What…is your quest?

What…is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?  And other questions unanswerable….

We’re back!  After our whirlwind tour of the Great State of Ohio including 2 major metropolitan areas, two 14 month old teething nephews, 3 parents, 1 debauchery-filled wedding, one pee-your-pants ride on Top Thrill Dragster at Cedar Point, and 10,000+ frequent flier miles between the two of us…* we are home, ready to hunker down and complete our quest!

We’re making a list and checkin’ it twice…

…just in time for Christmas!  J’s Mom and two brothers are spending Christmas with us this year and our quest is to get our house in to the following orders:  SAFE, FUNCTIONAL, and CLEAN!  Our deadline is December 20th, the day that J’s Mom will be flying from Cleveland to Portland and the following projects need to be completed before then.  Here is the category breakdown:

SAFE:

• Buy and install (by ourselves, of course!) a new Hot Water Tank!  That should be fun!
• Buy and install a garage door opener (our house never had one installed – what gives?)
• Window Dressings for a minimum of 4 more windows.  Is privacy a safety factor?
• Caulking our outdoor “leaks” and repainting almost all of our window aprons before winter sets in.
• Replacing the seals on our front door and our garage entry door so that they don’t leak – and while we’re at it, see if we can fix our “leaning tower of Pisa” doors.
• Service the Furnace – we can’t turn it on until we do!  Could be a cold winter…Brr…

FUNCTIONAL:

• Find a better way to set up our television so it doesn’t look like a really sloppy Tetris game.  Another built-in, perhaps?
• Find/create a “drop-zone” without a mudroom – challenging, to be sure.
• Buy or repurpose a nightstand for the Guest Room – we’ve been lacking this for years – now is the time to do something about it!  Also, lamps, hang pictures, and find a way for guests to actually feel like “guests” and not inmates.

CLEAN:

• Bookcases need to be purchased, assembled, and books filed away so the Room of Requirement can lose its Harry Potter distinction and become a bona fide Library!  Flying and man-eating books optional.
• In addition to that, we need to actually HANG pictures so that the Room of Requirement doesn’t look like a Library meets Art Dealer.
• Hang beadboard on the back of the island in the kitchen.
• Replace the baseboards in the family room and any other room that we paint!
• Laundry Room needs cabinetry so that we can actually have a home for cleaning supplies and detergent.  We also need a sink and countertops, but that’s for a later date…
• Paint our guest room and hang a little some’n some’n to really take it up a notch!
• Paint, Paint!!  Basically, the whole house needs to be painted – all 2200 square feet of it!  We probably won’t get it all finished before Christmas, but we can hope, right?

This is our quest!  Will our fearless Bloggers finish in time?  By hook or by crook we certainly hope so!!!  We will be updating this list certainly in between now and then and if anybody happens to be in the Pacific Northwest and is able to throw in a hand here and there, please feel free to let us know!

*This was a hint.  We do not have any planned trips back to Ohio until at least OU’s Homecoming of next year (fingers crossed).  We have begun a quest!  Come visit us in the Great Northwest!

Update:  We have since linked up to the various projects we have tackled that were initially listed in this post.  Feel free to click on the links above to see how we tackled each one!