This old house - compiled

This old house table – October 3, 2007

I’m quite sure by now you are all sick and tired of reading about my remodel. But let me tell you, you’re probably not quite so sick of hearing about it as I am of doing it! You write what you know and right now this is all I know.

Tonight, after painstakingly masking off the upstairs with yards and yards of blue tape (and I’ve only just begun) and just as I was thinking about how nice it would be to be able to afford to hire out this type of grunt work, I went into to do one last wipe-down of my soon-to-be refinished dining room table (yes, silly me. I figured it was already in pieces and with the room empty until Friday now was as good a time as any). As I was running my hand–the one that’s still reverberating from too much time holding the power sander–across the smooth wood I realized that is exactly what I would miss if I paid someone else to do it.

Sure the DIY series make it all look sooooo much easier than it is IRL. (And no, most redo or remodel projects cannot be completed in the standard 22 minutes.) But nothing can quite capture that sense of satisfaction that comes from having realized that with no more than the free advice of the friendly wood guy at your local D&B, some toxic substance sure to cause cancer in the state of California and just a little bit of elbow grease, you managed to pull a few muscles you didn’t remember you still had and make something old seem like new again.

Of course I might be feeling differently about that when I try to drag my old and tired bones out of bed in the morning. But I’ll take that chance.

*****

Enough about the pain, let’s talk about carpet – September 29, 2007

Yesterday–after two weeks of trying–I finally heard back from the carpet retailer and I now have a date on the calendar for them to measure my house for new carpet. Wahoo!

It’s not a lot of new carpet. We have some pretty beat up wood flooring in the upstairs bedrooms, tile in the kitchen and we are putting wood in the dining room (to be installed Friday–Yay!) And we are leaving the bright red but practically invincible carpet downstairs alone. But having new carpet in on the split-entry stairs and in the living room and hallway will make a big difference in the look and feel of our upstairs as well as in my desire to vacuum (like there will actually be a point to vacuuming now).

So it’s time to move on from my completely depressing paint failures and talk about the new carpet. Here is why I’m hopeful this new carpet will the best ever:

1. I’ve discovered the absolutely genius and beauty of a product called Folex.

2. Because I bought my wood flooring during a big promotion I’m also getting a brand newHoover absolutely free. I’m really more of a commercial Eureka girl, but hey, if the price is right… (And just think how nice it will be to have a vacuum on each floor of the house and have attachments to use on the stairs.)

3. It’s Stainmaster.

4. It’s the color of dirt (twelve different kinds of dirt).

5. Three of my four children will have moved out before the stain warranty expires.

Enough said.

*****

When the room and my mood are dripping – September 28, 2007

So like all good remodel projects this one hasn’t 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.

I’m trying to invest a bit more time and money to do this the right way. Which means I’m 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 wasn’t the case because a friend of mine who does faux painting professionally painted my daughter’s 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 crazy–my not-really OCD omes 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, I’m 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!

(Here’s one thing I wish I’d have known before I started painting. And of course, if all else fails, it never hurts to actually read the directions. Although the jury isn’t out on the part about how long you can wait to remove tape. If it’s still too wet, it smudges. If it’s 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 – September 25, 2007

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 don’t 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 LRH’s 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 LRH’s hard heart might have softened and she might let them help anyway. At least a little.)