Home Improvements...

When Husband & I moved into our home, we did so with a mental list of all the things that had to be done to this place to make it tolerable to live in and representative of our personalities. Some of it had to be done before we could even move in, such as tearing down a wall-to-wall built-in book case which blocked a window in our livingroom, and painting almost every room in the house to change the feel from circus freakshow (seriously, flourescent green in the stairwell and upstairs hall--flourescent green, people!) to subtle sophistication (ha ha ha).

Once those "must do"'s were done and we moved in, we went ahead and steamrolled our way into pregnancy, leaving 90% of those other projects gathering cob-webs on our mental "to do" list. The first trimester found me crawling to the couch to nap moments after returning from work each day and by the middle of the second trimester, I was bed-bound (ah, the "good old days")--nothing in the way of home repairs got done. Not that I would have been doing them single-handedly, but Husband had more important things to do than rip up the carpet on the stairway during my bedrest months--he had to entertain me. This was not an easy task. The stairs remained carpetted; the front door remained purple and the porch red (circus freaks, people; I am not kidding); our basement and kitchen seemed to have been in mid-renovation when we bought the place and not a professional renovation.

I do believe the people who lived here before us were addicted to the show "Trading Spaces" and they would walk into a room of their house on a Friday, decide to "redo" it and by Sunday, they were either done with the sloppiest renovation ever in the history of home repairs (Bob Villa would freak) or they had lost interest in the renovation and just stopped. A.D.D. home repairs. "Honey, let's paint the room a lovely sunshine yellow (including the ceiling!) and hang purple curtains! Let's tear out those cabinets and re-tile the backsplash! Don't forget to paint all the outlet covers, sweetie! (pause) ooooooooh, Desperate Housewives is on! (dropping all supplies to the floor, grabbing a snack and leaving the room, never to return....)

So now that the little man is closing in on 3 months old and we have somewhat of a grasp on what our lives are now, we've started to look around and say, "Damn. This house needs some work!" First order of business...a back porch. I have fantasies of sitting on the back porch, watching the fire flies (we have tons of them) as the sun goes down, enjoying a glass of wine or a cold beer. Perhaps a little backwards, to add something to the house when there is a list of things already here that need some attention, but hey...we deserve a back porch after the year we've had! Hopefully the porch will be done by fall; of course the way summer is barrelling on by, I am not sure this week's laundry will be done by fall, so I shouldn't really hold my breath.

My sister-in-law and her husband built their own back porch--it is much bigger than the one Husband and I are thinking of and it has a built-in bench wrapping around one side of it. Gorgeous. They showed us pictures of it this weekend with almost the same enthusiasm we exhibit when we show pictures of Ethan to people, and who can blame them--talk about a labor of love. For a moment I felt guilty that Husband and I are hiring people to build our porch. I mean, wouldn't we appreciate it more if we constructed it with our own two hands? Mixed and poured the concrete together? Laid the boards ourselves?

Then I realized, as far as labors of love go, I've had my fill this year. Yes, they built a beautiful porch, but I gestated an entire human being--that's all the "building" I'll be doing this year. I'll be happy to bake cookies and make iced tea for the big sweaty men with 2X4's and hammers in my backyard during August. And I'm more than happy to go shopping for the deck furniture when the workmen leave...