We know that all construction projects run behind. To demonstrate our understanding of this, we signed our apartment lease to end 120 days after the construction, instead of the 60-90 days our builder told us the project would take. We've always had a start date of April 1 because that's when the tenants' lease is up and when we felt we could reasonably begin this project. Design-wise, we're right on schedule. Getting started in the yard, and clearing out the garage? Not so much.
In January, Scott and I mapped out what needed to happen each month. January was meant for clearing all the junk (and by junk I mean stuff that needs to go to the dump, not all the stuff) out of the garage and finishing up projects at the rental house. That went smoothly. February is dedicated to organizing, sorting, selling and clearing all the stuff out of the garage. By the end of February the only things meant to remain in the garage are those things for the shed or that we will use in the garage as a living space. Here's the huge hiccup. My mother arrived last Friday to watch our daughter for a week. We knew that this was a really big task, so Scott took the week off work so we could both focus on getting everything listed and sold. The first weekend we took our first weekend away together since our daughter was born. We really needed that time to be together. Unfortunately, while we were gone a huge ice storm came into town. We weren't able to get back to town until Tuesday afternoon. (2 weekdays down) Wednesday we put on as many layers as we could and braved the roads to the garage. We worked steadily all day, taking pictures, filling bins for the recycling center/dump/Goodwill and cataloguing everything we had for sale. Scott stayed up until the wee hours of the night putting many of those things for sale. Thursday (here's where it gets messed up again) we tried to clear away the bins to the recycling center/dump, but the center wasn't open due to ice and we couldn't be told when it would be open. We got a few things off to Goodwill, but there's still a lot of the garage that can be emptied. Thursday afternoon when we looked at the forecast, we saw that another storm was coming in on Friday, raining all day on Saturday, and freezing temps on Sunday. We decided to admit defeat, and canceled the garage sale that we intended to have on Saturday to get a lot of stuff gone. Since we were no longer having the garage sale, we weren't able to get stuff out of the garage to the dump, and we were never going to finish anyway, we decided to admit defeat and have Scott go back to work on Friday. There just didn't seem to be a point in struggling through and using vacation time to do it.
Saturday rained all day, making the roads slick and we just stayed home and worked putting our daughter's things together for a consignment sale. Sunday, Scott and I were back in the garage and we were able to get some things sold to brave souls, but nothing like what we were anticipating.
The writing is on the wall that February will come and go and the garage will still be full. March was supposed to be our month in the yard to build a shed and a fire pit, but it may be that March is meant for cleaning out the garage, part 2. We've got most of the stuff photographed and catalogued, but now is the time-consuming task of making the ads and organizing pickups. I really hope that this can be done by the end of March as April begins construction and I absolutely do not want that delayed a single day.
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