, sweetest baby ever.

NEW CARPET!!!

I was talking with my dad this afternoon, and he was totally right when he said that so much of our work on this house has been stuff you can't see--plumbing, electrical, etc. etc. Carpet is something I can see. I love it. Looks SO GOOD!!!

Here's the baby's room, painted and carpeted. 

Man Cave! With a cameo by the Pix. She, too, is very excited about the new carpet, and is much less scared of entering either of these rooms now that they're not subfloor. 

Eric is excited about getting a new tv, one larger than the 19-incher we have right now. He's out looking, just looking, right now. Tried to sell me on a 50-inch tv that was a "great deal" earlier today. Ummm, no. But it's fun to tease him. 

Progress...

We're making some major progress. Very pleased. 

1) I finished painting the nursery today. It looks really nice. We chose a light green paint and off-white for the trim. Eric did a great job with the trim. 

2) Dings in the walls that occurred while we were refinishing the attic are all filled and waiting to be painted. 

3) Things are as clean as they've ever been on the 3rd floor. 

All because...

CARPET TOMORROW!!! Hooray!!!

As I mentioned earlier, we had some people in for estimates last weekend. Against our better judgement, and that of countless of our anonymous friends on the internet, we asked Empire Carpet to come over. Estimates for both bedrooms, the nursery, both sets of back stairs and the attic ranged from $5-7K. WHAT??? Yeah, so we didn't go with them. We found some great wool carpet on sale and some frieze (friz-zay???) and we're not doing the big bedrooms for a while, so we ended up in a place where we not only got what we wanted, but will not be in the poorhouse. Pleased. 

I'll be posting more pictures tomorrow. I can't wait. 

In other news, property taxes came last week, and thankfully, are more than 60% less that what we paid last May. Thank goodness. THey're still too high, but it appears that Marion County is on the right track. The legislature has put tax caps into action, making sure that residential properties are taxed at 1% of assessed value. Now, this is a good thing--our current bill, which represents a phasing in of this plan, is at 1.5% of the assessment. But this will only work if assessments stay reasonable. While our assessment went down by $140K from last year to this, what's to say it's not going to go up again? I'm not sure how the treasurer can justify increasing assessments when, duh, we're in a recession and values have plummeted, but I'm sure that they will find a way. 

Baby is doing well. Getting big (I am too) and practicing for a career in the martial arts. S/he is kicking HARD right now, and as I sit here with my laptop on what is left of my lap, my stomach is literally moving. I can see it move from the outside. I love it when this happens at 7:30 in the evening. Not so much at 4:00 in the morning, which has been happening lately. Apparently, all of this stuff is supposed to prepare us for when the baby actually gets here. Yikes. As of Friday, I officially enter the 3rd trimester. Yikes again!

Had chicken and dumplings for dinner. Delicious.

Back tomorrow with carpety awesomeness. 

THIS is where we're putting the baby???

No project that Eric takes on begins quietly. There's never a situation where the house isn't in complete disarray, that we're not constantly tripping over stray pieces of wood, that we don't find sawdust in the dryer filter... The nursery is no different. Because I am in major nesting-mode, I put very strong pressure (read: told Eric that he needed to do this NOW), and we're in progress to complete the nursery. 

This room is the smallest bedroom I have ever seen. It may have been a servants quarters at one point. However, it's also the easiest room to heat and cool in the house, and while I'm no expert, I know that babies are small, and can thus infer that they don't need a lot of space. 

Here is the destruction as of 6:30, Monday October 19. I am setting a goal of being completely done with this room one week from today, except for the carpet, which Eric ripped out, 100% forcing our hand in getting new carpet installed asap. We have people coming on Friday to give us an estimate. 

 

Ahhh, plaster... About 40% of the house is still plaster, and man, is it a pain in the butt. I love the idea of things being historical and all of that, but it is SUCH A MESS. We've got a big spackling project ahead of us with this one. 

Crappy windows. Downstairs, we removed the weights from the dining room and stuffed some insulation in there. Even though there doesn't appear to be the same level of draft (aka, Arctic breeze) coming through these windows, I suggested we do the same here. Eric, star of my firmament, suggested instead that we keep a 100% functioning window in the room where our child will sleep. I hate to admit I'm wrong, but in this case, I am wrong. 

Finally, this is not nursery related, but has to do with one of my babies. Here is Yogi Bear enjoying the couch all to himself. He lay like that for about two hours last night. Picture of contentment, right? He's been a little gimpy lately--we think he jumped off the bed and landed wrong. He's milking his disability for all it's worth. I saw him run a little while ago when he thought I wasn't looking. But when I am looking, he's limping like crazy. Hummm. Smart doggie. 

Drama, Indeed

We're nearing the end of the marathon that is the "man-cave," otherwise known as the finished attic/family room/tv room/baby's playroom. Eric insists it will be his bastion of peace away from the hectic bustle of our house. Ooooh, I think different. 

Anyway, it has been a long and difficult journey. Let's remember together, shall we?

Sometime last fall, probably a year ago, because I remember it was just starting to get cold and I thought we had electric heat. My family was down for a visit and I turned the thermostat on and, hilarious, cold air came out. Of course we have gas heat. And I hadn't even thought to call the gas company to come and turn it on. So, we played Trivial Pursuit while bundled up, and drank a lot. It worked out fine. Anyway, while the fam was here, the boys helped Eric destroy the attic. 

This was pretty awesome, as it was a lot of work, and we got a dumpster the following week, so that pile of drywall didn't stay there for too long. The not-so-awesome part of this adventure was that at the time, we only had the one shower, which was up in the attic bathroom. So, it was a ton of fun tramping up there every morning to shower. That, plus no insulation plus no carpet plus drywall dust everywhere equals Haley's wit's end. Or so I thought. 

As I mentioned earlier, the original plan for the ceiling was to just install the beadboard. But because all of the rafters were just slightly off plumb, Eric had to do this, lest we wind up with a wavy ceiling. It involved probably a month's worth of work. Copious amounts of string and furring strips, and a frustrated Eric. We were STILL using the upstairs shower at this point. And it's getting colder. 

In addition to working on the ceiling, Eric also put in about a ton of loose and roll insulation in the kneewalls and ceiling. Those are his ski goggles. He found several mummified mice in the kneewalls, and actually asked me to carry them downstairs, albeit in a tupperware container. PLEASE, husband. It's like you don't know me at all. 

It is at this point that the attic reached it's most disgusting point, what with the loose fill everywhere and dirt and open kneewalls and BLECH! We had acquired a space heater for the bathroom at this point, which made the showering experience much more pleasant. However, we discovered that racing from bedroom downstairs to shower upstairs in roughly 45-50 degree environment--not so much fun. So we turned the heat on upstairs. Discovered shortly thereafter that the upstairs air handler was hooked up to the box with a 30 amp breaker and 40 amp wire. The handler required 60 amps. I'm just glad we didn't burn the house down. 

Probably last March, Eric got all the drywall installed. Remember that we'd spent roughly a month installing all the furring strips so the drywall wouldn't be necessary. I'm still not sure why we did this. But we did. So there you go. We had a second floor shower by this time--I stopped minding the attic situation so much then. 

Eric then spent the next three months or so installing beadboard over the furring strips and drywall. He did a fantastic job, as you can see. Still, three months? 

Eventually, we got everything trimmed out. As you can see, there is enough wood being used in this room to build an entirely new house. We also went through at least six containers of caulk, two containers of wood putty, half a dozen sanding blocks, and lots of blisters. That is me over in the corner. I've learned that the baby doesn't like manual labor. 

After a couple weeks of priming, sanding, and painting, we're nearly finished. The walls are "Library Pewter," the same color we painted the upper wall in the half bath. That project used about an eighth of a can of paint. Want to guess how much this project used? Just over 7/8 of a gallon. So now I've got to find another project to paint Library Pewter. This project also took three gallons of Antique White high-gloss trim paint. 

Next steps: cleaning up. As you can see, Eric has put all of the junk wood in the bathroom. I am not sure what we're going to do with it. Maybe a dumpster is once again in our future? Within the next month, we'll get the carpet installed and build some storm windows to cover our travesties of dormer windows (original to the house--they might as well be screens for as good as they keep the weather out... Replacing them would cost at least $6,000. So... storms it is). I have promised Eric that as soon as he finishes this room, we can get a new television, as he's currently watching all of his Boston sports on a 19-incher (ha!!! This is the way Boston sports are meant to be watched, in my opinion. Better yet, don't watch them at all). 

“This post was written for Houseblogs.net as part of a sweepstakes sponsored by True Value: www.startrightstarthere.com" 

Pics

Here's the beautiful ceiling! Like the Sistene Chapel, except out of beadboard, right? I was totally right--it's taking forever to paint. This is just primer, too. 

Here's another shot of the dormer. Eric built that platform, and we found some nice laminate flooring for it. He's going to put his drafting table up there. 

I realized that I never posted a picture of the "finished" half bathroom. We still need to hang the mirror, but it somehow lost a hook. Excuses, excuses...

Finally, here is the Yog-man with his new haircut. He's feeling very confident. Is that a handsome puppers or what?!

It's going to look SO good, but...

We are finally FINALLY painting the man-cave/finished attic. Eric did an amazing job with all of the trim and finishing work, and has ensured that the Menards on 96th St. remains in the black through the end of the fiscal year.

Digression: I've spent enough time in the big box home improvement stores over the last 18 months to fall in and out of love several times with each of them. In one post, and another post, I vowed that never again would I go to Lowes. I have broken this vow many many times over, mainly because Lowes is the closest to downtown. Each time we go, I am disappointed, but that never seems to trump the time I have to spend getting to either of the other places. The Depot is like one of those hot-and-cold boyfriends--one date, things are perfect. You're wined and dined and you leave feeling like it's the start of a beautiful relationship. And then the next date, he shows up wearing a mesh t-shirt and a confederate flag handkerchief around his head, and you're like, what the hell just happened? Menards is okay. It's a nicer looking store, and I like that they have candy prominently displayed throughout. However, their selection really isn't that great, and I haven't noticed that their prices are any better than the others. Still, it's the store of choice for the crew at #2021, at least until they do something to piss us off. Which they will.

Anyway, the story is really about beadboard. As you may remember, we decided back in, ummmm, January I think that rather than re-drywalling the ceiling of the attic after the fam helped Eric totally destroy it. We thought that, given the weight of drywall, the height of the attic ceiling, and the fact that ERic would largely be doing this work on his own, that we'd just aviod the hassle and do a beadboard ceiling. Well... We went out and purchased a small forest worth of beadboard, and Eric started putting it up. Then we discovered that none of the rafters were plumb, so Eric went out and bought another small forest worth of furring strips, and then did something with string that I really didn't understand. He made everything line up just right, and then decided to just go ahead and put up the drywall anyway, and then put the beadboard on top of the drywall. This is the story of my life. We think we're landing on a cost- and time-conscious decision, and then end up doing the work required both for that time-conscious decision AND the decision we originally rejected because it either cost too much or took too long.

You may also remember from my descriptions, or know from personal experience, that Eric is not the type to just "get the job done" (I say this with love, as I am totally the type to just get the job done--as I say, together we make up a whole regular brain) He is borderline OCD when it comes to planning, and full-on crazy when it comes to executing his plan (except when we're about 90% done--then he seems to lose interest). The new beadboard ceiling and trimwork in the attic is something to behold. It's amazing. My Big Sweetie has turned into quite a little carpenter.

The point: the beadboard ceiling and trim are spectacular, and may almost be worth the 9 months we've spent messing with this project. It's going to look SO good, but... it's going to take a heck of a long time to paint.

Pictures forthcoming...