The Condo

For the sake of completeness, here are a couple of after shots of the master bedroom:

I’m not including a before shot since that seemed a little too personal to me. You might be asking “And that bathroom wasn’t personal?” but I couldn’t resist in that case.

In this room, the only thing that was odd was a t.v. on top of a t.v. on top of a t.v. stand. All I did here was rearrange some furniture and bring in some faux greenery. The bedspread was a carry-on item from Florida.

As with most projects I take on, I have been consumed with this.

One day Nicole came home from school to find me in the basement painting color samples on to a poster board. She said, “You are putting your heart and soul into this, aren’t you?”

She also had other questions for me along the way, such as:

“Where are you?”

“Where are you going?”

“Why do we have to go to Home Depot before we go to the mall?”

“Why can’t I have the car?”

“What are you thinking about?”

“What’s wrong?”

My answer was typically, “The condo.”

To which she replied, “Of course.”

I had the same answer to my husband’s question of “Where is all our stuff?”

He also asked where my brother is going to stay once he sells the condo since he still works in the area.

I told him here.

He had some follow-up questions to that answer.

I took the before photos on January 20th. While waiting for the okay to spend some money, I got quotes for the appliances, the painting, and the carpet cleaning, and I put together a price list of items I wanted to get. My brother gave me the go-ahead on February 5th. The condo was camera ready on February 27th.

My brother told the realtor I went a little crazy and moved a little too fast.

Both true. For example, the painters were done painting before the walls were up around the tub. It’s a little difficult to paint walls that aren’t there. And once or twice I thought about telling my uncle to postpone some medical tests that he urgently needed so he could finish up. (Just joking. We are all in a controlled panic about his diagnosis, but joking helps keep the panic under control.)

Of course, there were hiccups along the way. The bath tub. The vanity top. The ice dams. The missing phone charger.

And the fire.

Yes, while doing something I know how to do (cooking), I caused a fire. I had stored the new owner’s manuals in the bottom drawer of the oven not realizing this drawer serves as a broiler in a manual clean oven. When the newly installed smoke detectors went off, I opened the drawer to find the manuals ablaze. With the drawer open, the flames reached up to the towel hanging on the handle of the oven.

The hiccups have been accepted and/or dealt with, and my work here is done.