For the past six months my house has been in a state of disorder. The positive-minded people out there might call it remolding. I, however, have recently begun to call it a perpetual state of chaos, madness, insanity!

What began as a mere upgrade has turned into more of a headache than I ever thought possible.

Thanks to the lovely ground the house was built upon, even though the foundation is solid enough, the house still shifts. Therefore, we have a rather intriguing array of cracks sprouting up from the corners of the doorways and windows. To help mask this less than attractive feature, our contractor suggested a texture be put on the walls. And while this doesn't look bad at all, let me warn those of you thinking of going this route. If you texture the walls, either leave it white, or be prepared to touch up the paint every few months. The slightest bump can gouge a nice line in the texture, taking off paint and leaving white dots. Rather annoying, but minor in the list of construction blues.

The main issue that I have is with the amount of chaos happening within the house at the moment. I'm not complaining about the noise, or the dust. I'm not complaining about the random people in and out of my house. I'm complaining about the lack of all that! For the last three months, we've time and time again been put on the back burner. Every time our contractor gets a bigger and better job, he says "Next week, we'll come next week". Then next week rolls around, and no work.

We tried to be understanding the first month. Then the second month I bit my tongue. But it's getting a bit ridiculous now. I'm really rather fed up with absolutely no counter space. And if I stub my toe on the microwave one more time, since it's on the floor, I'm going to throw it out the window.

Then there is the matter of our soon to be new bathroom. We've had to turn it into a junk room for all the excess items I don't have a place for because of the construction we are "waiting" to take place. And I want to see my piano in my house so badly I think sometimes I can hear the tinkling of the keys when I'm sleeping. Hallucinations are probably a sure sign that I'm at the end of my rope.

All in all I can definitely say I was naive going into this project and that perhaps next time I'll try and be a bit more realistic. Until then I'll just sit in the one room that is finished and rather comfortable and imagine how lovely the rest of the house will be. How nice it will be to have two bathrooms rather than one the size of a coat closet. And I'll think of how great it will be to have the counter space to actually roll out piecrust rather than having to buy a pre-made one.

Yes, there is light at the end of the tunnel.