Woe Wednesday

I am not feeling so hot this afternoon. Urg. It's hard to function.

I just want to get home and shower. But my good friend just read my Mold Report and said, "I could imagine how desperate you felt and how disgusted you must be taking showers..." And that's true. I want to close my eyes and imagine myself in a beautiful bathroom.... too bad that's a little dangerous. I might end up washing my hair with shave gel or something.

Mike has sworn to me that he'll go to the town hall soon (and by soon, I mean like I'm going to make him go this week or next) to get this whole basement permit thing taken care of. Meanwhile, speaking of the bathroom, I should probably start that process soon too.

Post halloween party I need to take care of finally finishing the upstairs, which I've been talking about forev's. It's just all the banister stuff that's going to be annoying. And I did just rack up more deepho charges with all my painting.

I really just want to lay down right now.

Before and After

Before

After

Looks Like Wallpaper huh? Too awesome! It's our painting!

White Doors

Well, I just finished painting. But the real story of the night is the door. Remember how stupid and dark it made the hallway before? Well, while my 1st coat of paint was drying on the wall, I decided to just paint it in the same off-white color.

And oh my god what a difference! I almost love it too much to get rid of it. (almost.)

Hall of Fame

My hall is striped! Well... at least with tape. I had a busy Saturday and Mike had a busy Sunday, so we really weren't able to work together on it until Sunday night.

In that time, we managed to stripe tape one wall out of two. And it was actually easier then I imagined - I was thinking plumb lines and levels and drawing lines every which way... but Mike came up with a much easier solution.

Since I wanted my stripes to be tape width, (2") we simply placed three small pieces of tape at the top, middle, and bottom of the wall, lining one edge up with the adjoining wall. Then, we'd unroll a wall-length piece of tape, line up the top with the opposite edge of the guide tape, the middle with the middle, and bottom with the bottom. Then we'd just move the guide tape pieces to the opposite side of the newly stuck tape line to line up the next stripe with.

This method worked perfectly! We were pretty meticulous about lining everything up right and making sure the tape was smooth with no wrinkles to offset us. We were actually pretty surprised when we put the level up to a stripe halfway down the hall and found it to be dead-on straight!

Small is Tremendous

Ahhh, Wednesday. And I am crawling up the hump on my hands and knees, exhausted and looking forward to rolling down the other side while screaming, "wheeeeeeeeeeeeeee" at the top of my lungs.

Although I have been trying to keep my butt rolling with the momentum generated by last week's frantic Czech footage editing spree.

Monday I purchased a new light for the hallway and winter-time fertilizer for the lawn. Then I got home and cleaned the house. (Because it had fallen into shambles due to ast week's frantic Czech footage editing spree.) Meanwhile, Mike was kind enough to install the light for me.

Tuesday I brought my beautiful poster from Czech to be framed. At a cost of $WAYTOOMUCH. Seriously - I can't even tell Mike how much I spent and on what. I just have to smile and let him by the nerf bars for his 4wheeler. (That's probably not how you spell it - I just never spelled it before, but I'm imagining nerf balls.)

WAIT A MINUTE. It's freakin thursday isn't it? I just realized that. God damn it, I should already be rolling and screaming. Ok ok, let me get on that right now:

"WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE"

Back to Tuesday.

Then, when I got home on Tuesday, I attempted to install a fan control and dimmer switch in the upstairs. That didn't turn out so good. When wires aren't the right colors - I get highly confused. So Mike had to bail me out when he got home. (And he rightly pointed out, why are you installing a fan control when we don't have the fan yet and why are you installing a switch for a light we don't have yet?! My argument - we bought the switches, so why not get a jump on it?)

Wednesday - yesterday. I finally took the fertilizer out of my truck. But didn't apply it. In fact, I don't even know what I did last night - after my shower, it's all a blur. Must have been the shiraz.

Tonight - I want to fertilize.

And this weekend is going to be soo busy. But maybe if I have time on Sunday, I'll be able to stripe my hallway. We'll see. I have a 10% off coupon from the deep-Ho. And they just increased my credit line to $10,000.... those fools.

It's that time again...

Time once again for the biggest bash of the year - the 5th Annual Halloween party! This year unfortunately, I can't claim credit for the invite. It's all my good friend Becci - who took our house into Photoshop, gave it a moon, some clouds, and an eerie orange glow.

Another Bathroom Disaster

So Mike thought he was being really awesome last night - fixing the leaky bathroom faucet. Me? I was sure it would lead to disaster.

Why? Well - history, my friend, history. Every single time we open up a wall in this house, it's like one of those fake cans of peanut brittle. The minute you open it, the stupid thing blows up in your face and you break your nose and there's a mess of little unexpected things everywhere that you now have to clean up.

We take down walls - we discover old chimneys. We take down ceilings, we discover bat poo. We take down the kitchen and there's a big hole behind a clock. We take off floors, we discover wood rot.

It's just not a happy scene every time.

So Mike opens up the little access door behind the shower, and, sure enough there's a problem. One that I expected, but was not looking forward to staring right in the face. Home owner's worst nightmare - MOLD.


Like, put on your haz-mat suit and run for fresh air kinda sh*t.

"Just spray some bleach on it," Mike said as he wrestled with the pipes.
And I just shook my head and said, "It's too late for that, this bathroom just needs to be demolished."

For a brief moment I wanted to pick up that hammer so bad and destroy everything in a fit of mad bathroom-hating rage. Because I do so hate that bathroom anyway. And I want to rebuild it soooo bad it pains me whenever I go in there. But instead I held in my urge, went back into the living room and sat down.... imagining dollar signs all over the place.

If we demolished the bathroom, there would be no turning back and consequences would be financially dire - especially since this is our only bathroom.

Despite all the disaster's we've discovered in this house - we've never turned our back on them or walled them back up, or said, "eh, we'll tackle this later." We've always dived in, no matter what the cost or labor involved. So it pained me when Mike put the little access door back on.

Part of me really wanted him to say, "Well, we can't wait any longer. We need to do the bathroom." Because with one little push, I would have been all over that like hobos on a ham sandwich! It's always easier with Mike behind me, pushing me over the edge to get things done - especially when its urgent.

Maybe we should call this guy - 1966 Bathroom remodel. Forty so odd years ago... I think it's definitely high time for another remodel.

Just Czech-ing In...

We're back from Czech! Oh did we have an awesome time too... incredible. And believe me when I say, I think we're both rejuvenated from the trip. I mean, the whole summer has been a line of bad luck, injury, work-related madness and depression, lack of funds, and lack of inspiration.... But now I really feel like all that is behind us. (Except for lack of funds - because we had to buy about a million souvenirs of course!)

So now we need to get back to business. First on the to-do list is to get approval, or begin the process of getting approval, for the farmer's porch. Even though we wouldn't be able to build it until possibly spring, we need to either add it to our basement permit or get the basement permit signed off and start a new application. Because the basement is done and I'd like to move on to other projects and get that signed off. Mike has promised me that he'll handle it (because I just hate the permit process and the stress that goes along with it) - so it's just a matter of getting him to the town hall in the morning before work.

Secondly - we just a few more things to finish off upstairs, and then we can move on to the stairway/hallway. I don't know that I expect anything to be accomplished this weekend - I have a mile long list-o-stuff to do. But if I had my way, I would like my headboard put on the bed and the attic doors made. I don't think that's much to ask... so we'll see.

The annual bash of the year - Halloween party - is fast approaching too. So the race is on to wrap up a few of these little projects.

One Sixty in the WSJ!

Another blog moment - a reporter from the WSJ read my blog on our Demolition party and contacted me for an interview!

Read the article here!

And the blog that started it all? Read it here!

I'm always amazed that people that I don't know read this blog. I love all your comments. And I get so flattered when I see a link to my blog in someone else's blog or website.

You guys ROCK! Thank you!