First reno dilemma, one of many to come

Our contractor/friend/neighbour told us last Thursday that he is available as of Monday for our basement.

All we need to do is clean out the basement.

We started.
We are not finished.
Hubby is working as an airline pilot.
He's being recruited for two new jobs.
We have a toddler.
I am almost 6 months pregnant.
We are on a very tight budget.

Because of our budget, hubby wants to do most of the tearing apart himself. To save on cost. But that can't be done till we finish cleaning out the basement.

We thought we could fit all the stuff in our garage/shed, but we were wrong.

We have to get some sort of temporary storage. Which isn't a problem as there are many local ones nearby.

But it will take time to transport the stuff there. We have a station wagon, not a truck, so that limits what we can bring with us.

It being Sunday today, and as I guessed correctly, hubby not having called our contractor/friend to confirm we won't be ready for tomorrow, he emails me from some destination. Could I please call our friend and tell him that we're not quite ready.

I called.

His wife answered.

Her first question was "how goes the basement cleaning?".

I told her we're not ready for Monday.

She told me they're going away on Thursday for the weekend.

I'm thinking in my head 'great, that will give us the rest of the week to prepare and demolish, get a bin, storage, etc'.

But she suggested that our friend will be ready to start on Tuesday and continue a bit more on Wednesday, before going on their vacation.

My feeling is that she wants to keep him working. Everyone needs a paycheck.

For some reason I couldn't stop her though process. She talked and I listened. Then the call was suddently over.

Maybe I'm a pushover, maybe part of me is hoping we can start on Tuesday. But realistically, that puts a lot of stress on our family life.

I do not need stress.

It's not like I could help out today during hubby's absence. Toddler didn't nap, and although he was in a great mood, I wasn't really able to put a dent into the basement while keeping an eye on him at the same time.

Besides, it was raining on and off, and since the garage is full, and we don't have the storage confirmed yet, where should I have put the stuff?

Better to wait for hubby to come home.

The contractor will probably not mind having a bit of time off. He's just finished a basement last Friday...but I never spoke to him. Didn't even ask if he was home.

Duh.

I feel like she made our decision for us.

Been trying to get ahold of hubby at his destination but all I get is voicemail.

So...he'll have to deal with it when he gets home tomorrow.

Except, I expect delays since there are a lot of thunderstorms in the area, and that always means red alerts at airports, and delays....

Blah.

Note to self: this is only the first challenge I will inevitably encounter on this long and winding road to a new basement.

Too bad I can't drown my sorrows in Riesling.