“How’s it going? What’s happening? When’s the start date? Have you moved, yet?” So, these days, goes many of my friendly exchanges.

Just so you know, there are plenty of things going on in the background. People with green eyeshades crunching numbers behind their office doors, working on the figures that will be the contract. They are looking at options, too. I hope.

I’m preparing myself for the worst of sticker shocks. I know that we have blown the original budget because the scope of the work has [righteously] expanded from a “new bath upstairs plus remodel the old kitchen and bath” to atoning for decades of neglect from, not just us, but, perhaps, from other families over the past 100 years. But, mostly, it’s our penance.

And, also, there might be like, I dunno, slowly spinning fans hanging from the front porch ceiling that frame a custom door that fills the original extra wide entryway and that might, potentially, maybe be painted a bright and inviting color that will be chronicled in a future post. Maybe, though, the custom door isn’t such a good idea. Or the new lights for the back deck. Or the slide away doors to the updated office. Or the underfloor heating and new central AC. But the new water filter at the new double deep sink….

Anyway, let it be known that I have the smelling salts on hand for the contract proposal.

There are new “new drawings” that are likely already done, but we haven’t seen. I have been pouring over collections of links for sinks and faucets and light fixtures for our selecting pleasures. There has been great joy with most recommendations, but the selections for the bathroom sink for the new upstairs bath had to be tossed back. Too modern. The updated options? Spot on! The first link I opened made me say, “wow.” Out loud. I was drinking coffee and only The Beast heard the adoration escape my lips.

Ultimately we are in planning. Nothing much is physically happening. No dumpsters have appeared. No sledgehammers have broken through a wall. There have been no boxes of belongings packed for the temp home or for storage. But, I will tell you, there is much thinking about that. And a call placed to the people who bring their lovely truck to pick up discards, or “donations,” from my porch. I think that they will know me well, soon.

So, for those of you who are asking, we are still in the preparation stage. This is good because the more upfront design decisions, the smoother and less painful the actual process. This is bad because the Doc–as a procrastinator nonpareil–is challenging nature, nurture, the gods and all that is good sense by delaying a meaningful effort to physically move.

Note: not everything is a metaphor. For example the whiskey on this page? Literal.