The Monstrosity: Day Four

But before we get to that, here are the pictures from the day before now that Blogger is willing to cooperate.

First of all, the hole in the wall! (In the APPROPRIATE place, Brother Dustin. Novel idea.) This is taken from the kitchen side. That white door dead ahead leads to the dining room. No, no, no, no, no. It must be OPEN. I don't like feeling all closed in. Especially if I'm working in the kitchen and company is sitting at the table. I should at least be able to hear them--and preferably see them. Sooooo...

Big opening! I know, I know. You're thinking the first picture looked better. That's only because I stripped all of the red wall paper (actually the red paint on top of wall paper that was on top of the first wall paper) and now you see splotchy drywall everywhere. And we yanked out the panels above to fluorescent lights and took the cabinet doors off as well, so everything looks bare and ugly. Stop looking at that! The hole in the wall--you're supposed to be looking at how wonderfully the new and improved hole opens up the whole feel of the room. ~Aaaahhhh~ Isn't that nice?

Same hole, different view. This picture is taken while standing in the corner of the living room, looking through the dining room into the kitchen. As you can see, the Hall of Mirrors was still intact at this point.

Voila! No more mirrors, which is a huge improvement all it's own, but just look at how much this little change opened things up from the living/dining room view! I love it. :-)

I didn't take any pictures of the never-ending project in the half-bath. There just wasn't that much to show.

This is the master bathroom. I was thrilled ~ahem~ to discover that they had put a border on top of another border. Nothing like going from ugly to ugly in one swift glue job. There's still papery residue from the first border that I'm going to have to go work on some more one of these days.

Katie took this picture of me steaming away. Okay, so I was posing in between steams.

Sam was busy working on school while I steamed away, Joe removed switch and socket covers, and Katie apparently played with my camera.

Ah, yes! The best part of the day! The border around the master bedroom just peeled right off. That was glorious, but not a HUGE project so not as rewarding as THIS was. These are the stairs leading down to the laBORatory--I mean basement. The walls were covered in this re-e-e-e-e-e-eally old and nasty wall paper. It needed to go, but anything concerning the basement or the road traveled to get there is LAST on my priority list. If we ever get the rest of the house really and truly finished, then I'll think about doing something with the basement. Maybe. Maybe not. Anyway, for some unknown reason I scraped up a corner of this wall paper and pulled. And pulled. And pulled and pulled--and it just kept coming and coming! Every single sheet came down perfectly whole and intact, leaving the walls READY FOR PAINT! Wa-Hoo!!! Here's Joe, tugging away.

And half buried in filthy, nasty, stained, smelly--but glorious because it came down willingly--wall paper.

Okay. Are you ready for this?

Brace yourselves.

Deep breath...

Here we go--to the foyer...

Meet...






THE PEACOCKS!!!


And more of them...

And some more...

No, wait--there's still more...

This isn't all of them. This is taken from the top of the stairs. The stairs continue down around the corner to the left... and the peacocks continue up high--way, way up high. And you thought I was exaggerating when I said hundreds. I really ought to make the kids count them all next time we go to the house. It would be interesting, though rather disturbing, to know exactly how many peacocks live in this house.

And this is the glorious wall paper that I discovered UNDER the peacocks.

This is what the wall looked like after I had spent a very, very, very long time removing all of the peacocks and getting down to the red and gold...

And though you can't possibly appreciate how unusable it is, this is what the sheetrock looked like after removing the red paper.

~Bleagh~ That was a bleak day a the Monstrosity, let me tell you. Especially because before Brother Hopkins came to the rescue I was still groaning over the possibility of having to spend weeks removing the rest of that wall paper. A-a-a-a-a-a-a-all of that horrible wall paper. ~Shudder~ I haven't mentioned yet how much I love and appreciate Brother Hopkins, have I???
Okay, here we go--Day Four.

Day Four got off to a very slow start. We left the Powells' house a little late to begin with and then we were still sooooo tired. I think I actually dozed off on the way to town. We got to the Monstrosity and I did devotions with the kids and then gladly helped Sam with school for the first hour or so. I was so worn out and had no motivation at all to actually work. But soon enough that luxury ended and I grabbed my steamer and headed upstairs--because I'm DONE steaming downstairs!!! The only thing that remains are the peacocks that Brother Hopkins is going to take care of for me. I love him. :-)

At the top of the stairs is this little... "square." :-) I don't know if there are names for spaces like this in houses or not. It's not really a room, it just has doors--lots and lots of doors. The door on the left leads to Sam's room, the right is Katie's room and the middle is Joe's. He said he wanted a small bedroom so we gave him the long skinny one. Of course I'm just joking--that's a closet. :-) The door to his room on the opposite wall across from Katie's room. There is a bathroom on the left, a bathroom on the right, and the doorway leading to the beautiful little chapel room on the left as well. As I said a lot of doors.

And shortly after this picture was taken, there was no border at the top either. :-) It came down well with the steamer.

Then I headed to Katie's room to attack her border. The print lifted off, then the backing steamed and scraped off easily. Another score for the steamer!

Then it was off to Sam's room. I took a picture there too, but it didn't turn out. His room has wood paneling and somebody had put up a football border on one wall. People who put borders on paneling should be drug out to the street and shot with all of those other people I mentioned the other day.

The steamer took the border down okay, but may have discolored the paneling a little bit. We'll see what we can do with it.

In the meantime, Sam was helping James pull up the flooring from the chapel room. Whoever laid it bought almost enough to finish the room, but not quite. He should probably be drug out to the street... well, you know. The flooring is in good shape so the guys took it apart and we'll use it in a smaller room.

And then... Hahahahahaha! THIS CRACKS ME UP! This is the bathroom on the left, though the other one looks so similar you probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference. The tile is all very nice and we'll be able to just clean it up and keep it. Yeah! Except, of course, those red tiles that somebody slapped on that closet door all crooked like--I pried those off right quick. But look at the choice of colors here--isn't it GREAT? Ha! Black and white tile... and then gold-ish paint with a red and gold border. The gold paint, of course, is over wall paper. Because that's what the previous owners seemed to do best. Layer things. Lots of them. As you can see in the bottom right corner of the picture, beneath the wall paper that was painted gold is ANOTHER wall paper, sort of greenish and swirly.

This means, of course, that there was another wall paper border beneath the first. Lovely, isn't it? You can see the section of red wall that I had scraped the green wall paper off of AFTER I scraped the top wall paper that was painted gold. But wait--that red isn't actually wall! No, that's red paint on TOP of ANOTHER LAYER OF WALL PAPER!!!!! Hahahahahaha!

And look what I found in another corner--yet another border! And see those stripes on the wall, white with blue? That's MORE wall paper! In the end, I discovered at least five wall papers and at least three borders and two colors of paint all on top of each other!!! COULD YOU DIE?! What is WRONG with people?!?!?!? Hahahahahaha!!! I laughed sooooooo hard--even though it meant more work. It's nice to have humor in the midst of work. But wait. It gets even better. :-)

The BOTTOM layer of wall paper that had been painted... There were only a few sections in the room--all narrow strips in the corners--where the paint and other wall paper came off of it so it could be seen, but just look! Hahahahahahaha!!! I LOVE IT! I laughed and laughed and tried to imagine what it must have looked like all over the walls in there. Judging from the findings of my archaeological dig in that room (!), THIS is what was originally installed--to match the black accents in the tile, I suppose. I would have LOVED to have seen these bathrooms like that! Hahahaha! It's so great. As I've been working on the house I just keep picturing what it must have been like when it was built in 1969. I know it's not THAT long ago as houses go, but I wish there was some way I could see pictures of how everything was in the very beginning and how the owners had it decorated. It would be sooooo fun to know all of that. But I'll just settle for this picture of these little scraps of wall paper. I can't look at them without smiling. :-)


So there you have it. The accomplishments and findings of Day Four. :-)

The Cox family came over to take a look at the house in the afternoon that day. It was a welcomed break from the wall paper fiasco in the bathrooms--it was when I still thought the red was the bottom layer. Silly me. The kids played outside and had a blast throwing golf balls around and shooting bb guns. We showed Brother Will and Sister Kristal all around the house and they were real gracious and didn't say, "What is WRONG with you people?! Why in the world did you buy this crazy house???" At least until they got in the car. Ha! Just kidding. :-) It's great to have people come and look at the house. It's so much fun. Though I got to thinking about it and it's probably akin to people going to see the bearded lady at the circus or something. We're just another freak show. "Hey, Mom--can we go look at the Monstrosity today? Huh? Huh? Huh???"

Today we stayed HOME. Got to get caught up on laundry and ironing sometime, right? Of course, the last load of laundry is still in the drier. And I haven't ironed a thing. I think it can wait until next week. I did manage to dye some rice for Sunday School tomorrow (if the craft turns out cute instead of a disaster I'll try to remember to take a picture--before I vacuum up rice from all over the church building... some people are just gluttons for punishment--the houses they purchase can usually be a good indicator...), made a double lasagna and some poppy seed bread for the Mission Dinner after church tomorrow (James made some enchiladas with the last of his frozen green chilies from Hatch), I made some taco soup for lunch/dinner at the Monstrosity on Monday (trying to think ahead so we don't have to eat out!) and got the house pretty clean, to boot. I bathed the Charles last night, so we no longer have a smelly poodle. Poodles should not smell. They should smell clean and be soft and fuzzy so you can cuddle with them. (Yeah, I said that just for you, Sister Tammy. HA!)

I've been wondering about the women out there who work jobs away from the house. How in the world do they actually keep up with a job AND taking care of things around the house? I might be able to manage okay for a time while we're fixing up the house, but as a permanant arrangement?! No way! There's no way you can possibly be gone working hard and wearing yourself out all day long and then come home and put your heart into caring for your home and family. I am so, so, sooooo blessed. I don't want to take it for granted. God is so good to me. And to my family. :-) I'm sooooo thankful!!!