Not necessarily home rennovation related...

There are certain traits about my mother that make drive me insane.  Her and my dad came to Ann Arbor to pick up their farm fresh chickens and go to Ikea. (Side note: My mother didn't start visiting me in Ann Arbor until they built an Ikea in Canton.) So I accompanied them to Canton, and at the checkout line, Maria has to go to the food market. She bought every random thing imaginable. On our way out we had, stale bread, Swedish chips, and weird fruit cookies. She took one bite of everything, didn't like anything, and then left it all with me.  This makes me crazy. She can't leave the store without buying junk food, that she inevitably leaves with me.

What's worse? As we're walking of Ikea and I'm rolling my eyes, I realized, OMG, I do the exact same thing to Bob. Sigh. I guess the apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

Electrical

Last year we got a really good deal on insulation, so we went ahead and bought enough to roll out another layer in the attic.We were able to roll it over the bedrooms, hallway and into the formal dining room (AKA baby grand piano room), but the living room, kitchen and weird back room were never done because the electrical was (is) a hot mess. It made more sense to figure out what to do with the wires first, and than roll out the insulation.

 Fast forward a year and we were still trying to decide what to do with the electrical. After a couple of big pow wow session, we've had success. I thought no big deal, Bob will climb into the attic, we'll get the wiring in, and bam, we're done.

And then pieces of the wall started to come down.

And the drywall dust came creeping back. As usual nothing is as it appears. There were live wires going to nowhere, dead wires everywhere and random lighting everywhere. Bob and dad were only able to put in the recessed lighting in the living room and sort out some of the wires in kitchen. So what should have been a weekend project, has turned into a couple of weeks projects.

Dad trying to figure out the hot mess.

Bob pretending he knows what he's doing.

Three of the 6 recessed lights in the living room.