Nursery dilemma...kinda long.

angie05161

My DH and I have been working on finishing our basement in our house off and on for ~3 years (the entire time we've owned the house).  Now that the baby is on the way, we decided to get more serious and to have it done before the baby is here.  That way we can move our room downstairs and have the nursery down there as well.  We currently have 3 BR upstairs (our room, guest room, and office) and we don't really want to give up a guest room or office right now.

Dilemma...my DH procrastinates like you wouldn't believe.  Why do today what he can put off until tomorrow?  We just finished hanging the sheet rock and now we need to hire someone to mud and tape.  It feels like we still have so much to do...carpet, trim work, painting, not to mention decorating (and buying) the stuff for the baby's room.  I'm beginning to worry that it won't get done in time.  We only have 17 weeks left...if I don't go early!  What should I do? I don't want to wait and only have a couple weeks to prepare the room, especially when I'll be huge at that point.

majors31

make a project time line.  make a deadline for each phase that needs to be completed.

CDCbaby

majors31:

make a project time line.  make a deadline for each phase that needs to be completed.

This!  It's exactly what I was going to say.  and maybe if your DH sees what little time you have left, once you break it down week by week, it will kick his butt into gear to help you get things rolling.  and explain to him that the bigger you get the harder it will be for you to help.  So the more you get done now, the more work that you can actually do, he'll probably like that part   

littlemaybaby

I don't have any suggestions, but wanted to write to say that I TOTALLY sympathize with you.  My DH is the exact same way.  We are in the middle of doing our guest bathroom, and then he wants to do the master bathroom before we even start on the nursery . . . but every weekend there seems to be an excuse to procrastinate.  I told him that if we haven't started on the nursery by week 25, then I'm hiring someone to come in and do it.  He says that's "forever" away - but I don't think he realizes that finishing 1 bathroom and completely doing another in 10 weeks isn't going to be easy for someone who likes to do housework as little as he does.

Good luck to you!!!

farrellashleigh

Well depending on the square footage it is totally possible. (Hubby and I own a residential construction company) 4 months is plenty of time to finish a basement (we just did a whole house gut and remodel in 6)

Anyway, you need CLEAR deadlines, figure on allowing a week for each of the longer phases like drywall, electrical, trim, etc. And then you can start cramming 2 things into a week for the easier stuff like carpet and paint. Itemize the following, here's my recommendation on timelines to finish (but it totally depends on your sq. footage and finish options) here's a reference.

Drywall, Electrical, Trim, Hanging Doors, Tile, Plumbing, HVAC = all roughly a week to finish but you can overlap them.

Carpet, Door hardware, paint, finish electrical (fixtures and switches), finish plumbing (toilet, sink, mirror, etc)= all roughly 3-5 days to finish and again can overlap.

And if you get too stressed out just remember that if all else fails you can still use one of your 3 bedrooms as the baby's room temporarily until it gets done, even though this is a last resort. Just keep that in mind for peace of mind.

jrnewhook

I did the hunting for our plasterer when we reno'd the house last spring. Alot of them will also take care of priming and painting for not a lot of extra $. So if you can convince your DH to take care of trim work you could line up someone and not have to do any work. Might take a bit of the pressure off him with one less thing (a big one at that).