Some things I've noticed

I think it would be really hard to make a living working in the construction business. Their work right now seems to run hot or cold. They seem to have more work than they can handle, or they don't have any work at all. Most of these men have told me that since there isn't a lot of new construction, they have been doing remodels like ours. They get their work (hence their paycheck) any way they can find it. Their rates are down from what they were only a couple of years ago. It's been really interesting to watch these guys do what they do. They are very skilled with their hands and can do all sorts of amazing things. They're nice guys who have done good work for us. So far, so good.
Case in point - Electricians. They can run wires and hook up lights in places you never thought possible. Our "old" living room had terrible lighting. It was dark and dreary, but that will be a thing of the past now that we have 27 cans of recessed lighting in the living, new dining room and kitchen. That's right - 27 cans. Let there be light! PLUS, he hid the cable wire that has been sticking out of the wall for the TV and bugging the crap out of me for a number of years. The computer cable is now inside the wall where it belongs, out of site. Long live electricians! Plus he changed all our outlets and light switches to new and improved white ones. Yeah! Oh, and he also hooked up a programmable heat control thermostat. Cool!
Dry wall guys must love what they do. I've decided that they are just big boys at play. They get to walk around on stilts like these

when they are texturing the ceiling and they get to play in mud and make all sorts of interesting patterns on the wall. They get to create amazing textures. Our guy Scott is a neighbor and friend and he and his crew have been doing a really good job. Would you like some holey smooth texture after your walls have been skim coated? He's your go to guy. He did four samples on our walls so that we could see what they were like, and then once we chose, he sanded them all down and redid the walls the texture we wanted. I think doing dry wall would be hard, but kinda fun.
Wall paper removal guy (kind of a jack-of-all-trades worker because he also sheet rocked and did some other things.) Poor, poor guy. He took down the wallpaper in our huge family room. Luckily he had a steamer, but still. I don't think I'll ever wall paper again (even though I loved it for many years.) It is just too hard to remove. Shortly after removing the wall paper in the family room, he left to tour with a rock band for four months. I'd leave to tour with a rock band too if I had to take off that much wall paper. Only thing is, now Rick, Andy and I have to take off the wall paper in Andy's bedroom and our bedroom...oh well, it will be worth it, right? While we've got these dry wall guys around, we'd better take advantage of the situation.
Painter. We hired the guy that painted the outside of our house in the spring. He is another friend and neighbor. He is retired and came out of retirement to do the inside of our house. He does such excellent work. He's been working on stripping and re-staining the stair rail and also glazing (kind of antiquing) the kitchen cabinets. Once the dry wall guys get done, he'll start spraying the paint. One coat of primer since we have new texture over our old orange peel (bye, bye orange peel) and then two coats of new paint over practically the entire house. It's going to look so different.

Coming up - the hard wood floor guy, the finish carpenter and the tile guy. We'll see if they can compete with the skills of these other laborers. Hopefully they'll be mostly done in another two to three weeks. Here's to the skilled carpenter! Hip, hip, hooray!

Oh, and another thing I've noticed...once you start a remodel, it's VERY HARD to stop...