The wall comes down...

...and the wall goes back up...

T has been busy taking down walls and re-framing them, correctly in the office.  It has been a few weeks now and this is the status...

1. Our awesome plumber took some pity on us and came up and fixed the leaky pipe.  Turns out the pipe wasn't even soldered together originally and it is a miracle it stayed together this long...
   
   [caption id="attachment_619" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The no longer leaking pipe"][/caption]


2. T took out all the scraps of wood, reinforced the wall studs and rebuilt the door frame and header.  He turned the door around so that it opens into the step-up playroom.  It is a very wide (36") door so when it opened into the room it took up a lot of space.
   
   [caption id="attachment_621" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The wall comes down"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_620" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The wall goes back up"][/caption]

We are making progress, slowly.  I recently had a conversation with my friend who is living in his own "entire house renovation project".  I asked him what his strategy was for keeping sane.  Did he focus on what had been done?  What happened when he started to think about the huge list of things remaining to be done and then calculate that to-do list in years (or worse, dollars)...?

He just smiled and told me that this was a "lifestyle".  I had to get over the mind-set that it was something that would ever be "done".  I am still digesting that one.  I guess in a sense he is right, things are never done, even in a new house there is maintenance and things that break or things that you want to change...  But still,  a "lifestyle"...  I had no idea.