I've been dreaming about this week for a long time: the week where I finally had the carpet removed from our house, and put in the hardwood I've wanted for so long. 

It is Saturday, and I'm sitting with headphones on, and as usual, the details of the reality didn't quite match my rosy envisionings. I didn't anticipate that we'd find water damage on the right side of the chimney, requiring an immediate roof repair.

After agonizing over the idea for over a year, and fretting and wondering if it could ever work out, I've set a major house plan in motion today: we've ordered replacement flooring for the house. We're taking the yuppie plunge, and shifting from carpeting to engineered flooring, because that's the best quality we can get, given that our house is on a slab foundation.

Admitting you're in over your head is hard. It hurts. I don't know anyone who enjoys it, and I don't know any fellow perfectionists who can do it without feeling a great deal of shame, hesitation, or remorse.

Yesterday, in sewing terms, was nothing short of an epic journey. I had to check my last.fm account to see a tally of exactly what the final answer was (the question, of course, being, "What do I have to do to finish this quilt top this weekend?") --

Scott, bless him, offered to come up for a few days around New Year's, and we've been busy creatures during that time. The New Job™ means I work out of the house, but the bad part? I didn't really have a good workspace for me, my phone, and my laptop.

We needed to fix that, but doing so meant that we needed to tear down not one but TWO corner desks, combine two computers into a single work station, put in shelving, and blah and meow and etc.

Good news: we're mostly done.

Jeff's former desk:

I had huge help this weekend from Crystal and Jacob. Because of Jeff's accident, I wasn't able to take my earned holidays for Christmas and New Year's, and since it was nearing the end of March, it was verging on use-or-lose status for them. I'd been babbling incessantly about doing a Great Shelving Project to anyone who would listen (and several people who politely wished I'd just shut up) and we finally got cracking on it. Of course, about halfway through, Jacob had an insight which totally changed the course of the project -- more on that insight after the photos.