Chet makes a plan!

 This past weekend was Easter weekend so it was light duty in the home improvement arena.  I got a new medicine cabinet for the upstairs bathroom and installed that.  I picked up a new vanity for that same bathroom, so I can install that when the downstairs one is someday finished. LOL I did some picture hanging, pulled some nails, kind of  kept things low key.  

Chet found getting rid of the old medicine cabinet rather heart wrenching. I had him help me pull it out and we looked at all the rust all over it.  Honestly there was so much we had covered it with duct tape  years ago. It was put in when I was 4 and i am in my 6th decade; this owes us nothing!  It helps him to  be part of taking the old thing out and he calmed doing that.

Later he came and asked me what was behind the walls in his bedroom.  I asked if he meant did it have insulation and he said yes.  I explained that there is no insulation in those walls, actually in any of our bedrooms.  There is no heat upstairs either but we are all used to that.  Chet then asked if I could someday "rip his walls apart and put in insulation."  LOL  Well, yes, i could, once the other projects I have going are done.  It would really only be two walls so it would be pretty straight forward, though getting the debris out of the second floor will be a pain in the you know what.

More than that though I was concerned over how Chet would handle mess in his space. And there would be mess.  I explained that I only can work on the weekends and it would take about 4 weekends for me to get the job done. You have to understand that Chet essentially lives in his room. He comes down and socializes at meal times and for occasional short bits during the day. But by and large, the man l ikes to stay in his room.  And he doesn't like mess and he doesn't like change.

I said I was willing to do the job but it would probably be late summer or early fall.  And that he needed to think this through carefully.  He nodded and wandered off.  Two hours later he was back.  He said he had thought it over and he thought we should really do this because his room is cold and this would make it more comfortable.  He had decided that while I am working in the day time that he could hang out in Elisabeth's former bedroom and he had checked to make sure there was tv access there and a place for him to sit comfortably.  In short, he was a man with a plan!

I can't begin to express how impressed I am by this. I will check in with him again in the late summer to make sure he still feels the same way but as it stands now, I will be taking his two north facing walls down to studs insulating and hanging new drywall.

Weekend Warrior Woman!

 This weekend I kicked it into high gear in the bathroom project.  I got almost all the wall demo done and also took up the old tile floor and the subflooring. 

This picture was courtesy of my wife, surprising me with a candid pic when I lease expected it.  But actually today what I wanted to write about was not what I was doing physically, but how I have worked to help this be tolerable for my son Chet. Chet has Aspergers.  He is very much a person who craves consistancy.  He has his evening shower (now bath) at the same time every night. He has a snack at the same time every day.  He takes the recycling out at the same time every day.  You get the gist of things.  The guy does.not.like.change.

And here we were planning the biggest change to our space that we have ever done.  I knew when we started this that I would have to use care to help Chet get through this.  Knock wood so far we have been melt down free.

I started explaining what we were thinking of doing way before we did it.  I explained that we talked to two companies and they could only do a portion of this work for between 10 and 13K  If we took this on ourselves and did it with minimal contractor input we would have a more functional, beautiful space when we were done and we would not probably pay 1/2 of those numbers in cost.  Chet is analytical so this helped.

I also took time every weekend to explain what I was going to focus on that day before I did it.  Even if I explained it the week before, I did it again.  I gave him 20 minutes to ask all the questions he wanted and then I would move him along so I could get working.  Chet will literally ask questions for hours if you don't put an end time on things.  He would check back in with me at snack time to see what I had done so far.  It helped keep the mystery out of thngs.  I have a pretty thick skin where Chet's concerned. I know that he does not mean to be hurtful.  His saying things like "what are you destroying now?" is not meant to hurt my feelings.  I just always explain that I am taking apart things that don't work for us so we can install things that do work for us.

For instance, I demoed a closet. I am going to build a new one there with better and more functional shelves and a sliding barn door that can have towel bars on it.  To Chet, the old closet was "perfectly fine" and i had to take the time to show him why it wasn't.  Explaining it calmly and quietly helped.

I had to alert him to noise.  I never start work before he has his breakfast and does his hygiene so tha the can get upstairs before I start banging.  If something is extra noisy like the tub removal, I warned him and I kept the bathroom door shut to try and minimize the sound. Chet is extremely sensitive to sound.

I have found ways that he can help.  I had him help me carry the pieces of the cast iron tub to our dumpster. I have had him hold doors open, or fetch tools.  Not a lot, just things here and there so he feels a part of the process. 

I have showed him the new components that I have purchased for installation. The new toilet has been vetted for energy efficiency. I showed him the insulation and explained why I bought this specific type of insulation instead of the fiberglass.  I showed him why having a new shower head with a detachable hand shower would be helpful.  He needed concrete examples which I had but it made it possible for him to feel we did not have to save our old showerhead.

In some ways, all of this is more exhausting than the labor of getting the bathroom down to studs. But he has stayed calm and that is really really huge. We are all looking forward to the completion of the job but if knowledge helps him deal with the inconveniences I am all for it.