What to do while you wait

Wait is a four letter word. Hmmm. It's so hard. We still haven't heard anything about the adoption papers moving forward. Did I mention how hard it is? You start this journey so full of joy and expectations, looking for an orphanage, considering children, imagining what they will be like and how they will fit into your family. You find an agency to do your home study. You gather all the papers for your dossier. You're so busy doing things, gathering papers and making plans. Then you send the dossier off. Oh my goodness, what do we do now? I never dreamed it would take so long. All the waiting drives you nutty. Well, one of the things we've done during the wait is to change some attic space into a bedroom for our son. Here are a few pics.

This is the attic before we started. There had been a TV antenna in there so we started by putting up an antenna tower and moving that out of there. Then we scraped the insulation off the top and started a subfloor. All of the boards were brought up through our attic trap door and carried across and over to the new room. What a job! I don't know how many times T hit his head on the same board crossing from one part to the other. The first few times I felt bad for him but after the 10th or 12th time you'd think he would duck. Oh no, he hit it nearly every time. Brings whole new meaning to the term "hard head".

Ah, finally the window is in. T did all the electrical, framing, etc. I did the insulation. We did those jobs on the main part of the house while we were building too.

The hole has been cut into the living room ceiling for the steps. T cut it with the chainsaw. You should have seen his face when I suggested using the chainsaw to cut the whole. It's not every man who gets to cut holes in the house with a chainsaw.

A friend helped us get the drywall up through the window using a forklift. It was raised up a few at a time and then lifted up and pulled in through the window. We hate working on drywall and that was the part we were dreading the most. We got it done though.
Finally, the painting is done, Spiderman border is up and staining and poly is going on trim boards. I was working on this while we were practicing for a play and a I'd take the little CD player up there and sang the songs as loud as I wanted. Pretty good acoustics in there with no carpet or furniture.

We were given so many things to go into this room. Our ex-pastor's son (they moved to S. Korea) gave J Legos and a storage bin. Some friends gave us a bed and some blankets and sheets. My S-I-L gave us the comforter. Some friends T works with gave us the Spiderman throw. My dad helped T lay the carpet with some tools loaned to us by another friend that I work with. I've had a lot of fun collecting things for J. I've read and been told by someone who has "been there, done that" that we should make the room very simple at first. I'll take some of the clothes and toys out for now and then as he adjusts and bonds with us, not his things, I'll bring out more things. We don't want to overwhelm him or over-stimulate him.


As you can see, there is plenty of stuff in the room. My parents gave us the computer desk when they got new office furniture. T plans to put up a computer for J and load it with ESL software and educational games, etc. When we visited J the first time he was really in to R's laptop. He mostly wanted to run the mouse all over though. T is not putting an expensive computer in there, just one that will play the educational games.

Okay, we had talked about adopting in the past and the girls were always excited about it and willing to share a bedroom, etc. We hadn't talked about it for a while when I read a Karen Kingsbury book and figured out that she had adopted 3 little boys from Haiti. I started checking in to adoption grants and ways to fund an international adoption because we rarely have extra money and didn't know how we would fund it. We did a Kingdom Kids fundraiser which several of you who are reading gave to, we did get a grant and I've raised over $1,000 selling cookies. Anyway, when we told the girls we thought we were ready to adopt they just stared at us. Finally R said, "Where are you going to put him?" You see, while we were building this house we lived with a wonderful lady from our church who had a huge house. We had a "suite" of two rooms and the girls not only shared a room, but they shared a bed and that got old quick. They got to pick out their carpet and the colors in their rooms and they have very different personalities so the thought of sharing was not appealing to them at all. So I started looking at the attic and thought it would work, but where would we put steps? We were laying in bed talking about something else and the thought of a spiral staircase came into my head. I found some plans online and T thought he could do that. Once the girls knew we could make an attic room they were totally on board with the adoption. The spiral staircase was a huge undertaking. T laminated the boards together and made treaders, he found pipe for the center and calculated pipe length for the spacers. If you know T, you know that math is not a strong point for him but it came out perfectly. It's an awesome piece of work and I love it. I always wanted a spiral staircase and T always wanted a loft. The girls just wanted their own bedrooms. The cats are quite thrilled with the staircase too and could use it before we could. Dexter was involved in all phases of staircase production. Here he is inspecting the new stairs. He's the black furry blob.


Same time as the other pic, but from the top.


Ah, the handrail. By far, the hardest part of the stairs. T cut a long board into thin strips, about 1/4" wide. He measured and made a form using two sheets of plywood, little pieces of boards srewed into just the right place and shims. Then he smothered the strips of wood with glue and put them into this frame. I'm sorry to say that the first rail was too thick when we tried to install it and it broke. T never said a word. He just took the piece in his hands outside and returned to fight the other piece down and took it out. Then he packed up his tools and watched TV. We did get another built, T planed it down at a friend's house and we held our breath. This time when we bent the circle into a helix, it didn't break. Glory be! Here is a pic of R holding the strips down while T pounds in the shims and attaches the clamps.

We just got the last of the trim around the opening up this weekend. I'm still putting the last coats of poly on it today. Here's a pic of the finished product from the top.

And from the bottom. I really like how it turned out. It is definitely narrow, but so is J. It's hard to get things up there but there's always the attic trap door or the window :-)


We ended up with a small landing area at the top of the steps. Then you step down a little bit into J's room. We plan to build bookshelves around the top that can be accessed while on the stairs. You can kind of see that in the other pic. I wonder how long before J will climb up the small edges of the stairs. I hope we find out soon. Now you know some of the things we did while waiting. We're done now. Please Lord, let him come home.