Nonetheless, managed to be reasonably productive once Jarmila arrived; I've just finished up four hours of grading and am all caught up on my mid-semester portfolios. Yay. Now I just have to stay awake while driving to and from class. (Staying awake in class is no problem, because teaching fiction-writing is awesome.)
We're scheduled to have lunch with Pam Whitehead (of P & P Ltd. Construction) tomorrow. Pam, if all goes well, will be our general contractor. So far, we love Pam -- she's smart and creative and very communicative (both e-mail and phone), and just generally seems very diligent and competent. She did warn us that at some point in the process we will likely hate her, because that's just what happens with this sort of project between the homeowners and the general contractor. That may be true, but given how absolutely glowing her references were, I have faith that we'll likely come out loving her again on the far side. It doesn't hurt that she values a lot of the same things I do about old houses, and that we have at least overlapping aesthetic tastes. That's going to be a big help with the design process, I think.
Pam got us a budget yesterday, and we're doing a last lookover of the numbers today. The numbers are scary; we're going to be spending as much on the renovation as we did on the house. Of course, we got the house for half what it was originally listed for, so maybe that all works out. Sort of.
In any case, I'm starting to go a bit nuts with wanting the work to actually get started. We have lights in the house -- I want working heat and water. I want people to start stripping the paint off the moldings. I want to see some demo, and some new walls going up. There are a ton of things we can't do until the architect's plans are completed and approved, which won't be until the Historic Commission meets at the end of December -- and that's the best-case scenario, where they accept what we bring them without requiring revisions. But Pam says there's a fair bit we can at least get started on now, while we're waiting for that to happen. Sounds good to me. I am not good at waiting. I want to start getting things done!
Speaking of which, time to drink tea, pump milk, and then get dressed and go to campus to teach. More anon.