We started some projects at home that was long pending. We were sitting on builder-beige for over 12 years after moving in. And time flew, life caught up, and never got to painting the house.

About 8 years back, we added hardwood floors to the house - but we ended up not doing it for the four of the bedrooms. A bad idea, we should have completed this one shot with the dust and the debris that we went through, but for various reasons, we had put it off.

So six people living in the house, with four of us working remotely from home in this pandemic-driven world was quite a challenge. Plus wearing masks at home every time we went to one of the work exposed floors (the contractors were using masks too) added complexity to the mix.

Have you ever heard of a construction project that came in under budget and on time? Perhaps not. And our situation was exactly as expected. There were cost overruns (which were anticipated) and what was supposed to be a two-to-three-week job is now in its fifth week. A couple of heavy snow days coupled with my contractor juggling other jobs led to this extension.

By rotation, some of us ended up sleeping in the basement plus a temporary kitchen was operational there for at least two weeks. Including a billion seconds milestone party. Hopefully, the end is in sight this week. And staying with fingers crossed for some kind of normalcy of patterns to return back to our lives. Soon. Very soon.