so in the last two weeks, the house has gone from looking like this:

to looking like this:

that’s actually just a corner of the pantry; but it was the cleanest, whitest, smoothest surface in the entire house.

i spent some time narrowing down the paint color selections:

and the apartments are being painted at the time of writing. and i’m amazed but delighted to discover that, so far, i love all of the paint color choices i made. it’s a nerve-wracking process, color selection. ben left it up to me aside from retaining veto power, which he exercised only in minor ways. it feels a little wussy, paying someone else to paint. but it will take 3 professionals 7 days to paint both apartments. the two of us, working nights and weekends, would have taken a month to complete the painting, and that’s another month that we’d be paying rent on three apartments. in the end, it was cheaper to pay someone to do the work quickly. i’ll have to settle for painting the closets fun colors later.

the contractor is finally out of our hair, minus a few lingering issues like the pipe that is still seeping in the basement. and the rodent problem, as evidenced by the little rat foot prints left overnight in fresh concrete:

we got to see ben’s basement stair design fully realized (rat prints and all)

and more importantly, the inspector signed off on it.

the new windows went in, and watching those go in (from our usual spying spot in the cafe across the street) was amazing. the window guys were like cats. or, like cats who are really good at installing windows, that is. perfect balance, zero fear of heights. if there was an olympic event for tearing out and re-installing windows, i would totally sponsor these guys:

Ben installed shower curtain rods. I fixed the bathtub faucet only to have someone else snap it off 2 days later. I razored every sticker off every surface in the building. Ben installed some more door hardware. i boiled door hardware. there was some paint archaeology.

we still don’t know if we’ll move in on time, or be homeless as of next tuesday.