I’ve always known it takes much longer to put something back together than it does to take it apart.  Yet somehow, I managed to forget that and assumed that moving back into our newly-renovated upstairs bedroom would be a simple and speedy procedure.  And boy, was I wrong.

In the first place, the bedroom isn’t completely finished.  We custom-ordered closet doors, and they aren’t finished yet.  And we have to wait for the doors to put up the trim around the closet.  Still, the room is livable, so my husband and I have begun the process of moving our stuff back in.

The first thing we did was move our furniture back upstairs, which was painless because the construction workers, our son, and our son-in-law carried it up for us.  (Which is a process I can’t recommend too highly.)  We wanted to move our clothes up next, but first we had to actually find them.  I’d stored many of my Summer clothes in the closet of the guest bedroom we’d been sleeping in during construction, and I distinctly remember carefully organizing all the rest of my wardrobe into labeled bins.  But that must have been a dream, because it took me two days just to find my socks, never mind my extra underwear.

Eventually, all my clothes found their way upstairs and it was time to turn our attention to the wall-hangings.  You would think that adding a dormer to your primary bedroom would give you extra wall space, but it turns out that it actually reduces it.  Because although our bedroom is considerably larger than it was before, it’s still tucked in under the eaves, with a brand-new dormer on the north side.  It looks great, but the walls and ceilings still meet at odd angles, and two windows take up most of the new dormer wall.  An optimist would say this is good chance to re-evaluate our wall art and hang only the pieces we love best, but a pessimist would realize that my husband and I can’t agree on those pieces.  So we’ve been sneaking upstairs and hanging our personal favorites when our spouse isn’t around to dispute it.  It’s resulted in an interesting, if not exactly coordinated, decor.

Finally, I moved my books back up, with the help of my oldest grandson.  Since I’m very particular about how I arrange my books, my husband had taken pictures of the bookshelves before we emptied them.  But while I was carefully carrying them back upstairs in the correct order in which they’d been stored, my grandson was simply grabbing random books, carrying them up, and putting them down in various piles all over the bedroom.  He had good intentions, but he’s six-years old.  And I was still glad of his help, even if it meant taking a little extra time to get the books back on their shelves.

So even though it’s been over two weeks since the workers have left, we’re still not settled into our new bedroom.  Having an unusually busy August didn’t help, but the main problem has simply been that we’re trying to create order out of chaos, decide how we want our new space arranged and decorated, and further pare-down our belongings.  I know I promised a photo of the new room once it’s done, and I really will post one.  I just don’t think it’s gonna happen anytime soon……