Why You Should Never Plan a Home Improvement Project before Christmas

Yes, I've been very quiet the past few weeks. I had a release yesterday (Unwrap My Heart came out at Cobblestone Press as the last 12 Days of Christmas release), but I didn't have time to celebrate or promote because since Saturday, we have been doing THIS:




That's right, for some reason, Mr. Barbosa and I had this fabulous plan to replace all our old, disgusting carpet with hardwood floors the weekend before Christmas. We THOUGHT that pulling out the old carpet and entry tile and painting would be the most time-consuming part of the task. That took two weekends plus a couple of evenings. We thought installing the new floor would be, at most, a weekend and perhaps another half a day.

Oh my, how wrong we were! It MIGHT have been that fast IF we had had an electric or pneumatic floor nailer and if we were experienced at this and if we didn't have an entry and a closet and a stairwell to deal with. But we rented a hand nailer, my friends. Add to that all the precision cutting (just look at the inside of the closet!) and it took us all of Saturday, most of Sunday, all of Monday, and most of yesterday just to get HALF the room done. We decided yesterday to stop where we were because to continue, we'd have to disconnect the TV completely for the duration of the Christmas holiday (and that is simply a non-starter when there are DVDs under the tree).

I will say, what's done looks positively gorgeous. I couldn't be more thrilled. But I also couldn't be more exhausted and we still have half a room to do. At least in theory, this is the easy half, and the total distance from one side of the room to the other is less. And I must also say that I had no idea my living room was so freaking huge!

In any event, with weekends and evenings dedicated to this project, no Christmas shopping was done as of last night. I went out after dinner and tackled some of it, then polished off the remainder this morning. Sometime between now and tomorrow, I have to mop my kitchen floor (it's disgusting) and clean the guest bathroom (also disgusting). And finish wrapping the presents.

Oh, and did I mention we don't have a Christmas tree yet? Yes, there is much to do.

So, the moral of the story is, don't tackle major home improvement projects before Christmas. Even if you think they're minor. Just don't. Trust me, you'll be glad you didn't.

Oh, and just for fun, here's a couple of pictures of the Barbosa kids with a couple of the Barbosa cats...