I should have learned to love the wallpaper.

That would be - what, 907? - on the list of things I wish I knew before buying a house... Those involved in/sucked into the house since its purchase might remember that the hallway came wallpapered, in a mildly unattractive (though could have been worse) floral pattern. I of course did not like said wallpaper, and when we discovered during initial renovations how easily it came off, my crew of marvelous helpers yanked it all down.

You know what's under wallpaper? A sh*tton of paste. And cracks in the plaster, bad plaster patch jobs, and crumbly plaster. So before I can repaint the hallway, I have to a) finish removing the paste, b) fix the plaster, and c) take care of the spots on the ceiling with peeling paint. Last weekend I finally spent some time removing wallpaper paste. On a great note, it comes off quite well with the aid of water with vinegar, a scraper and a sponge. On a depressing note, I think 2 hrs gave me about a 5' x 5' area of clean wall. Um - and tedious jobs like washing walls are not my favorite things to do. I prefer things requiring brain power... At my current rate of progress, it may be July before the walls are ready!

Moral - perhaps I should have learned to like the wallpaper...

We continue the trend of tiny projects...

I managed to get the outlet/switch into the wall in the bathroom! And shockingly, it did not require another trip to the hardware store. Just some tape (thanks for the hint Casey), a chisel, hammer, vacuum, googles - and an exercise in patience. Note - my patience muscle is now really sore. But it's in and attached, even if not a perfect vertical. But honestly, I really do want to redo that bathroom at some point, so I wasn't going to spend too much time trying to make it less crooked... It works and it sort of looks normal!

Joys of home ownership

The frustrating part for me is when I plan to do a project, and end up completely derailed because something else in the house goes awry and requires immediate and time-sucking repair. Case in point - last weekend I broke the light switch in the downstairs bathroom. How? I tried to turn it on. Oops. These things happen, old house...

Luckily I had a spare, so I started the replacement process. 30 min later, with a little help from Dad, the new switch and outlet was attached and working - and hanging out of the wall, as it's too big to fit in the hole in the tile made for the original outlet! Therefore, I will be spending part of this weekend with a hammer and chisel, trying to make the outlet go into the wall without destroying the surrounding tile. (Sidenote - I hate the downstairs bathroom anyway, why must it keep having issues that require my time when I just want it to survive until I can destroy it and replace with something better?) That was so not on my project list for the weekend! Anyone want to bet on how long this little task takes?

The holidays are busy. And then I was tired.

Well - I was. So I took a rather long (and rather needed) break from home repair. Slowly trying to work my way back in though. Last weekend I had goals of hanging the curtain rods I finally bought for the living room - which were to replace the ugly ones that came with the house - and working on stripping more wallpaper paste off the hallway walls. With typical Sarah time estimation skills, the curtain rod hanging took much too long (don't ask. let's just say going up and down ladders after working out does not make for speedy home repair), so there was no paste stripping. But I'm back on the horse, look for more work done - or started - soon!

An old fashioned Brooklyn barn-raising

Once again - saved by my friends. I've been trying to work on the dining room forever, with a goal of having it "finished" for Thanksgiving. The brain and the brawn did a ton of work - but there was still a ton left to do. Once we got back from Nationals (and recovered from the party), we had 10 days to finish the sanding of the patched walls and ceiling, fill any spots that needed help (and then re-sand), and prime and paint the walls, ceiling, and moldings. Anything else that got done would be icing on the cake.

Everything was going according to the master plan (even though I scheduled myself to sand while hungover - dumb, dumb, dumb... but effective!) until some of the skim coating started pulling away from the evil wall. (It's evil because it needed so much work). Then it needed special primer (which smelled like painting with nail polish remover!), another layer of compound, which needed more sanding, which needed more priming... All of which had to be squeezed in during the week after work so that we'd have time to paint! It was only managed thanks to one very determined friend...

And then the weekend rolled around, with another layer of primer necessary, and all the painting. So - friends to the rescue yet again. A bunch of people came over on a chilly Saturday, and did amazing work. By the end of the day on Sun we had the entire dining room painted, the loose paint from the bathroom chipped off and the bathroom primed, the linoleum up on the dining room floor (that one was all Baj, great work!), and the furniture in the dining room! Scraped in under the wire. Thank heavens for amazing friends, yet again!

So we went from here:

From Dining Room

to here:

From Dining Room

Slide show of the mass effort:

Mouse Butt

Finally, a picture of the mouse in Erin's bed. I wish we had video of our heroic capturing efforts, but sadly our hands were fully occupied. So you'll just have to imagine lightening fast reflexes with a tupperware container (mine), screaming and jumping (Erin's), and determined hunting (Stiletto's)...

From Mouse

There was a mouse in the house!

In Erin's bed to be precise. With some belated assistance from the cat, I caught it and threw it outside. I'll blog the full amusing story later - but any suggestions for vermin control that we can use with a cat in the house would be greatly appreciated...

Stripping is not my forte.

Well, now that I have your attention... Ha.

So due to an unfortunate incident with my automatically locking house doors, the brain (my contractor, mentioned in the previous post) wasn't able to get much work done (and I hadn't hired the brawn on Fri as she was already booked). However, the brain had put up a bunch of paint stripper on the doorway in the dining room, so I had to take it off on Saturday. I think I may be missing a trick, because after hours of stripping, two coats of the stripper, and melted paint everywhere - that doorframe still looks painted. As do my gloves and the tools I was using. Argh. I left it, the brain and the brawn will be back next Tues and can hopefully rescue me.

Erin and I also spent a couple hours working in the backyard. We cleaned it up, did a bunch of weeding, and planted the two baby dogwoods that Max got for me. Translation - we threw out a ton of cat poop, stepped in some (byebye work shoes, you served me well), and made many new dirt patches which the cats were happy to poop in right in front of us. I think I'm going to try the cayenne pepper trick my friend told me about - apparently some cats ignore it, but some really don't like the smell, so maybe we can reduce the amount of yard pooping... Well, if nothing else, at least they seem to bury the poo in the dirt patches, vs leaving it on top of the grass. Yucky.

Warmer and dustier

Much work was done last week - and none of it by me. At least, none of it by my muscles. The wallet is exhausted from the workout though.

On Wed the insulation guys came. Despite being rather late (shocking), they were friendly and efficient. I now have an insulated attic and two new roof vents. The insulation is pretty cool - as environmentally friendly as fiberglass can be, with no added chemicals. It looks like the fake snow stuff you see in Christmas displays at the mall. I thought it was pretty well contained - until Erin came home and noticed it was falling out of her cabinet, where the drainpipe comes through. So much for keeping the cat out of the way!

On Friday I hired a couple contractors - one of my rugby coaches (the brain), and a rugby friend (the brawn. This is funny when you know the rugby friend. Sorry Hoop. You're huge too :P). They did some outstanding work in the dining room and the downstairs bathroom. The drywall is finished in the dining room, and the bad wall has the first skim coat on it. The bathroom fan now works, and they scraped off a bunch of the loose paint. AND - there's dust everywhere. We tried to clean, but I think the dust is still winning. There will be more on Fri when the next phase begins... But so nice to see progress in that room! Pics soon, thanks to Hoop.

Baja's Doors Pt 2

And they're up - and they might not fall down and kill anyone! I put the third hinge in, and with some more muscles and patience from Max, we got them up. Perfect they are not, but for my first door hanging, not so bad.

All done - except for the five holes I have to patch from putting the crossbar too high at the beginning... In the process we also discovered that Erin is definitely the best person if chiseling is required - those art skills can be very handy in home repair ;) The one I did to add the third hinge is definitely not up to her standards.

In progress:

From BajaDoors

Finished:

From BajaDoors

Slideshow: