Cheryl at Twinfatuation hosts Makes My Monday.  Admittedly, my topic today is sort of an odd one, but it makes me very, very happy nonetheless.

Witness, what used to be my back stairs:

The back stairs and mudroom is our primary entrance to the house, since it’s right off of the driveway.  But it’s been a safety hazard as long as we’ve lived here.  The photo above is a short time into demolition, but I assure you, they were nearly ready to crumble on their own.  And those rusty-looking pipe/posts are what I refer to as the Tetanus Handrail.  Not safe from a “preventing falls” standpoint, and I’m waiting for someone to cut themselves on it and need to rush to the doctor for a damn tetanus shot.  Sigh.

So, finally, despite the fact that it’s January and frigging cold, we’re getting this project underway.  The back stairs are being replaced with a small wood/composite deck and new stairs.  The mudroom, which has no foundation or other support and is basically falling off of the house, is getting some supports built and being gutted on the inside. It will still be a small, oddly-shaped room, but hopefully a little brighter and more functional, and less likely to fall down.

Anyways, demo has begun and is mostly complete, and this week they will start rebuilding.  In two to three weeks (knock on wood), we’ll have a brand new entryway.  It’ll be kind of noisy and messy in the meantime, but pretty minimal since it’s mostly outside and in a confined corner of the house.

There’s a million reasons why it took us over three years to finally attack this very necessary project.  Some of it is just laziness and not making the phone calls.  Some of it was people falling through.  And some of it is me vs. M.  While I know that some couples argue a lot and it works for them, M and I really don’t fight much.  But if there’s one thing guaranteed to have us majorly ticked at each other, it’s the topic of home renovation. Don’t even get me started on the kitchen.

While I’m not a big spender, I’m a damn shop-a-holic compared to M.  Especially big, permanent-feeling home improvement projects.  He doesn’t want to spend the money (“not a good time to ‘sink’ money into the house,” according to him), he doesn’t want to live through the mess, he doesn’t want to commit to a design.  Me? I want to remodel, redecorate, etc.  We make each other a little crazy.

Anyways, I finally convinced him on this one since there was a substantial safety issue, especially with our increasingly independent toddlers.  So, away we go…  let’s hope everything stays more or less on schedule.