How to start. After so much stopping.

Holy blogoverse I have been lazy, it's been three weeks since my last blog post.

I need to just get on with it.

Three weeks ago I had a nearly finished downstairs.

Three weeks ago school holidays were about to start.

Three weeks ago I faced the prospect of moving all the piles of crap important family items downstairs into the newly finished section.

One whole Saturday I spent moving the kitchen.  It's awesome kitchen heaven.  It's big, new, easy to clean and easy to cook in.  I still don't love cooking.  But it's never been as easy for me to not love cooking as it is in this kitchen.

And the stools said Moo! 

The next day I spent moving the study. All. Day. Long.  It was never ending.  We had stationery, computer stuff, craft, old documents. Mountains of the stuff.  I walked up and down those effing stairs so many times...

The study, mid move, in temporary lodgings on the kitchen bench.  Ghastly.

Mike moved big stuff.  He had to kept asking mates to help.  He has good mates, cause they always said yes.

After a weekend of this, I couldn't face any more moving.  It was holidays so we spent the time at the movies, cricket camp, art workshops, there was even a spot of cupcake decorating at the most awesome Suzy Q's cupcakes.

There were sleepovers, here, there and everywhere.  It was like a child exchange service. At times, I lost track of which child was where.

We even went to Luna Park because it's a way to hemorrhage money that rivals Movie World.

For a few days we lived in and loved the new kitchen, trashed the new rumpus and pretended we didn't have another entire stage of the reno ahead of us.   Or a top floor that was only half empty.

Then the weekend came again and along with it, reality.  While it felt like the rest of Sydney was out at the beach, we went up and down the stairs multiple times, this time moving our bedrooms.  We set the kids up in the rumpus.  We abandoned our upstairs bedroom and after a long (both literally and figuratively) weekend, we had emptied the upper floor.

Everything fit.  We still have spare cupboards.  Oh heavenly joinery!  My funny, stuck around the corner, invisible to the naked eye kitchen was gone forever.  My happiness was complete.

We now have scaffolding up around the front and sides of the house.  It is posh scaffolding with a proper staircase.  The builders can climb up and get to the top floor without coming through the new bit.  They can chuck stuff from the top balcony straight into the skip.

They're even going to build themselves a barrier at the top of the staircase to stop (and I use the term stop very loosely) the dust from coming downstairs.  It will still come.  It always comes.  Just not as badly.

The kids love the rumpus.  They love being together.  They love having their own space.  They love the kitchen and how easy it is to get to the pool.  They like putting their stuff in their very own entry cupboard, and ultimately, as long as we're all together, they're pretty happy.  They are turning into seasoned renovators.  

C'mon, it's pretty cool, yes?

I made Sarah a nook.  You can just see it in the top corner.  She loves it. 

We won't be done by Christmas.  We might be done by the beginning of the 2014 school year.  Or maybe not even then.  I am not getting my knickers in a knot about it because all the worrying and nagging and endless pushing makes little difference to the end result and only makes me stressed out and miserable while it's happening.

I am going to be Zen.  In a new kitchen and a brand new bedroom, with beautiful floors, doors and joinery, it's easy to be Zen.

My Zen new pantry.

And in my Zen state, I hope to find the energy to write more often.  Instead of having my writing energy beaten out of me by moving our house around.

 Time will tell.  I have lots to write.  I just have to extract it from my head and get it into here.