Well, we certainly can't claim to complete any house projects at world record speed, whether it's a 12+ year renovation of our 15' wide townhouse, or even completing our master bathroom renovation in less than five years. But when outsourcing work, I thought we could count on hired pros to turn things around a little more quickly.

For anyone who has been following along the last several months, back in February we experienced a catastrophic failure of the boiler in our new home, resulting in a house full of frozen and burst pipes, a busted boiler, and even toilets that had cracked. We knew it wouldn't be a fast process to work through the insurance claim and get the house back in working order, but I certainly didn't count on months of little to no action.

It dawned on me this week that for officially half of the time we've owned the new house, it's been without heat, running water, or functioning plumbing. Ugh. But while that's a downright depressing thought, and honestly one that's resulted in multiple meltdowns on my part including a full on tantrum that included a flying pry bar, I am happy to report we've made some progress on this front.

We've officially hired HVAC and plumbing contractors! Yep, you read that right. After a tediously slow process of finding companies that service the area and do the kind of work we need, getting companies out for estimates (and actually showing up for the appointments), following up for estimates, submitting estimates to our insurance company, filing the necessary contractor paperwork with the insurance, and discussing approaches each contractor would take to complete the work until we found one we liked, we're thrilled to report that we've selected pros for each of the two major areas of work and have given them deposits to start the work.

I'm not trying to get my hopes up here, but from what we're being told this week, work should begin within the next week. The HVAC work inside the house has to happen first before the plumbing can start, and the exterior HVAC (digging the trenches in the yard for the new geothermal system) can't start until the contractor hears back from Miss Utility, but even with those contingent items we're feeling excited.

There's a list of items we need to do in order to prepare the home for the work. Some of the items include demo, like removing the tile walls on the outside of the two showers.