Starting to Nest

Our goal over the weekend was to begin work on the nursery.  There were more steps to this process than we had anticipated.  Here's the run down:

1. Clean the entire house.  My God, it was a mess.  How could we focus on just one room while the rest of the house looked like this?  We filled the Dyson twice.

2. Pare down the books.  This was a difficult and emotional task, but I managed to load up three boxes to sell or donate.  Dave made the process sound simple: "Just get rid of any books you don't need."  Need?  Do I need all of Jane Austen's novels?  Why, yes.  I do.  Incidentally, Dave assured me he had already pared down his books and did indeed need all of them.  Including Kate Chopin's The Awakening.  Since I have three times the number of books, I didn't explore this further.

3. Organize the basement.  With the new baby furniture coming in, everything already in the office needs a new home.

You can see some of Dave's books in the corner of this photo below.  The red one is Michael Jordan's autobiography.  He needs that.

4. Move the furniture out.  Except for this guy.  We think the baby might like him. And his politics.

The basement actually has a quaint little office space now.  I'm tempted to use it.  

5.  Paint.  We didn't actually get to this step.  It took us 14 hours to complete tasks 1 through 4.  I'll be sure to document the painting though (because you can't take pictures and work at the same time).