very little progress

If it looks like we haven't made much any progress with the house, that's because we haven't. But it isn't because we've been twiddling our thumbs and spending days at the beach.

Well. You got me. There were some days at the beach. But we live in a beach town -- what did you expect?!

But we have a good excuse.

No, really.

The house closed escrow at the end of October. We immediately hired an architect to draw renovation plans.

Unfortunately, it took much longer than we anticipated for the architect to finish the plans. We expected to have the finished plans and permit approval by the beginning of December.

It wasn't meant to be.

We managed to barely submit our plans to City Planning before they closed for the holidays. I was told that it usually takes 3 - 4 weeks to get permit approval. And since we were submitting our plans just days before Christmas, it was probably going to take us the full four weeks.

In the meantime, we've been going a little stir crazy wanting to get started.

Here was our dilemna: Where were we to begin?

Many of the rooms and spaces are going to be affected and/or altered. Not all, but many of the existing walls are going to be affected in some way or another.

The areas of the house that we have left to work with are:

• 7's bedroom
  
• downstairs bathroom
  
• closet in master bedroom
  
• garage

I'm getting started in 7's bedroom. John has the lovely job of working on the garage. More details on that later.