Remodeling

We're doing some so-called-"weekend" projects this week. We flew my brother down to help us (read: we're slave drivers) :) and we have high hopes for the results.

But oh my. Painting a room sounds so simple when you just say "yes, this weekend we're going to paint the bathroom." It isn't like that. The towel racks were glued to the wall. And not just any glue, these guys used 3M heavy duty never-will-you-get-this-off glue. We got it off, but some drywall came with it. The previous owners also painted the house right before they sold it to us. Little did we know that they skipped all the important steps like deglossing the paint and using primer. Yeah. So the current bathroom paint is peeling in sheets, and we're trying to either peel it all off or sand it off or...something. It is amazing how big a small bathroom can suddenly be when you're faced with sanding the entire surface area.

We really are making progress, mostly because my brother is an amazingly hard worker. Jonathan's bedroom is pretty much ready to actually paint - I just need to get in there and draw the line where we want the different colors of paint to switch. And the bathroom is getting better, I think, maybe. The places were the drywall came off may not look quite normal ever again, but what can you do. This isn't my "forever home" - it's just a place that I want to be nicer while I live here for a few more years. So its ok, and we're learning an awful lot. Like: next time we buy a house, we should check to see how the owners painted it, instead of just going "ooooh, ahhh" over the prettiness. We should also check the walls to make sure that they don't have 20 degree bends in them for, um, no reason that we can see. It does make you wonder. :)

Hopefully we'll be able to get the rooms at least totally prepped for painting by the end of the day. (Although at the moment, we're definitely having the post-lunch-slump and not wanting to work at all! Hence the blogging.) Tomorrow Gabe's family is coming over to spend the day helping as well, and we're going to replace the floor in the entry/kitchen area. Doesn't that sound nice when you put it that way? What we're really going to do is pry up the yucky old laminate wood, then somehow pull up not one but two layers of REALLY yucky lineoleum flooring under it. Hopefully once we do that we'll actually find the original concrete. :) The funny thing is that you can totally tell when the floor was re-done - there is really dark brown/black linoleum that was probably put in during the eighties, and under that there is this truly hideous product of the seventies. I can't even begin to describe it, and truly you probably don't want me to. :)

I'm really looking forward to having a new floor in there - right now the wood flooring doesn't even extend to the walls. I guess the previous owners didn't see any need to put flooring under the stove and refrigerator. But ours are a different shape, so the fridge wiggles and rocks when you open it (since it isn't on anything like a level surface!) and we have a lovely view of the old brown linoleum between the fridge and the stove. Besides, the current floor is full of cracks, which makes sweeping a semi-pointless endeavor - it all just goes down into the cracks. Yuck.

Anyway, I really think the end result of all this will be more than worth it. But I do wonder how in the world Dy managed to do her own remodel right up to her delivery date. I'm exhausted, and I'm not even the one doing most of the work!