Thanks for listening to our rant

By Debbie Irmen (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Thursday, November 15, 2007

Debbie Irmen

The house is done and I wouldn’t change a thing.

The days Randy put in laying the wood floor and his sweat, paid off — it is gorgeous.

The time he spent putting the tile in for the entry also paid off — I love the color and it goes well with the carpet.

All the paint colors chosen as well as the lighting fixtures and countertops blend together to give our new home a warm feel.

The time we put in, if it resulted in a less than perfect product, makes the house our own.

Moving in was a drawn-out process, but all our stuff is either in the house or sitting in the garage. There are still a number of boxes in the house and garage to unpack, some closets to build and some painting and trim work to complete, but we are in and loving it.

I took the week after moving off to get the house settled. Thanks to my mom, we unpacked more boxes than I can count while I was on vacation. She helped get the kitchen set up, washed windows and offered her suggestions for decorating.

Where would we be without moms? I’d surely still be looking at a moutain of boxes and feeling overwhelmed without my mom.

Our friend, Myron, seemed to find the time around hunting to help move and take care of our lawn at the old house, getting the leaves bagged up and on the boulevard in time for the city pickup in October. What a godsend that was. He also hung towel bars and toilet paper holders, freeing Randy for other things.

Our kids also gave more than 100 percent to our effort — Ryan laid the bathroom floor tile with perfection and helped with the heavy lifting associated with moving from one house to another. He found countless other smaller jobs that helped finish the house and get the it order, always coming on short notice.

Vicki painted nearly as many walls as I did and asked that we not call her ever again for the job; but we still have the outside to paint. Hopefully by next spring she will be ready to pick up the paint brush again.

We knew we could count on them whenever we called so they were called frequently.

Even Randy’s sister, Sandy, and her friend, Sandra, who live several hours away in North Dakota helped by building a couple of key closets. We’d still be living in quite a mess if I couldn’t hide some things in those closets.

Building a house is all-consuming: We were either shopping for fixtures, looking for the right carpet and tile, calling the cabinet maker about some overlooked detail, worrying about the weather at various stages of the project, or actually working on the house. When we weren’t doing legwork, we rethought each and every decision, consulted with the builder or his crew, or the plumber or the electrician, or the ...

We thought about that house 24/7. Now that we’ve moved in, I’ll guarantee Randy and I are both more productive at work because we aren’t using a quarter of our brains thinking about the house.

To all our friends and family who so patiently listened to us agonize over every decision, to you who had to hear about that house nearly every week — thanks for your patience.

And for the record — we don’t plan to do this ever again; the next time we move, the kids will be making all the decisions.

Debbie Irmen’s column runs on Thursdays.