August 31, 2015

The Crazy-House Blues

Martie Big Creek Farmhouse Remodel bathroom vanity, concrete stain, sun room, wallpaper 2 Comments

The Crazy House Blues:

{Bum-Bow-dow-bum-bum  bum-bum bum-bum}…(you know, a blues riff…)

This house is a messsss…

{Bum-Bow-dow-bum-bum  bum-bum bum-bum}

It’s causin’ all my stress!

{Bum-Bow-dow-bum-bum  bum-bum bum-bum}

Nothin’s in its place…

{Bum-Bow-dow-bum-bum  bum-bum bum-bum}

Tears runnin’ down my face!

Ok, not really.  Sure, I shed some tears last week, but I think I’ll manage to survive this somehow.  A mantra I learned years ago from Madre:  “I can do anything for [insert an amount of time]”.  At the moment, it’s “I can do anything for two weeks!”  That’s how long we have to wait to get the concrete stain in the sun room, which means that’s how long we have to live like this:

 

 

 

We have a spacious, wonderful sun room, but we are now blocked out for two weeks.  We got everything out (thanks to the help of our nephew, A.R.),  scrubbed up all the drywall mud on our hands and knees, and called our guy.

The problem is, our guy is not just ours.  He’s actually a very sought-after individual who stays busy year-round.  So, he can’t make it out until next week.

{Bum-Bow-dow-bum-bum  bum-bum bum-bum}

Once the floor is stained and has time to dry (or cure, or whatever you call the wait time), we’ll move everything back in, including my sewing station!  But, then we will have to house the entire contents of the girls’ room in the sun room, so they can get their new carpet.  We can’t pile it all back into the guest room, because Pooh and Tigger will have to sleep in there during that time.

So, I suppose I should have said, “I can do anything for three weeks!”

 

We also need someone to hang wallpaper, but I am having a hard time finding anyone.  Wallpaper seems to be a thing of the past, although I found some really pretty designs on Wallcoverings For Less.  Here are a couple of favorites:

 

“Why wallpaper?”, you may ask.  Well, here’s the thing…the existing wallpaper was hung on new, bare drywall, which means taking it down could destroy what’s underneath.  Had the wall been primed before the paper was hung, we probably could have done the squirt-and-scrape method, but as it is, we’d be re-mudding everything when we got the paper down.  I’m just not willing to do that!  I don’t want paneling, because the bottom half of the wall is already paneled with some very interesting stuff…It’s made of pencil wood from an old pencil factory that used to be in the area.  Someone my grandfather knew made a whole slew of card table tops out of the pencil wood, but had trouble selling them.  My grandfather, wanting to help the guy out, bought them all.  He then paneled the living room and dining room with it, walls and ceilings.  When Papa and Madre remodeled thirty years ago, they put in a chair rail and left the bottom half the pencil-wood paneling, but had sheetrock done on the top half.  Papa chose the wallpaper, and it’s a very simple cream with a pinstripe.  I actually love it, but I’d never find the exact same stuff.

 

We are finally going to get our new bathroom vanity installed this week!  We bought this piece  before we ever moved out here, because it was on sale, and we knew we would have to replace the monster-vanity.

That bathroom will feel so spacious!  Ok, maybe that’s a stretch, but it should help.

So, even though it feels like we’ve stalled out, I know that we are making progress.  Someday, this will all just be memories, and we can sit around and laugh about all the hassles we went through to make this house great again.

Meanwhile, I’ll be strumming my guitar, which is my favorite form of stress-relief.

{Bum-Bow-dow-bum-bum bum-bum bum-bum…}

X,O,X,O,    Martie