I can write this now, confident in the knowledge that K is currently in the skies between New York City and Toronto, and won't see this until she gets home.

Kirsten flew to New York on Wednesday to attend the graduation of our friend Irit (I talked briefly about it here). While she was gone, she asked me to do a little work on the house, as we'd just put up a wall in the basement for my new office.

About two weeks ago, I decided I wanted to do something a little different than that. As some of you may know, Kirsten watches an awful lot of Home & Garden TV, along with shows like Trading Spaces and While You Were Out. Often, she's admonished me for not having brought Debbie Travis into our house to do a complete makeover. For some reason, none of these shows seem to come to Edmonton.

I knew we couldn't get the celebrity host, the throngs of contractors, or the free cash to do the basement while Kirsten was in New York. However, I did know that we have a great group of close friends that really love Kirsten and wanted to do something nice for her. So, I emailed them a couple of weeks ago and proposed the "While Kirsten Was Out" project - the original plan was to spend the weekend painting the basement and putting in new flooring. Our friends Orion, Pam, Igor, Christie, Aida, and Heather all enthusiastically offered their help.

Wednesday and Thursday night I spent plastering and sanding the drywall on the new wall (Kirsten described our collective drywalling talent best: we drywall like special olympians - lots of enthusiasm and effort, while overcoming a lack of ability), and Friday I rented a wallpaper steamer and spent hours pulling the remaining wallpaper off the other walls. By Saturday morning, I was pooped.

Unfortunately, we didn't get as much done as I'd hoped (through absolutely nobody's fault). Since originally emailing our friends, we'd had to put in a claim with Epcor because of a leaky water meter. That meant that we couldn't put in the flooring, as I'd originally planned. But then again, this weekend wasn't as much about getting a tonne of work done to the house (though that was the goal) as much as it was showing Kirsten how much we love and appreciate her.

Because the wallpaper took so long to take down, we started Saturday having to prep the walls (clean, apply some plaster to areas where I'd gouged trying to get the wallpaper off). I also ran into a hellish junction box (6 pairs of wire all marretted together) when I was replacing the ceiling fixture in the new room that took a few hours of my time to fix.

In the end, we were able to get everything primed, and put a coat of paint in the new room and in the living room downstairs. Everyone worked their asses off and did a fantasically good job, despite their claims of being inexperienced, and my general crappiness at organizing people. :) I also decided first thing Saturday morning that I would keep my current office the way it is, and focus on making the new room a nice reading/relaxation area for Kirsten. I think that helped quite a bit; it allowed us to get more done in the new room and living room than we would have otherwise.

Thanks to everyone that came to help, even if just for a little while. Kirsten will be really happy that so many gave their time so freely and put a little extra love into the house.