In Which We Have An Incredible Announcement To Make

I have incredible news, folks.

This morning after we dropped Connor off at school we drove over to the local home improvement store and picked up a lawn mower, a big set of hedge clippers, a rake, and some seriously heavy-duty garbage bags. When combined with the gloves I already had at home, my ivy-killing arsenal was now complete! The rest of the visit was spent wandering around the store looking at all of the home improvement items and divesting Jeremy of the various tools he'd picked up with the intention of strapping them to his wheelchair. I made him put back the hand ax he found in the gardening section, and had to physically drag him away from the chainsaws. I swear I can't take the man anywhere.

While that was a lot of fun, it's not the incredible news.

After a break at home for Connor to have some lunch and a nap, we headed back over to the house to give a friend the tour, do some more preliminary cleaning, and to wait for Becky, one of the owners of Signature Custom Homes (the company doing our remodeling) to meet up with us and show us the recommendations for the remodeling. However, while we could spend a lot of time waiting around outside the house, getting in was a whole other story.

See, whenever we'd stopped by the house before and were planning on having everyone go inside, we'd always been with someone else-- the real estate agent, a friend, a contractor-- someone who could help me get Jer's wheelchair up the two steps in the front. This time it was just the three of us, and Connor wasn't exactly going to be doing a whole lot of the pushing.

In the past, I've tilted the chair backwards and pulled straight towards the door while someone at Jer's feet lifts slightly to get the wheels moving up the stairs. Jer helps by steering and pushing back towards the door. The wheelchair goes up without too much trouble. This time, not only was there no one to give us that initial lift, but the porch was slick from the rain and my feet were sliding all over the place. We tried for a good long while before realizing there was no possible way that Jer's wheelchair was going up the stairs.

So Jer ended up maneuvering himself out of the wheelchair, crawling across the porch, through the door and into the house in an awkward sort of scooting motion on his hands and rear with his feet and legs in the air, and getting back into the wheelchair (which we set down in the sunken living room so he could reach it) inside. Then all I had to do was haul the chair with him in it up one six inch step out of the living room rather than two eight-and-a-half inch steps. So now we've figured out that we can get Jer into the house sans a ramp in a pinch, but it isn't something that we're going to want to do very often. Especially since my back is not thanking me for it right now. Oh well.

Definitely not the incredible news.

Anyway, we gave our friend Anna the tour, and then after she left Becky came over to present us with the remodeling plan. I've been talking about pretty much nothing but this remodeling for the last few weeks, so you all probably have a good idea about what we were talking about doing: basically a ramp, a pretty major bathroom remodel, a much less extensive kitchen remodel, and the floors. Becky unrolled the plan on the kitchen counter and dropped a bombshell on us.

Everyone at the company got together and talked about our circumstances and the remodeling project. They decided they wanted to do more for us than we'd be able to do on our own. And so they're keeping the same budget we originally gave them, but through donated labor and materials they are redoing the entire house.

The. Entire. House.

A totally redone, expanded kitchen with all new accessible appliances and a two-level island that Jer and I can work at together. All of the doors in the house expanded to be wheelchair accessible. The sunken living room floor raised to be level with the rest of the house. Completely remodeled accessible bathroom with a curbless, roll-in shower, and the other bathroom modified so that it's at least partially accessible as well. Accessible porch (no more crawling). No more popcorn ceilings. New lighting. New floors. New paint.

And my library. They're building me my library. I'm in tears just thinking about it.

So that, my friends, is our news. They start the demolition this weekend, so we don't have to worry about getting a maid any more. We're going to stay in the apartment an extra month so we're not living in the middle of the remodeling, which would be much more difficult given the scale of what we'd originally planned versus what they're actually doing. And if all goes well, by Christmas we should be living in a beautiful, updated, fully accessible house.

What incredible people. What an incredible day.

~Jess