when the room and my mood are dripping

So like all good remodel projects this one hasnt been without its setbacks. Aside from it being impossible to get someone from the flooring retailer (from whom I am resigned to purchase my carpet because their bid came in at about half of the one I got from RC Willey for the same carpet) to come and measure for the carpet, things had been going fairly well until yesterday afternoon. When I had a panic attack.

Im trying to invest a bit more time and money to do this the right way. Which means Im sanding everything before I paint, painting one coat, sanding again, then painting a second coat. But yesterday while I was sanding a little chunk of paint came off and I more or less stopped breathing. What if I had just painted Latex over oil-based paint and the entire room would peel off much like one would peel a banana?

YIKES!

I was fairly certain this wasnt the case because a friend of mine who does faux painting professionally painted my daughters room over a year ago and she had done the alcohol test and decided the paint was Latex. But this is where I start to drive myself and others crazymy OCDC comes out in full glory and I start obsessing over things. What if she had been wrong?

I ransacked the cupboard looking for rubbing alcohol and cotton balls and frantically ran through the house trying desperately to rub off the old paint in various rooms. What if? What am I? Oh no, how will I ever? Assuming the acohol test is even accurate, Im guessing what I have is Latex over oil-based in most rooms, but straight-up oil based in the bathrooms. Which, if I remember correctly, may have been the fashionable thing to do back in the day.

Having no choice at this point but to bravely forge ahead, I proceeded with the second coat in the dining room, because the paint needs to cure for an entire week before the wood flooring is installed next Friday.

Enter panic attack number two. As we pulled the blue masking tape off the ceiling and from around the windows the paint came off (in parts) in this neat little skin of Latex paint. ARGH! Of course then my paint paranoia struck again and I pictured myself standing in a room of freshing painted peeling paint. Quel disastre!

(Heres one thing I wish Id have known before I started painting. And of course, if all else fails, it never hurts to actually read the directions. Although the jury isnt out on the part about how long you can wait to remove tape. If its still too wet, it smudges. If its too dry, your paint peels off. And who knew the use of masking tape required directions?)

Oh well, live-n-learn.

sigh.

The Story of the Little Red Hen

The Little Red Hen (known heretoafter simply as LRH, but not to be confused with Lucky Red Hen whose presence is sorely missed in these parts) decided she was tired of worn and dirty carpet and ill-painted walls and she needed to update her look. So she ordered some new flooring and chose some new paint and jumped into the project with both feet.

Who will help me put things away? LRH asked.

Not I, said each of her four chickadees all at the same time.

Then I will, said the LRH. And so she did.

Who will help me move the furniture? asked LRH.

Not I, came the unified reply.

And so it went. No one wanted to do the boring stuff so LRH was left to do it all herself. OK, well a lot of it anyway.

Who will prep the room(s) because even I dont want to do that? said LRH, but in spite of her bad habits of usually skipping that part she resigned herself to do this job the right way.

Now who will help me paint the walls? whispered LRH a bit sarcastically.

I will! I will! I want to! Me! Me! Me! they all cried.

Fat chance of that, said LRH and she savored every minute of changing the look of her home as if from night to day. Well more like day to night because she chose carpet the color of dirt and was going with darker paint, too.

(disclaimer: Eventually LRHs little chicks might reluctantly give in a help a little, but no where nearly enough to merit the reward of helping paint. But by then LRHs hard heart might have softened and she might let them help anyway. At least a little.)

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fin

I should have taken a before and after picture

Preface: As many of you know, it has been a life-long challenge for me to discover the zen in the art of homemaking. Sooooo…

Yesterday when they got to the part in Relief Society meeting in which the sisters shared good news I turned to my friend and admitted the following: “I can’t say this out loud, but my good news is I finally got all the laundry folded and put away.”

Trust me, the washing is the easy part

For those of you who have it together (that would probably mean all the rest of you), that may be a daily or weekly occurrence. But not chez moi. I’m really good at washing it, but then it just piles up waiting for attention. It had spilled out of the laundry room an into the family room in the form of a mountain of mostly folded towels sheets, odd socks and hand-me-downs gathering dust on our second-hand pool table. My goal for the weekend was to clean it off entirely, find a place for everything and put everything in its place, and match all the socks–with the added treat of tossing any that didn’t have mates in the trash.

One of the biggest challenges was the socks. I do believe the first thing out of my mouth when I get to the other side is, “Where are all the other socks?” I remember hearing my mother recounting a funny story about my dad when I was growing up. They went to the local appliance store to purchase a long-awaited new washer and dryer. (As there were six of us kids you can imagine she had even more laundry than I do.) The salesman asked my father what kind of washer and dryer he wanted–enumerating the virtues of many of the newest models. My dad simply said,

I want the one that doesn’t eat socks.”

Aside from the socks there were enough towels to mop up what’s left of Felix. I don’t know how we inherit towels, but between car washes, kids playing on our slip-n-slide, my propensity for saving things for rags as well my not being able to resist the brand spanking new perfectly white towels and washcloths my grandmother was giving away when she downsized into The Jamestown, I’m getting buried.

There are also an awful lots of items that are just sitting around waiting to go to D.I. and find a good home. These tend to hang around longer than they should because I can never seem to find a big enough bag or box in which to put them. Luckily I happened upon a roll of huge leaf bags and now there are two of them completely full of clothes (and even some of those extra towels) ready for D.I.

I’m happy to say the pool table is bare and ready for play. There is once again both floor and some counter space in my laundry room. And I now have a place to hopefully go to work on some too-long-put-off quilting projects.

I still have a couple of rooms (hint: ~j, you are not the only one) to tackle in my quest for some semblance of order. But there is some light at the end of the long dark tunnel. And that my friends, is indeed good news!

I'm just another Blueblood--that's Cougar blue

my kids attended with various levels of enthusiasm. or not

it's always fun to hone in on someone else's photo shoot

and that was a photo op not to be resisted