Project update

Finals week is finally over and I lived through another semester.
I will admit that this has been the hardest semester for me so far due to a combination of several things. First, my class schedule, second, extracurricular things I am involved in such as student government and research, and third my house is a disaster...literally. Our home improvement project is still not finished, every time we seem to make a little progress we either find something else that needs to be done or we decide to add on to the project. What started out as remodeling the living room (wood floor, new lights, paint) has now grown into a major renovation. We have replaced our ancient furnace with a hot water system, added a water softener, repaired sagging floor joists, poured cement in part of our crawl space for support, moved a couple of doors, re-plumbed the kitchen, updated some electrical, and removed a closet, and we are now tearing out a wall to expand our kitchen. That will of course require more sheet rock work and more wood flooring. We are also intending to replace the cabinets and counter tops and paint the kitchen. This is all of course taking a very long time because we are doing most of it ourselves, I'm sure glad my husband knows how to do all of this because it would be very expensive if we had to hire someone else. I can't wait to get it finished because I know it is going to be beautiful when its done.
Here are a few pictures of the project:

This is a picture of a wall in my kitchen right before we tore it out, by removing this I am gaining 4 1/2 feet more across the length of my kitchen. I am losing a pantry which was not a very efficient use of the space, we will be adding pantry cabinets later.
You can see that we have already taken out some of the kitchen cabinets in order to work on the plumbing

When you look at this last picture you may see a mess, but try to look past it and see that there is maple flooring that is ready to be sanded and finished. This is proof that we are making slow progress.

The end is in sight!

The end is in sight...and I mean that in more than one way.
I have only one more day of regular classes followed by 3 finals next week and one 5 page paper. This means that 8 days from today I will be breathing a big sigh of relief.
Not only can I see the end of the semester, BUT...
Then there are only 16 credits between me and a diploma.
Fortunately, I have registered for spring semester classes and I was able to get everything I need. This means that I will be driving to Logan 5 days a week, but at least I will not be there all day everyday and I will be home most days within an hour of when my kids get home.
Of course that diploma will only be the end of my bachelors degree, hopefully next fall I will be starting on a masters in school counseling!