Remodeling Blues

This whole remodeling thing is really getting to me. It's funny how little I actually knew about the process. When we bought our Great Depression-era 1200 square foot mansion in February, I thought for sure we'd be moved in by March. All we had to do was drywall the ceilings, rip out the upstairs bathroom, replace everything in there, paint the whole upstairs, carpet it, rip out the kitchen, put in new flooring, cupboards, cabinets, and a countertop, paint the rest of the house, and BAM--we're in, just like that! Doesn't seem like much, right? But little did I know, this kind of thing takes much longer than a mere couple of weeks. Four months later, we're still working.
Let me tell you why it is so hard to get work done on this house. There are many excuses, uh, reasons why it has taken so long, and many of them aren't even my fault. For instance--waiting on things. A lot of our time is spent waiting. Waiting on the carpet to be installed, waiting on power tool batteries to charge, waiting on lunch to be delivered, waiting on friends to finish their portion of my work, etc. You can see that this whole "waiting" thing really slows down the process.
Another problem is the fact that once we do one thing, we find something else that needs to be done. For instance, we ripped out the kitchen cupboards, and while drywalling that wall, we found that the outlet receptacles needed to be updated. That takes up a whole afternoon, especially if you don't know what you're doing. Please pray that we did it right.
My family is also holding back our progress. I know, I know--"How could that be?" you might ask. "Isn't your family trying to get in as quickly as you?" I thought the same thing. Well, my beautfiul, intelligent, social, extremely forgiving wife chose to quit working inside the house for a while--and decided she was going to put all her focus and energy on plants. Yep, three weeks of planting and pulling weeds, watering and filling. And what am I going to do? I have to help her! I can't let my little wife do it all by herself!
And not only is my wife delaying the move-in date, but my daughter is making things even harder! "But I thought your daughter was only 15 months..." That's true, she is. But I think she's going to be the downfall of this whole project. Luckily, my in-laws are able to watch her some of the time when we work on the house; however, other times, we are not as lucky. Let me give you the scenario. Say we're going to attempt to paint a bedroom. We take our daughter, Abby, to the house and set her in her playpen. We pour the paint and get our rollers ready. No worries. I paint one strip of wall, and here it goes--Abby starts screaming as though someone had ripped the chocolate milk from her tiny clammy grasp (which I have been known to do--I just love the taste of that cold, thick chocolate on its way down my throat). I don't know if you've ever tried to accomplish ANYTHING with someone SCREAMING IN YOUR EAR, but let me tell you, it is NOT easy. My emotions start to go haywire. I want to yell, laugh, and cry all at the same time. I can't think or focus, so nothing can be done. We rush out of the house in tears and go back to our temporary home with the in-laws, Abby's mission accomplished.
So maybe some of it has to do with me not wanting to work sometimes, but that's a very small portion, and not even worth mentioning.
But after all that, there IS actually an end in sight! We will be picking up our furniture this weekend and moving it into the house! So we can't move ourselves in until the kitchen's done, but it will be soon! Until then, I'll just keep waiting, helping my wife and listening to my daughter scream.