The Width of a Wheatie Flake

That's how my father used to describe anything that was so close you couldn't see the space between it and the finish line. Which is how I feel about the house.

My dad loved our house and everything we did to it. As this week marks three years since he died, I've been thinking a lot lately about how he'd regard our little project. Provided we didn't tell him how much it cost I think he'd be pretty damned impressed.

We're still almost finished. The basement is more or less set up, except for the cabinets and countertop in the laundry area that are due to be installed this week. Considering it's still mostly an unfinished basement it really does look like an operating room. My study is newly painted and all put back together, and I can even get to my desk.

Which leaves the garage. The old doors were removed last week and the openings covered with plywood, which gives the outside of the house an "Early Katrina" look about it. The ceiling and walls have been sheetrocked, but matching new ceiling rafters to the old - as well as closing in the walls - has apparently been more than a match for the wall guys. Some of the seam lines look like EKG's, and with the new doors scheduled to be installed tomorrow it's a bit of of a race against time. But there's a crew there today so we're keeping our fingers crossed.

The trailer is still on the front lawn, morphing into the slowly melting snow around it. Right now it's holding lots of stuff from the garage so we can't empty it just yet, but we're hopeful there will still be something of a lawn left when they take it away.

At this time three years ago we were in the middle of the window replacement/family room redo project. I remember having over 40 people standing in our family room one late December night for a shivah service, with no sheetrock on the walls and a bare cement floor. We managed; nobody cared. I also remember our wedding by the pool five months later, my mom's 70th and 75th birthday celebrations, Thanksgivings and a photo album full of wonderful gatherings. Our house is a home, no matter what.

But we still want those garage doors.