Can't wait to be finished with the refinishing

The house renovation project is approaching the next phase.  It's hard to believe that the kitchen will begin to look like a kitchen and not a barn with exposed beams and no insulation.  With the plumbing, electrical, and heating/AC work complete, they are about to hang the drywall.

I have been told that after the drywall is hung, the hardwood floors will be next.  Our entire first floor is hardwood flooring.  Despite the popular trend to expose all hardwood, our family room has a very thick carpet over the hardwood. (I wonder how many times I can squeeze the word 'hardwood' into this paragraph!)  I LOVE carpet.  What's better than a cozy room with carpeted floors?  Call me old school.  Call me outdated.  I've been called worse.

Please understand, there is not enough space on our furniture for all of our family members to sit.  Bodies strewn across the floor while we watch a movie or a sporting event is our norm.  Great carpet is paramount to our family's comfort level.  Never mind carpet absorbs sound.  The Shenanigans are a loud breed.  Trust me.  

I've been freaking out a bit about getting the floors refinished - not replaced, just refinished.  Everything on the first floor needs to be moved into the family room, the mudroom, the downstairs bathroom, or the garage.

I look around and my eyes bulge out when I realize how much crap we pulled out of the kitchen cabinets.  It was deposited in little boxes, in piles, or spread across the dining room table.  Everything is on display as if we are hosting a flea market of shit no one wants to buy.  

This is just the stuff that was in my kitchen desk.

Our  makeshift kitchen in the dining room.

The task of shuffling the kitchen cabinet explosion along with EVERYTHING resting on the floor in the study closet, the junk in the living room end tables, and the breakable Waterford in the dining room china cabinet gives me a wave of panic.  People - I do not panic.  It is not my thing.  I may swear a blue streak because I am blessed with an Irish temper, but I am not prone to panic.

Lad's room with temporary additional seating.

Boxes full of kids' artwork, favorite school
papers, and believe it or not - hair. 
I often tuck hair into a baggie with the date
after a first haircut, but it is just so damn
hard to throw away Curly's beautiful
locks after a haircut. 
She's got enough to create a wig someday.  

Study closet - floor space cleared . . . no small task.

The contractor hasn't been able to pinpoint a date when I need to clear the floors.  I have been begging for a date.  Without concrete information, I am fearful of a last minute 'get out' request.  Will they do the floors on a Friday, when I don't babysit?  I've warned my Mom and Dad that we will most likely show up and hope to hunker down at their house when we get ousted from ours.  Mom was less than excited.  My folks live a few minutes away.  We haven't stayed with them since Laddie was a one year old and we had a few weeks 'layover' between our condo selling and our newly purchased first house being vacant.

Shower working to store my photo albums plus!

The end of last week and part of the weekend was devoted to the shuffling process.  My first floor shower, which is rarely used (unless we are all attending an event like Christmas mass and no one thought to allow enough time to stagger showers) has taken on most of the photo albums from the study closet and the living room end tables.  I have a ton of photo albums.  If some wise-ass turns on the water in the shower-turned-storage-unit, I will lose my mind.

I'm gradually tackling this overwhelming job.  I would rather not just toss stuff around only to stick it right back where I found it.  Whenever possible, I am organizing and eliminating.  Reggie asked when the floors were getting done as he lugged memory boxes filled with kids' school papers to the upstairs hallway.  'I think in a few weeks,' I informed him. 

He was outraged that we were ALREADY starting this project.  Clueless.