Plans, or Lack Thereof

This has been a frustrating week-- work was crazy and I didn't get a single  substantive thing done around the house.  We've arrived at a weird place in our house-rehab-- we're actually much further along than I thought we'd be as we celebrate six months in our house (we moved in August 10, though we didn't officially close until the 13th), but we have so much to do.  And what's left is a whole pile of huge projects that we're kind of totally afraid of.  

For example, plans for demo-ing and refinishing the third bedroom have been put on hold by my crippling fear that the ceiling tiles contain asbestos-- if we get them tested and they DO have it, we're legally required to pay for professional asbestos remediation and it can cost thousands.  Some completely crazy part of me just wants to put on a rebreather and yank them out without testing them, but it's pretty irresponsible to send potentially asbestos-y tiles to the landfill (don't worry, I'm not going to do that).  And even if they don't have asbestos, I KNOW we're going to find all manner of horror behind every ugly surface in that room.  Fossilized rats, old rodent shit, chewed-up wires, termites, plumbing issues, animal nests, structural problems, etc etc etc ad infinitum.  And we really don't know how to handle any of that.

And of course we're anxious to finish the bathroom, but that'll mean picking the toilet up again, repairing / replacing the subfloor under the toilet and fixing the cracked cast-iron flange, putting down new flooring, paying an electrician to uncouple the outlets from the sconces so we can replace them,  ripping out the plastic shower surround, replacing what is surely hella-moldy drywall (and probably finding a million scary things behind it when we pull it out) with hardi-backer, tiling the shower, and refinishing the tub.  Have I mentioned before that it's our only bathroom?  Yeah, I don't know how we're going to pull all that off without moving into a hotel for the week.

And the kitchen?  It's too awful.  I can't even THINK about all the disasters we're sure to find once we peel away its hideous orange-peel drywall and seemingly pointless soffits and odd does-this-actually-vent-to-the-outside range vent and cabinets with no subfloor underneath them. 

So I guess what I'm saying is that we're going to have to continue in the decorating-not-renovating vein for the time being.  No photos of anything right now.  Sigh.  Please cheer me up.  Or send me a free contractor,  but not the HGTV kind that will put all kinds of weird goofy products in my house and leave me with, like, a rock-climbing wall in the kitchen and a tiki bar in the bathroom.