Brown socks- or the division of chores :-)

If you can't tell by Matt's latest entry, we have started the bathroom remodel! Right now we are still in the demo/rebuilding walls phase, but once that's done the rest should go quickly! I have been so blessed to have a husband who enjoys building things and actually knows what he is doing. It's like living with Tim "the tool man" Taylor from Home Improvement, but with a Tim who actually knows what he's doing and isn't constantly hurting himself ;-).

Today's post is dedicated to our division of chores. During our pre-martial counseling we talked about how we would break up the division of labor around our house. We took a somewhat traditional route, with Matt being responsible for most things outside, and me being responsible for most inside things. (Side note: not because we felt so much that this was "the way it should be", but because I have pretty bad outdoor allergies and can't help much with outside stuff most times of the year, and Matt's not really that great at cooking).

Since I am in charge of getting most inside things done, that puts me in charge of laundry. I sort the clothes, wash them, dry them, and fold them.... except for socks. I don't like folding socks. This is a chore that takes more patience than I currently posses and that I find very tedious. It also takes me back to helping my mom sort socks for a family of 5- three girls and two boys, which as you can imagine is a ton of socks. So, Matt, being the best husband in the entire world, is kind enough to help me out with this and matches up all of our socks so that they can be put away.

This has been going on now for the past two years, with great success, except for my brown dress socks. Matt refuses to fold them, and he just threw them at me for me to fold a moment ago, inspiring this somewhat silly entry. These socks are not cotton, but something different from regular socks, as they are made to be worn with dress slacks. Because of their unique texture, they cause my poor husband some problems. He has calluses on his hands, and the socks end up sticking to his hands every time.

This may not sound like a big deal, but let me explain. My husband is a "manly man". At around 6 foot 4, he's a big guy. He can have a beard in a few days tops, and seems to know how to fix anything. He kind of reminds me of a lumberjack... Now picture this lumberjack man looking like a cat with tape on it's paws when he's trying to fold those brown socks. The mental picture is funny, but seeing it in person will make you laugh until you cry.

This is why I love my husband: He's a wonderful man with a great sense of humor, and he is willing to laugh along with me and the little silly things in life.

Our most current project: Week One

What you're looking at here is a view from our master bedroom toward the hall leading to our master bathroom. As you can see, we have a long hallway (which, by the way, is complete wasted space) leading to our bath, which happens to be rather small. In fact, we almost didn't buy this particular house because of the cramped space back here. However, we decided that if we bought the house, we would remodel the bath/hallway as soon as we had the time to do so.

We toyed with the idea of having a contractor come do the
work for us since we were originally told that a permit would be required to do the renovation. However, after having a contractor give us an estimate, and finding out that no permit was required after all, we decided to do the work ourselves. So here we are, day one of our remodel project. The photo above is of the bedroom before construction began and to the right is a view into our tiny master bath.

The general idea is to demolish the existing doorway, seen here, and move the door to the end of the hall nearest the bedroom, thus enlarging the bath area with no real detriment to useful bedroom space.


This will involve the following:


1. Remove door and existing doorway (along with carpet and trimboards)


2. Frame in new doorway


3. Add drywall, begin framing in opening above door, finish removing old doorway.



And that's as far as I've gotten this week...