Done But Not Done-Done

The last piece of wood has been laid. The quarter-rounds are secured in place. The tools have been returned to our friend and all of the extra hardwood has either been returned in its sealed packages or been given away to someone who can make good use of it.

Our hardwood reno project is completed. But we're not entirely finished.

Our bedroom: the last to be finished and Finn-approved.

We had to pack some belongings away. There were books on shelves that needed to go somewhere so that we could move the bookshelves. We had other things on the carpeted floor that were moved down to the main floor, so that we could rip up that old carpet.

Before we even started work on the second level of our house, to convert the flooring from wall-to-wall carpet to hardwood, our house was a mess with things piled up, out of the way for our work. Now that our flooring is done, we still need to move things back, to clear the clutter of the main floor.

But it's not that simple.

We're reluctant to put all of the books back on the shelves. We've been wanting to rid ourselves of the hundreds of books that we have for years. So we're going to only place books we haven't read, or collections that we want to keep, back upstairs. The rest will stay in the packed boxes and will more to a place in the basement, until we're ready to move them out of the house--likely, in the spring.

We have little knickknacks that have done little more than gather dust on some shelves, on dressers, and on desks. When we were packing things up, before starting the reno, I already threw out things that I had barely paid attention to over the years: an empty, black beer bottle of a Belgian strong ale, Trompe la Mort, that I purchased and consumed in France, in 1991. I liked the unique bottle so I brought it home. It's sat on one bookshelf or another for more than 30 years, doing no more than collecting dust.

It went into the recycle bin.

I had a snow globe with a clay bald eagle given to me for Christmas by a nephew when he was a little kid, no doubt an impulse buy. The gift had no real meaning for me other than it was a gift from someone who was thinking of me.

That kid is an adult now and I doubt he would even remember giving it to me. So out in the trash, it went.

I got rid of a lot of stuff and as I said, we're reluctant to have our room return to being the holding place for things that we no longer want or need. But it's going to take time to decide what stays and what goes, and I doubt we'll have everything sorted before we leave for vacation, at the end of this week.

The reno project is done but we're not quite completed. We're not done getting our house back in order. But we'll work this week to at least make the main floor livable. It would be nice to feel comfortable inviting friends and family back into our home.

When we get to that point, maybe we'll be done-done.