Crawl space project/vacation day 1

Today was a good day. It was the first day of my week off. I plan to stay home, no jet-setting this time around. I want to spend time with family and accomplish some projects around the house that just cannot get done with the 90 minutes of free time I have during the week. Weekends tend to turn into family gatherings where I cannot simply check things off a list. That said, this week will be different. I'm off to a good start; good balance.

I started out the morning as usual, but felt sluggish getting out of bed. Amanda was ever so gracious and let us sleep in. She woke up at 7:00 AM (!!!) which is 60-90 minutes later than usual. That was nice. After waking and spending a typical family morning together (getting dressed, breakfast, cleanup, etc.) we all went for a walk to the bank to have a look at our safe deposit box. It's already 9:00...

I had this feeling that we were not backing up our important family photos onto DVDs frequently enough. I was right. In all that, I determined that it would just be easier to keep a portable hard drive in the box and take it out once a month to freshen up the files that are on there. And so starts yet another item to keep track of on a monthly basis.

After visiting the bank, I can home and started preparing for my day in the bunker; better known as the crawl space. I have such lofty goals. I want to insulate, drywall, electrify and light the space all this week. If I'm efficient, it will happen. If I get sidetracked; it won't. What happens to me is that I'm so afraid to make a mistake (some can be fixed, others...not-so-much) that I get paralyzed. I call it "paralysis through analysis" and it happens to me all the time when I'm in over my head.

That said, I was able to make progress today. Since I will be enclosing this entire space on all 6 surfaces and I won't necessarily have access to all the wiring after the fact, I want to make sure I get everything lined up. Case in point: the doorbell.

Months ago, our front-door doorbell quit working. Having no time to evaluate what happened or really care since no one comes in through our front door these days, I have put off the investigation. I took this on as one of my to-do's since the wiring for the front doorbell runs right through the ceiling of the crawl. I took apart the doorbell and ran all new wiring. Good news: that fixed our front doorbell issue and I could move on. Bad news: it took me about three hours to get it all done from start to finish.

Other progress, I installed several more feet of insulation bats in the ceiling and side walls today. The space is getting larger as I start using some of the materials that are stored in there. I am starting to see progress.

Additionally, I found time to play with Amanda and help Katie feed her lunch and dinner. It's nice when she behaves and not so nice when she misbehaves and throws her food on the floor. Today was a mixed bag. Considering she is getting over pink eye (oh yeah, she hooked herself up with that yesterday, sending us on a trip to a "Take Care Clinic" inisde Walgreens) she is doing quite well.