The Monstrosity: Day Two

Day Two didn't seem nearly as productive as Day One. I was expecting days like that, but not quite so soon as Day Two! Part of the trouble is that there is just so much to be done. You barely begin on one thing before you get distracted with something else. Besides all the time you waste walking around the house THINKING and trying to imagine what needs to be done where and what colors and special touches and all that. There are sooooo many decisions to make it just seems overwhelming. But still fun. So far.

We bought a wall paper steamer yesterday to assist in our efforts to remove all of the paper throughout the entire house. I once thought there wasn't much. I was wrong. The foyer alone is just way too big. That's the room with the lovely ~gag~ green and yellow pheasant wall paper that, upon further study, is actually peacock wall paper. Not that that's an improvement or anything. And the foyer just happens to extend up the stair way. Way, way, way up high... and the peacocks go the whole way. Hundreds of them. After spending all day long stripping the wall paper from the kitchen (I finally got the last of it down so we can say I finished something today!) I'm really, really wondering if there's any way we can get by without actually stripping all of the peacocks. I hate it when people paint over wall paper and you can see all of the seams. But I don't really want to wall paper over it either--it would cost a fortune and be an enormous and potentially life-threatening project. Still working through the possibilities on that one.

ANYWAY, what we did accomplish today is stripping all of the wall paper and border from the kitchen. (What kind of a person clips all of her fingernails down to the nubs the night before stripping wall paper??? Dumb.) I found myself standing on a step stool with a steamer in one hand and a scraper in another--after several hours of being in that position--HATING wall paper and wondering what kind of an idiot PUTS the ugly stuff in their house anyway. Of course, 20 or 30 years from now, should time tarry, there will be some other woman standing on a stool with a steamer taking down MY wall paper while thinking the same unkindly thoughts. Ha! It looks horrid in there now (worse than before, believe it or not), but it's great progress. The kids helped a lot with different stages of that job. Katie loves working the steamer, Joe likes rolling the little scoring tool all over the wall, and Sam loves helping peel paper. I just love it that they're old enough to help. This is the third house we will have remodeled (we're not old enough or been married long enough for that!), but the first one the kids have been old enough to actually help with. It makes it much, much easier. And I feel like a good Mom for working along side of my kids or watching James work with them and teach them valuable skills that will be useful to them if they grow up to be the kind of people who buy ugly things cheap to make them pretty and more valuable... instead of a bad Mom who is neglecting her kids and leaving them to themselves (that brings a mother to shame--never a good thing!) while she is all wrapped up in wall paper and paint.

The question for today is... how badly do I want wood trim in the kitchen??? There is beautiful wood chair rail around the wall in the kitchen, as well as door trim in three places. No wait... four. But the beautiful wood has three coats of paint on it, the last of which is a super thick and goopy high gloss white. That layer peels up easily in some places, but not so much in others. I've considered painting it again, but it's already too thick and goopy for yet another layer. I WANT it stripped down to the natural wood, then stained. That would be sooooo pretty in this room. But that would be sooooo much work, wouldn't it?! I need to Google. James bought some stripper stuff today and we gave it a try. It worked, but it still requires a LOT of time and scraping to get all of the paint--that turns into a sticky goo--off of the wood. I know I would prefer to have the wood clean and paint free... but is it really worth all that time and work when there is so much else throughout the house that needs to be done??? And the follow-up question is... if I delegate that project to my children, is there any way they would actually be capable of properly stripping all of that wood FOR me??? :-)

And now for the most exciting happening of the day. James ripped down a wall. :-) YEAH!!!!! I am sooooooo happy. He was not happy about it, but even he can admit that it was a good decision now that he can see the difference. Actually, it wasn't a whole wall, it was just a portion of the wall between the kitchen and dining room. There was a narrow door way (with a pocket door) to begin with and it just made the kitchen feel all closed in. But now it feels so much more open and roomy from both sides. I wanted the whole wall gone (ha!) but James is always worried about silly little things like structure and supports and stuff like that. ;-) But since there was a pocket door we knew there was no support there anyway, so he took out the "pocket" area and doubled the size of the opening. It's going to be GREAT.

Unfortunately I forgot to take my camera with me today. How did I manage that??? I'll have to take pictures of our new progress next time. I don't think it will be tomorrow though. Got some other stuff to tend to.

We just got the biggest part of the mess cleaned up this evening (the whole kitchen had been about a foot deep in wall paper scraps and sheet rock from the demo job) when the Washburns showed up to take a grand tour of the Monstrosity. :-) It was great fun showing them around and hearing their thoughts and seeing Sister Tammy's face when I kissed the dog. HA! They then treated us to Milo's for dinner, complete with fried lemon pies. YUM. We had such a great time visiting with them. We always do.

On our way home we made an unscheduled pit stop at the house of some serious hoarders and caught them off guard, just for the fun of it. HA! We were only there for a minute or two, but it was quite fun. :-)

And now we're home and glad to be away from the mess of the Monstrosity. I LOVE IT that we can trash that house and then come home to a clean one. Well... pretty clean. At least it's not covered in remodeling mess. ;-)