Progress?

I feel like this summer took both an eternity and passed without actually taking up any time. The heat lasted forever, the months themselves flew right by. Between going back and forth to Colorado, going to visit the family in Canada, Natalie coming into the country for a road trip and the ridiculous kidney infection in the middle I'm not sure what happened. Anyway, it's September already and I'm clearly behind on my blogging (and everything else in my life).

The master bedroom is as good as it's going to get for a while, simply because I don't want to put the last bit of bamboo floor down before I do the master bath. I'd then have to carry tiles, floor boards, mortar, etc... over the bamboo and that just sounds like it's inviting trouble. Essentially that means it isn't going to be done any time soon. I do think it will look good though - check out the picture above! Obviously that door isn't going to stay mushed-pea green, that was the old color. Because we all love mushed-pea green, especially with a renaissance angel theme. I wish I was making this up, but that's really what they had in the master bedroom and master bath. Lovely.

The master bath has become the non-room. I just pretend it doesn't exist, which seems to work well for me. And for giggles, because I don't have enough of those, I tore up the downstairs bathroom too. Funny right? Right? Yeah. Retrospectively I'm not so sure about it either. It's just that the creepy seashell motif was really starting to get under my skin. In any case, it is now without popcorn ceiling, toilet, or really any identifying feature of a bathroom.

I'm thinking of painting it a dark green. Maybe? I'd like it to loosely coordinate with the living room, which currently has a warm brown, deep red, and sage green thing happening. Of course dark green in that little tiny room might make people feel like they're peeing in a confessional, which could be uncomfortable. Actually, I could go with that and pretend it's a deliberate poetic statement. It's not, but nobody has to know that I'm not being hugely ironic. In reality, I just like green.

Etching Concrete

The concrete saga is never-ending. It really feels like it's been weeks of crawling around scraping little bits of stuff off of the floor - paint, ceiling texture, wall stuff, glue, god only knows what else. The good news is that yesterday we finally reached the stage where we felt like we could etch it to get ready for staining.

Staining the floor is the next major milestone simply because once I have a floor, I can actually get my furniture out of storage and start living like an almost-normal person. With chairs and things. Major step forward in Amy's world.

As it turns out, etching the concrete is really really fun. You get all kitted up in what feels like a hazmat suit - wellies (rubber boots, for those of you who haven't the foggiest what I'm talking about), rubber gloves, body condom if you happen to have one lying around. Then, you pour acid all over the floor and scrub it around with stiff broom. Then the fun really begins. Now you bring the garden hose inside your living room, which defies any and all sense of normalcy, Essentially then you spend the rest of the day hosing water onto your living room floor and squeegeeing it out the back door with a giant squeegee.

In all, there is something really satisfying about spraying out your house with a garden hose. I can't quite put my finger on it, but I think it satisfies some internal joy in doing-what-I'm-not-supposed-to. Maybe that's it. Of course it could just be the ridiculousness of it all, or the opportunity to wear wellies. Who knows?

After the car-wash-style etching, then came the concrete primer, which was considerably less fun. Picture spreading watered-down elmer's glue all over the floor - I'm relatively sure I've never been so sticky in my whole life. Also had a minor panic incident this morning when I came downstairs to find the floor all streaky from the nonsense primer. Damn damn. Mom and dad managed to calm me down by pointing out that it's probably just not quite dry in some areas and so those areas look darker, not that my floor is forever going to look like a streaky mess. At least we're hoping that's what's happening. In truth, none of us have done this before so really, they could be making this all up. The best news is that if it looks absolutely aweful, we can always just paint over it with a solid color and forget about the stain entirely.

Pictures of dirt!

So - I know the garden just looks like dirt right now - but there are seeds in there! And onions! More than I care to count actually... I'm going to be overrun with spinach, onions, lettuce, radishes and peas. Who's coming over to help me eat everything?

The living room is starting to look like a real room, and don't worry Jan - it isn't edged around the fireplace yet. I'm not going to leave it looking like that. :)

Best Offer I've Had All Year!

So - with my actual work, you know, the kind where I make money, I've had a ridiculously short-deadlined writing project that is amounting to about 20 pages, theoretically comprehensible, per week. Hence the house has been moved to "back-burner" status and I'm getting in about one good work day per week.

Essentially this means I'm going to be camping out in a partially finished house for quite some time. I'll learn to love plastic sheeting and construction dust. I will - I'm sure. Mom and dad were kind enough to come in on my designated house day this week and help with the ridiculously tedious, boring, uninspiring work of patching and painting the closets in the master bath. Wheeee! I know, I know. It is hard not to envy us right now, no? The worst part is I don't even have anything funny to say about it, it really is as dull as it sounds.

In better news, I received the most compelling offer I think I've ever had, and if not ever, then certainly it's the best offer of 2009. Some local lawn company papered my house with totally reasonable lawn-mowing rates, and an intriguing add-on service as pictured above. Bold as brass, right out there in the open. Isn't it wonderful to live in such a progressive society that lonely female homeowners can have such a valuable service, delivered with discretion to their home, for a small weekly fee? Not only that, they take all major credit cards. It's like Manna from heaven. :)

The merit of reading instructions.

So, hypothetically speaking, if one were to discover a minor swamp in the bottom of the dishwasher because it has suddenly ceased to drain, should one:

a) shake one's fist and swear like a sailor?
b) disassemble the awkward-to-reach bottom/filter/outlet of the dishwasher?
c) check to make sure the drainage hose actually drains somewhere?
d) all of the above?

Um... So I chose D. Wasn't the right answer, but I chose D.

I took apart, in the smelly swamp of stale dishwasher water, all of the filter-bits and cleaned them to make sure water could drain out. I can not emphasize enough the disgustingness of this job - the filter had what looked like a rubberized mold layer on the bottom that jammed up all the little holes. Given the mold-plug over the filter, I sensed victory and ran the dishwasher again. Alas, no drainage except onto the floor where it over-filled.

Dad had the genius idea of disconnecting the outflow hose that drains into the garbage disposal and, like magic, the disconnected hose drained just fine into a bucket under the sink. That sent us scurrying around the house trying to find the garbage-disposal instructions to see what went wrong (they were in a baggie on the low shelf hidden behind my car in the garage. Obviously. Where else would they be?).

In the Troubleshooting Guide we find...
Problem: Dishwasher flooding
Possible Cause: Knockout drain plug still in place.
Solution: Fire the idiot that didn't read the instructions. Seriously.

No - actually it said Insert screwdriver in knockout plug and tap with hammer. But I'm sure they were thinking fire the idiot...

So, having knocked out the knockout drain plug, and reassembled the red-herring filters at the bottom of the dishwasher, I felt a fit of cleanliness come over me and sprayed out the inside of the dishwasher with "Awesome Orange" - the off-brand orange oil cleaner to 'really do the job right'. Huh.

After this, the dishwasher was spic and span and we gave it a test run.

This is when it turns into an "I Love Lucy" episode. Apparently "Awesome Orange" foams like mad, hence creating the foam-overflow river in my kitchen. The saddest part is, this is not the first time I've had the foam thing happen, but I'm not telling the other story.

So anyway, dad and I had to bale out the foam-filled dishwasher a few times throughout the cycle and then run it again to clean the thing out. After that, we stopped for lunch because by this point we'd frittered away the entire morning with the only productive part (the knockout drain) having taken all of 5 minutes. Best quote of the day happened when I asked dad if he wanted tea - he said, in a serious, slightly grim voice "Tea? We should be drinking rum."

The afternoon, however, was actually productive - we took up the laminate flooring that was slapped together over half of the living room (I'm assuming this was a well-intentioned attempt at making the house more attractive to buyers). Then we scraped the gross, smoke-stained popcorn ceiling off of the entire downstairs except for the kitchen. The kitchen, in a bold interior design move, was completely hermetically sealed with plastic like some freakish crime scene. Granted, it kept the kitchen clean, but it's kind of creepy now that it's past sundown.

The only bad part is that I just discovered this little piece that's supposed to go under the bottom-most filter in the dishwasher sitting on my kitchen counter, innocently, as though it's supposed to be there... Damn.

Acoustic Irony

What is that saying about the road to hell? Paved with good intentions I believe. Well, by the looks of things I've managed to lay a few stones myself. In an effort to do the house 'the right way' I've been attempting to go the extra distance in terms of the little perks of a house, like acoustic barriers.

In a two story house with all bamboo (eventually) floors upstairs the whole echo/elephant-walking-noise issue comes into play. In a well-meant effort to reduce this effect, I spent several hundred dollars and a very tense couple of hours with my father attempting to make these huge foam rolls of acoustic under-padding fit the first room we bambooed. *Please excuse this new addition of the verb 'to bamboo' into the english language. I'm pretty sure that's the correct conjugation - to bamboo, bambooed, bambooing, perhaps bambooer? Bambooee? Oooooh I like that one.*

As it turns out, this accoustic barrior seems to have had the opposite effect we were hoping for. Apparently the foamy-ness of the acoustic stuff makes it very springy and hence difficult to nail the bamboo through with any solidity. So, as you walk in the first room, in spite of the effort we took to secure the sub-floor, the bamboo planks shift and creak.

In an experimental fashion I've begun the second bedroom with no underpad at all, which does seem to cut down on the shifting and creaking (and, in a happy coincidence, the cost as well). My recent visitor, Reverand Phil (who looks like a David to me, and so in my head is Rev. David) was kind enough to say that his wood floor creaked at first, but that effect reduced as it 'settled in'. So I maintain some hope that my floor is just 'settling' and not actually bouncing on the foamy thing. Granted it's a small hope, but hope none the less.

Attached is the picture of the meager progress I've made on the second bedroom. I have to admit I'm not looking forward to doing the floor in the master bedroom because there is just so much of it. Eek!

The Groutmare

I think I got my just desserts for bragging about how easy it was to lay the slate tile in the bathroom. It was easy to stick it to the floor - it has not been what I (or my knees) would call easy to make it actually look like a floor. Enter the groutmare.

Remember mud pies when you were a kid? The pure unadulterated joy that you got out of making just the right texture mud to make a pie-ish thing that you could then smash, throw or smear nicely on the front of your outfit (or, if you were that kid, eat.) Yeah. They're still fun as an adult. Mixing grout is about like that - you get it to mud pie texture, then have a coffee break because it needs to rest or rise or settle or whatever it is that grout needs to do. So far, so good.

Given how enamored I am of my slate tiles, I was a little scared of the grout at first but figured that it's kind of a necessary step, so I should get on with it. Essentially you glop the mud/grout on the floor then use a rubber thingy to shove (through the clever application of brute force) the grout into all the little gaps between the tiles. Joey, my local hardware store flooring guy informed me, with some measure of hilarity, that it would be great for building my "Popeye forearms." Thanks Joey. Now not only am I the weirdo girl who is fixing up her house, I'm the girl with "Popeye forearms" too. At this point I might just as well grow a full handlebar mustache and beer belly for all the attractive feminine energy I'm exuding.

Anyway, forearms aside, you essentially spend a few hours on your knees jamming this mud into the spaces, while becoming liberally coated yourself. Then you spend the next few hours alternately sponging the floor, and cleaning the sponge all the while cursing the mud pie mixture because a) it won't stick where it should and b) won't come off where you want it to. Essentially the mud mixture creates a thin, unattractive, incredibly tenacious film on top of the tiles, but peels right out of the spaces. The film, as it turns out, takes roughly 90 (and counting) rounds of scrubbing to come off, but I've still got streaks so I'll keep you posted.

GROUTMARE!!!

I'm convinced this is the reason that the word "grout" sounds like a disease. Like one could get a raging case of the grout, or perhaps cause a scandal - i.e. 'He seemed so perfect until I found out about the grout!' It should come with a rash and some hand-wipes.

Not only that, the grout that I chose is a deep charcoal grey - really rather lovely with the slate, but not so good under my fingernails and in all the little teeny lines on my palms, knuckles and hands in general. My hands looks like B-movie zombie hands. I'm getting more attractive by the moment - Popeye muscles and zombie hands. Now all I need is a hump on my back and maybe fangs and I'll be the movie-monster-hybrid girl. The best part is that due to the setting grout, I can't use the shower in that bathroom for another 24 hours, which means that I'm stuck in the bathroom without a functional shower. I have a tub, but it's not helping the zombie hands. Maybe next time I should hire someone else to do the grout part...

Slate floor and on-sale turkey...

So, Thanksgiving was fun. I went to my family's house and took a WHOLE DAY off from working on the house. Novelty! In the true spirit of thanksgiving, we had pot-roast with Yorkshire puddings and chocolate mousse and then watched National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. God I love a traditional holiday celebration.

Of course, then the work began. The weekend finally came to tile the guest bathroom, which has been intimidating me for a while now. Actually, the whole thing worked like a charm. I was expecting the slate to be a nightmare to work with, but our little wet saw worked wonders and the slate was more durable than I'd thought. The only real problem is that slate tiles aren't actually uniform in their thickness, so some sit up a little higher than others. The goal is to pound the high ones lower into the mortar with a rubber mallet (ooooooh that's a fun toy) but I don't seem to be very good at that part.

So essentially I have a very lovely, slightly uneven but good-feeling-on-the-feet tile floor. It still has to be sealed and grouted and all of that, but at least it's stuck down. Yipee!!! This means I'm one step closer to having a nice bedroom to sleep and a nice bathroom to get clean - what a luxury! Now if we can just stop every faucet in the house from dripping...

In a totally random whim at the grocery store I found free-range hormone/antibiotic/scary-chemical-free turkey for ridiculously cheap after the actual thanksgiving rush died down, so I cooked my very first turkey (easy as pie. Easier actually.) while I was putting down the slate. Move over Martha Stewart - I'm gaining ground.

Housekeeping???

Oooooooookaaaay.

Reality is starting to hit. My master bathroom (roughly the size of my old apartment) is coated in fine white powder as a result of sanding the ceiling. My guest bath has a newly-installed cement board floor, which is to be followed by slate in short order, but currently it's kind of gritty/crumbly/grainy mess. The areas that have been purged of vinyl tile (mostly essential-to-walk-on-toilet-surrounding-areas) are sticky and there are sticky footprints all over the floor close-by. The paint, which isn't supposed to be on my cement floor in the first place, chips and flakes and sticks to things. I don't have any bathrooms that have doors. Generally I can't touch any surface in my house without attracting some type of residue.

I need another toilet to smash.

The double-edged sword of home renovations seems to be that 99% of every job is preparing for the actual job to happen. It's tiring and tedious, mostly because you don't really see any finished product for ages. The great thing about it is that it forces you to finish the project because even when you're 90% done, it still looks as bad as (or worse than) it did when you started. It's that last little bit that gives you all of the rewards. A lot like giving birth really, hours and hours of backbreaking labor involving sweat, muck and general unpleasantness for that final, rewarding push. Of course, having never had kids, this is only a loose analogy. Or maybe it's more like sex for a man? All that tedious foreplay for the five second pay-off? But then, I've never been a man having sex either...

I think tomorrow I'm going to putz around and do fun things, like attaching doorknobs and trying out paint samples and maybe seeing what's in the 20-odd paint cans left in the awesome little crawl-space under the stairs. The crawl-space is currently storage, but I'm so tempted to make a little Amy-sized cushion-lined nook off of the living-room that I could curl up in to read. But who other than me wants a nook like that? For that matter, who other than me would fit in a nook like that? But the paint cans are the project closer at hand, and for whatever reason rummaging through other people's old junk is fun to me - probably why I like garage sales and flea markets and creepy old abandoned houses. The hopeless optimist in me waiting to unearth treasure (same reason I keep dating. Ha!)

One Room Done!!!!

I am feeling especially celebratory, as one room of the house is actually done. DONE!!! And it looks spectacular, if I do say so myself. The bamboo is in, the walls are painted, the ceiling is smooth as a baby's bottom. This means I have one clean, lovely room to live in while I slog about in the muck that is the rest of the house.

Actually, this whole week has been rather a success - one scary old toilet that didn't really flush has been replaced with a fancy new low-water-use version. The garbage disposal that shook the counter when it was turned on and made a noise like a Harley Davidson has been replaced with a quiet efficient disposal (and by me alone, I might add.) The bathroom has been mostly painted, now it just needs a floor... All in all I'm feeling rather smug and self-important like the Shera (SheRa? She-Ra? You know - female version of He-Man complete with bulging muscles and fake breasts) of home repair. She-repair maybe?

I also got to have the uniquely satisfying experience of smashing the old, non-flushing toilet into tiny little bits with a hammer, so as to be able to fit it in the trash bin. I would highly suggest this as an inexpensive and rather more fun alternative to therapy. Also, just in case you too have a non-flushing toilet, check your bathroom for obvious missing pieces such as, for instance, the toilet paper roll holder. There is a possibility that this missing item may indeed be lodged in the U-bend of the toilet, only to be discovered via toilet-smashing therapy. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

Frustration!!!

So I have to say that camping out in my own house is kind of an adventure - at least it's an adventure when I'm feeling well. It's a nuisance when I'm not. These last couple of days I've had either a head cold or some kind of toxic-paint-fume-induced malaise. Either way, I haven't felt like my normal spry self. Just kind of tired with a stuffy head. Not enough to do anything about, just enough to want a hot bath and chicken soup. A real bed wouldn't hurt either.

Eric came over one evening to help me sand and prime the ceilings, which was fun. Basically I was stuck three rungs up a ladder, while he stood, feet flat, and sanded the ceiling. I suppose it's easier if you're 6'4" and long-limbed. He's planted himself firmly on my list of people to call for help in high places.

Mom and Dad came in on Friday for the much-anticipated start of the bamboo flooring project. I rented a nailer that basically operates like the strong-man contest at the fair. Once you position the nailer, you whack the plunger with a rubber mallet (I kid you not) and then, like magic, your nail is secure in your board without any damage to the surface. At least that's how the tool rental guy billed it. I had hopes for one complete room of bamboo floors - those hopes were only beginning to wane when, by noon, we barely had the underlayment down. Then, when we started into the ridiculous nailing process, all hope was lost.

Basically, in the 10 or so hours my parents were here helping, we managed to secure three rows of boards. Three!! I think Aunt Lyn was right when she said she'd clear her calender in 2012 for the housewarming. The first row was naturally tedious because it's too close to the wall to use the nailer, so you have to pre-drill and nail all of the boards (naturally at awkward angles, with unnaturally thin nails). Once we got far enough away from the wall we could use the magic nailer thingy and had hopes of just speeding through the floor with ease. Ha! Not so much.

As it turns out, only a strong-man from the fair could actually use the nailer correctly - You really have to beat the hell out of the thing to get it to work, but then if you hit it too hard (not a danger for me, but my father had some trouble) then the nail mangles the board. Grrrrr. Clearly this is not the right tool for the job. I can't believe I have almost a thousand square feet to put down in bamboo... Maybe carpets aren't so bad after all.

The farting fish and barbieflesh

Among the various treasures left in the house, my favorite by far has to be the farting fish shower curtain. It's even better than the hand-glued, shell-encrusted bathroom light. Also better than the back scratcher that was (mysteriously) on the roof. The farting fish shower curtain is truly a work of art. It's designed in such a way that it could have been a terrible accident, or it could be subtle humor at it's best. I'd love to think that the last people who lived here were actually comic genius - I don't think I can keep it up for very long, but I would love to think that.

Jan and Marg, who are my favorite people on earth at the moment, came over and helped me paint on a Saturday night as if they had nothing better to do (bless their hearts!) so I actually have one room that looks almost like a real room! With the exception of the fact that it's been painted a color that has been lovingly renamed "barbie flesh." It looked very neutral on the sample, it looks pretty damn pink on the walls. Sigh. Everyone's been vastly optimistic, saying things like "furniture will really change that color - make it look less... well... more, um..." Yeah. Less like barbieflesh. I know.

Dad took me on the unfortunate floor-buying errand today as his Forrester will hold more than my Civic. It is a sad day when your near-70 year old father is trying to protect your youthful back by moving the 50lb boxes of tile himself. I will feel sooooooo guilty if he herniates anything. Of course Mom helped dig-in the 5 hydrangeas that I decided to plant along the back porch, so I'm not exactly sparing any of my loved-ones the agony of renovations. The good news is that now we have enough bamboo to do the floor in the barbieflesh room, and enough slate to do the floor in the farting fish bathroom so some time in the foreseeable future I may actually have a room to sleep in and a room to get clean in. Luxury!

As an Aside, my Aunt Lyn suggested that the house, in light of the omen, be renamed "One Flew Into the Cookoo's Nest." I'm pretty sure she's on to something...

Names and Omens

I am, lets face it, a chronic namer of things. Most of the inanimate objects I surround myself with on a daily basis have names. I don't mean words that describe them to others (like "car" for example) I mean personal names. Why? I don't know. I smell everything too - lets just call these personal eccentricities.

In keeping with this trend, I feel my house needs a name and as I've spent a little time here I think I'm learning the personality of the place. It's odd - the people who lived here before me were nothing if not consistent. The entire house was completely unkempt. It's filthy, unmaintained and in most cases broken or damaged in some way. Every wall either is dirty or looks dirty because the paint is so old it's yellowed. Things are cracked, chipped and generally in disrepair. There is, of course, one highly notable exception.

The half bath downstairs is mysteriously put-together. It looks, contrary to what the rest of the house would lead you to believe, like someone cares. Not only that, it looks as though they spent time caring. In fact - they did spend a tremendous amount of time caring because they hand painted (HAND PAINTED!) a ridiculous shell/seaweed/starfish motif border waist-high around the room. It's a small room, and I'm not averse to work, but I'm pretty sure you couldn't pay me enough to hand paint that thing. Anyway, I digress. The room is decorated in every possible way with shells - they're stuck to the light fixture (don't ask), there are shell knobs on the doors, there are even little shells just kind of hanging around in there. This leads me back to the name - I'm thinking I'm calling it The Shell House. More of a title than a name really, but it suits.

There is a nice little double meaning here as well given that I do feel like I'm working with the shell of a house and making it into what I want it to be. I feel also that the house is an outer example of an inner process that I'm going through - a reflection, if you will. Also I like that it makes me think of a hermit crab or something similar that might carry it's home with it. Sigh. I love it when it all comes together like that.

On a totally different and slightly more random note, I feel I've been given some kind of sign or omen, not that I have the faintest idea what it means, but still it felt significant. I was in the garage a couple of days ago when a little pair of birds - fat birds like wrens or something similar - flew into the garage. They sat on the workbench for a minute chittering to each other and then flew into the house. They flew around downstairs, one flew through the vents to the upstairs, and they both found their way out through windows that had been left open to help with the paint fume asphyxiation factor. So - what does this mean? Is it good luck? Bad luck? Does it mean my vents now have bird poop in them? What? What?

Overload... Or, 'terminal painting.'

I think reality is starting to sink in. I've started painting, which seems like a simple enough job. Really it's at the bottom of the list of difficult things to do. Not a lot of skill, just repetitive motion and fumes. Not even as messy as the popcorn ceilings. And yet, I find myself daunted by the enormity of the paint job. Always before when I've painted it's been small rooms, single walls, minor projects. With this house I can paint all day and go to sleep with the knowledge that there is only going to be another like that coming, and others after that.

The paint is just the beginning. With everything it seems that the doing of the thing itself is simple, but preparing the house for the doing of the thing is ridiculous and complex. Putting down the floors, for example, requires tightening the sub-floors, putting new screws into the squeaky bits, filling holes, leveling (clearly the scariest bit of all), putting down underlayment and THEN you can start actually putting the bamboo. The bamboo itself is like a minor finishing step in the process. It seems everything in the house is that way.

Not only that - It's dawned on me that I'm going to be camping in my living room for a long time. Many moons. And my damn air mattress sighed it's last sigh last night and I woke this morning on concrete. Grrrr. Nothing like a good swift dose of reality to shake things up a bit.

Is this when someone is supposed to remind me that I am getting what I asked for?

In better news, my cat (Cat) found a cupboard that he has settled into in my bedroom. Historically he always claims one cupboard wherever we live, and his choice has been made. He's also found a nemesis in the fat squirrel who lives in the neighbor's tree - they've developed a morning routine of angrily chattering at eachother whilst maintaining a safe distance.

All Hallows Eve...

It has recently occurred to me that my life *may* be a little abnormal at the moment. Most people, when they roll out of their sleeping bag on their living room floor Halloween morning, probably don't say: 'Damn. Halloween. I think I have plans. I was really hoping to screw down the squeaky bits in my floor.'

Nor, truth be told, do they try to think of a costume that conveniently works in the wall texturizing spray that they can't quite get out of their hair. Maybe 'construction zombie'? I wouldn't even have to change my clothes. Convenient!

Ah the joys of being different. The good news is that I think my body is finally figuring out how to cope with constant physical labor, which means that right now only my back and neck hurt, as opposed to every inch of me. The back and neck pain is, I believe, directly caused by priming the ceiling - I don't think there is a body born that can hold it's arms up above it's head and stare, open mouthed, at the ceiling for an hour without being a little creaky for the next couple of days. I feel justified in this back pain. Thank all the angels and seraphims that I share an office with one of the best Chiropractors in town - Dr. Victor has been fixing the kinks regularly and only occasionally muttering at me about taking care of my body. He's a saint.

So - for Halloween,the girls and I are (naturally) going to Oktoberfest in New Bronfels to eat bratwurst and drink beer and maybe throw in the occasional deep fried oreo. That's what you're supposed to do on Halloween right? Right?

Oh. My. God.

If any of your friends tell you that they're going to buy and remodel a house, and that they've never done that before then please pass along these well chosen words of advice. YOU ARE INSANE - GO TO THE MOVIES IN YOUR FREE TIME LIKE A NORMAL PERSON. I hurt everywhere. Everywhere. I hurt in places that I didn't know had muscles.


We closed Wednesday and three agents, 57 signatures, two trees worth of paper and one fire alarm later, I became the proud owner of one helluva house. Friday my parents and I actually came over with a load of tools, grungy clothes, patio furniture (currently the only furniture) and an air mattress and settled in to work.

Here was our to-do list over the weekend:
1. Fix the leak under the sink
2. Fix the outspout from the waterheater as it doesn't actually drain outside the house but rather directly into the wall (clever).
3. Remove satelite dish and accompanying mile or so of thick black wire which is strung carefully over every surface of the house.
4. Patch holes in attic to protect from "varmints" (my inspector actually said the word "varmints" in a sentence)
5. Patch holes in screens

Here's what we actually did:
1. Located the leak, which is actually from the dishwasher, which we are learning is made entirely from irreplaceable parts. It is located, but not fixed.
2. Detached half of the wire from the satellite dish, and pulled it out of the drilled holes in the siding and walls. The actual dish itself required different tools than I had while I was on the roof, so I left the roof and then forgot about the dish. Hmmm.
3. Patched for varmints. Wouldn't want any varmints.
4. Ripped the carpet off the stairs - potentially the most vile and repulsive of all activities. Never again will I have carpet in a house. I don't think I can bear to look at other people's carpet. Do you know what's under there? Do you? The dirt from under the carpet weighed more than the carpet itself. Completely repulsive.
5. Vented frustrations with a crobar on all those damn little spikey things that they use around carpet edges to fasten them down. There are still miles of them, but at least they're off the stairs and out of the living room.
6. De-popcorned not one but two ceilings. TWO! This is potentially the second most disgusting job ever because first you spray everything with water, liberally coating yourself in the process, then you scrape a thick layer of goo that smells like a beverage room from a motel from the 1950s off the ceiling directly on to your person. Repeat.

Essentially we worked all weekend, managed to inflame or somehow aggravate every muscle in our collective bodies, and completed one out of five of our goal tasks. Awesome. I'm going to curl up on my air mattress in my sleeping bag and pretend I'm at the Hilton.

Hysterical displacement activities.

At this moment, I am unable to get into the house to start (and subsequently become frustrated with) my construction projects. Instead I have to drum up vaguely-related projects to fill the time constructively (ha ha! Constructive construction projects. Clearly didn't study English in school.) My only other option would have been drinking myself into a stupor to waylay the anxiety.

To pass the time, I have refinished my parent's old set of patio furniture, rebuilt a little hexagonal table that I found in the trash about a year ago, and gone on a serious garage sale-ing trip. Actually, the garage-sale gods have been good to me, providing me with a charming wheelbarrow ($3), a shovel ($4), a doorknob and cute little outdoor light fixture (combined $1), a laser level ($2 but only because I felt kind of sorry for the family selling it so didn't argue), and a fold-up wire shelf for plants etc... ($4). Also two lovely baby sago palms ($0.50) and a spade ($0.50). Grand total $15!! Not to mention the giant brandy snifter that mom found to replace the one she broke (then cunningly fixed with duct tape - no one would ever notice!) and the two necklaces that Marg bought and broke within the span of two hours. Of course there is the minor detail of the $9.99 for minwax (to protect shovel and wheelbarrow handles), the $4.99 package of batteries for the laser level, the $7.99 for spray rust-oleum paint for the light and the yet-to-be-determined price of replacement screw thingies to hold the globe in the light fixture. Huh.

In any case, I'm feeling quite smug about the rebuilding of the little hexagonal table. It was a little loose and wobbly-jointed, so I not only re-glued everything, I also fashioned little braces for the part where the legs join to the top. Truth be told, they are braces of a silly size for the table but what they lack in grace, they more than make-up for in enthusiasm. I'm relatively sure I could now run over the table with little to no appreciable damage. Clearly, a rebuilder of fine furnishings I am not, but I'll be damned if my table will be susceptible to anything less than nuclear detonation. For reference, see picture.

What am I doing???

So - I have spent the last two hours trying to figure out what is going on with the economy and if this is, in fact, the worst time to buy a house. Or, for the sake of argument, if I'm secretly cashing in on something that everyone else is missing. Mostly I think we're just trying to reassure ourselves that the sky is not actually falling as fast as the stock market.

The bottom line is that I've fallen head-over-heels for a very ugly house. It's sea-foam green. That might make sense if the house were on Fire Island or in Boca Raton, or if I was 84. One of my friends tried to reassure me with "I like it, it's... beachy." Right - except that there's no ocean for 232 miles - I googled it. I don't think we have fair claim to "beachy." Aside from the sea-foam, it has popcorn ceilings with water stains, holes in the walls, an AC duct system that would do nicely in a 1974 double-wide and carpet that has been there since the dawn of time complete with wrinkles to prove it. The kitchen is an insane combo of white cupboards with forest green "trim" (read: faux-trim created with the clever, and somewhat obvious, application of paint), fake "wood" counters and peeling vinyl tile. Also a mysterious and inexplicable drop ceiling - only over the kitchen, and for no apparent reason.

I've fallen in love with this ugly house and really want to fix it up myself. To work on it with my own hands and turn it into something that I can love and something that shows a little bit of me. I work all day, but at the end of the day there isn't really anything physical to show for it, so perhaps this is compensation for the lack? All I know is that all of the logical arguments for why I shouldn't do this seem to be sliding away with alarming ease. All of those minor details like utter lack of construction ability and experience, no actual budget for it and the house itself being far too big, not to mention the sheer number of hours needed seem not to matter so much right now.

I'm assuming this is going to be a comedy of errors, and for that reason I'm just going ahead and setting up the blog so that we don't have to go back and write about everything in retrospect. I can just post it as it's happening - in it's full glory. Besides, if Jan and Marg can buy a fixer and do it themselves, then damn it I can too.