'Tis the season...

...to have a faux dressed-out reindeer hung from a pole in your front yard in Bedford, IN. I guess I would've figured they would've waited until after Thanksgiving, like Macy's, but with something this festive, I can understand why the neighbors wanted to get it up as soon as possible (note the red lights "dripping" from the reindeer).

Locale aside, things are going pretty well with the renovation. We finished out the second bedroom and trimmed it out. Our delivery of stored goods came and we put it in the master, which covers up the cracks from the foundation settling and puts us at ease with an "out-of-sight/out-of-mind" sort of mentality, but means we have a lot more unpacking, and ultimately downsizing, coming.

In the last few weeks a lot has happened, which is why we have not updated the blog. Beyond the delivery of the rest of our earthly possessions from storage and my best-friend from Indy getting married (I was in the wedding), Tiffany's Mom passed-on. I had a hard time figuring out whether or not to write about that in the Blog, but I realize that it was such a huge event that it cannot be brushed past. Joanne Roman was an angel on earth and we will miss her dearly. She was a great mother and wife and I realize that she will lend us strength, even now, as we continue on our great quest to make this house into a home.

The second bedroom came together quickly once we finsihed out the painting and got the trim in place. With our stuff getting delivered from storage, we were able to outfit the room (that we once referred to as the "Scary Doll" room because of the scary doll on the wall paper border) to be our first guest room. Because of the blue-gray paint color and our plans to put my Notre Dame Football prints in the room, we are now calling it the Four Horseman Suite.

In other good news, we had a structural engineer visit our home to give us the goods on what was going on with our foundation. He determined that our settling was caused by soil dessication, which was caused by tree roots. In many cases tree roots cause issues with foundations with positive pressure against the structure. In our case, it is negative pressure. The tree roots are removing nutrients and water (density) from the soil, causing the foundation to drop. In his professional opinion, the structure is in good shape and by stopping the movement by cutting down the tree. As long as we remove the tree, we can patch the cracks, have the exterior tuckpointed (chinks replaced between the limestone blocks) and we are in solid shape.

On the docket for this weekend? Leaf removal, As you can see by the picture to the left, the maple causing the dessication plus our tulip tree have mercilessly dropped their bounty upon us. We have been out of town the last few weekends so we are "those neighbors" and we need to take care of it. After the leaves are gone? A nice low mow and some overseeding...Ah...the joys of home ownership.







Next projects? Organize possessions. Paint, floor and trim the office. Organize possessions. Fix up the master. Organize possessions. It's like we live in one of those game thingies where you move the squares around to create a picture or a number sequence (patriotic version of slidy thingy shown left).