We're not foolin' around. Much.

We got right to it upstate this past weekend, hammering out more paneling up in the attic ASAP.

Well, sort of. We got literally one panel up when I was like, "Don't you think we should build a rad cubbie to enclose the toilet venting (which for some f-ing reason was run above the floor boards instead of inside the 8" space between the floor boards and the ceiling below...) and then panel it and make a secret door where we can store stuff like luggage until Julian is old enough to discover it and he and his friends can play in there, and if anyone ever breaks into our house, we can all go up to the attic and hide in there like the movie "Panic Room: The Catskills"? And remarkably, instead of John saying,

"That's the worst idea ever. No dice." 

He said,

"Okay. That sounds cool." 

So we put down the nail gun and the mallet, shuffled down to the barn where we discovered, like, exactly the right number of two-by-fours to build a wall (I'm not kidding) and then we went back to the attic and framed out a wall for the first time. Ever.

And granted, a professional contractor might say, "This is not the conventional method for building a wall", which would be a fair point, but actually it looked pretty similar to the conventional method for building a wall, so I'd say we're satisfied.

Unfortunately, that took about 1/3 of the day (God damn a learning curve! It can really eat up your morning!) but we spent the rest of Saturday and much of Sunday paneling, so we still made some solid headway. Not as much as I'd originally planned on, but then-- I hadn't originally planned on building a panic room/cubbie/fort in my attic-- and sometimes you just have to change direction mid-stride as they say. (I swear, somebody says that!)

A major thanks goes out to the many folks who helped make this weekend the (marginal) success it was... To John for not totally shutting down my zan-i-doo plan to panel our entire attic (although he has said, "We couldn't just drywall like normal people...." more times than I care to count.) And an even greater thank you to my in-laws and parents for minding my munchkin and keeping him happy. When he's happy, the whole machine runs more seamlessly. When he's in a funk, the whole ship starts to sink...

And I just can't nail up paneling and bail water at the same time. I don't have enough hands!