Attic Update!

Duane has been able to get a lot of time off work (December 31 to Jan. 8) as of late and because of this we've been able to get a lot done on the attic as well :-)

Since the last attic update a lot has happened:
* We've had carpet installed

* We (Duane and I) are moved up there!

* We've finished painting and re-mudding and re-sanding the walls
* All the outlets are in (as of about 10 minutes ago)
* And probably others that I can't think of right now

Here are pictures from this morning before my mom and I sanded the walls and painted:

My closet (the smaller of the two)

Not sure that you care to see both sides of my closet, but oh well. Oh and Duane just put these nice lights in for me, two days ago it's been great to be able to see much better :-)

Here's how we had the room set up 12 hours ago...

This is Duane's closet; the much more intricate of the two by personal preference and design.

Inside Duane's closet.

Behind the knee walls in the large room of the suite, is a long hallway (about 20 feet) that the boys think is about the coolest hideout ever. They'll take a laptop, blanket and a snack back here sometimes and watch a movie while Duane and I work in the attic.

I asked Kalvin to roll up some of our leftover carpet from the instillation last week and he put it down in the tunnel. I thought it was a good idea so he and Tristen wouldn't have to crawl on the dirty planks. The light you see on the side is a ball I threw that bounced down the hideout while I took the 2 second picture (it's dark in the tunnels).

We hope that this will eventually be an office/play nook/theater (we will watch movies from our computer screen while laying on the love sac :-))

Here's the play nook where the boys have already stored their favorite toys.

A different angle of the nook.

Soon after cleaning up and taking the photos above, my mom and I got to work.

Duane snapped some while my mom and I were at work today (Duane worked on fixing our computer all day, and now it works so I can post this, yay!)

My mom and I finished sanding everything that Duane had mudded yesterday, then we got to work painting, followed by a good vacuum job to get all the mud dust up and then we rearranged the funiture. In all, it was a much bigger undertaking than I thought it would be lasting from about 11 this morning to about 6 tonight.

Here are pictures after working all day:

Notice that the furniture is moved? If it weren't cloudy out tonight we may be able to see the stars. 

You can see that we still need to put rods in Duane's closet for clothes, but then it will be ready to go and I can take all his clothes out of my closet :-)

 We didn't have to paint all the way to the carpet because some day we'll put the base boards in... :-)

 The boys were not allowed upstairs as we painted, but Duane let them know they could see the surprise when we were all done. The anticipation was rough for them, but loved it when we were finished.

I love that my boys love playing with eachother :-) 

(See video below)

I can hardly believe that we are up in the attic now. By the way, we really need to call it something else because saying we live in an attic really is an understatement to the way I feel about what we have up there. We have called it the master suite, but that sounds a little over the top, maybe. On the other hand, perhaps after countless hours of working diligently we have earned the privilege of calling it such. So from now till I decide later, it will be referred to as the suite.

Back to what I was saying... The idea of having the suite finished EVER, was incomprehensible about a year ago. Each project that seemed like it would be small, took longer than expected, it seems. It's almost like Duane's first year of medical school; I felt like we were never going to be finished with that part of our lives, but after what seemed more like 7 years, the four years of medical school were finished and were able to transition into another four year program, residency :-). 

I don't know the words to express the happiness I feel knowing that we are now moved to our suite. Many of the thanks for our recent success in moving upstairs is due to my mom. She has been a great motivator and been more than willing to do all that I ask her to help with. Without her out here, there would be much less done in the attic, our house would look like a disaster, and the kids would have been eating cheetos and peanut butter sandwiches for days while watching Wall-E about 5 times a day as well. 

Duane has been more than diligent in his efforts in the suite as well. His work is precise and very well thought out. We have two closets upstairs, the smaller one I designed for myself. It is simple and I am satisfied that it will fit my clothes easily (instead of being crammed into the one we had on the main level), but Duane's closet had much thought put into it. We had cheap shelving board I had purchased about a year ago for my own closet and that I used, but Duane could not comprehend using it in his own closet, so we made a trip to Lowes where he bought MDF or MFD or whatever it's called, and he spent the day getting it all just right. His closet will look very nice in the end AND it fits everything we need easily.  

Well, it's late... actually I will be calling the hospital in just under 6 hours to see if I can come in to be induced, YAY! So, I better be off to bed. Check the blog tomorrow for updates on our hospital stay :-)
Loves,
Angie