As many of you know, we just recently bought a house, which many of these posts will probably refer to for at least the next six months or so, as it needs a great deal of work done to it on the inside.
We are thrilled for a variety of reasons (a house! more space! great location! a little garden! a porch! windows! a writing room! and and and...) and are extremely grateful. Please keep this deep gratitude in mind as I disperse my impending humor.
Let it be said that when you buy a house that has a great deal of wood paneling in its interior, that wood paneling might be something more than an aesthetic choice from the 1970's. It might be hiding some things.
Same goes for carpeting. And okay, wallpaper as well.
We now spend all of our weekends and any time after work digging into the awesome (and at times intimidating) project of changing this house into something we love and reflects our taste, and fixing the bits that aren't quite right, and so on.
Every day (or night) (or late night) (or late late night...you get the point) that we are there, pulling up carpet tacks or wearing respirators for the eighth hour while pulling down plaster I think of the calm and knowing look on our (awesome) realtor's face when, a few months ago, we first saw the house and I said, "Oh I love it! We'll totally just pull down the dropped ceilings, rip out the carpeting, and you know, get rid of all that wood paneling. And put in some wood floors. This place is SO great!"
The key word that I said which better describes our realtor's barely flickering poker face was, "just".
He could see the potential, as could we, and when you are standing next to some peeling wallpaper that you can't touch until you own it, "just" seems to sum it all up. If you could just peel that bit of wallpaper, the whole dream would come true, "just" after "just" after "just" after "just".
Fortunately, we were able to buy the place, and yes, we did run in and tear down (lots of ) wallpaper pretty much the first second we got in there. And the second second. And hours after that. There is (still) a lot of wallpaper in this house and I've been steaming and scraping since that first day.
Where we are right now, a few weeks in, is in the truth that our realtor must have known having been through a similar purchase and re-hab himself: there is no "just". This is a lot of work.
No-duh! You say. Yeah yeah yeah... no-frickin duh.
Did I mention that when I rub my finger tips together they make the noise that two pieces of sandpaper would make? Or that when I washed my hair tonight I had a panicky moment that the dust from the old horsehair plaster was actually paste that was regaining its sticky-power as it combined with the hot water from the shower and matting my hair into human-horse-hair-plaster-paste? Or that Ryan and I have embraced the convenience of frozen pizzas to such a disgraceful point that I have to remind myself that Biggie Smalls probably had the same diet when he was working on his first album and yeah, he got famous but he was also huge and now he's dead?
Let me just say, the house is really great, it really really really really really really really is. I totally love it.
And I have a lot of wood paneling shrapnel that you can have for free if you want to come and get it.
And thirty-odd trash bags of thick plaster and wall paper that are sitting in a future bedroom. You can have that too.
Offer ends in a few days after I research and decide on the best dumpster company. Which will allow me to start throwing things out the second floor window and hear them crash satisfyingly into the dumpster below!
It's the small satisfactions that make the bigger project feel more like lots of "just" moments.
Let it be known here that I have grown addicted to pulling out carpet staples with pliers.
Such a freakish enjoyment factor makes the following question and answer scenario real:
"What did you do this weekend?"
"Oh, I just removed a bunch of carpeting, pulled out all those little staples they use to fix it into the floor, you know, just working on the house...what did you do?"
I will describe the clawhand that results from such work in a future post.
Thanks for reading!
xx~Amy
We are thrilled for a variety of reasons (a house! more space! great location! a little garden! a porch! windows! a writing room! and and and...) and are extremely grateful. Please keep this deep gratitude in mind as I disperse my impending humor.
Let it be said that when you buy a house that has a great deal of wood paneling in its interior, that wood paneling might be something more than an aesthetic choice from the 1970's. It might be hiding some things.
Same goes for carpeting. And okay, wallpaper as well.
We now spend all of our weekends and any time after work digging into the awesome (and at times intimidating) project of changing this house into something we love and reflects our taste, and fixing the bits that aren't quite right, and so on.
Every day (or night) (or late night) (or late late night...you get the point) that we are there, pulling up carpet tacks or wearing respirators for the eighth hour while pulling down plaster I think of the calm and knowing look on our (awesome) realtor's face when, a few months ago, we first saw the house and I said, "Oh I love it! We'll totally just pull down the dropped ceilings, rip out the carpeting, and you know, get rid of all that wood paneling. And put in some wood floors. This place is SO great!"
The key word that I said which better describes our realtor's barely flickering poker face was, "just".
He could see the potential, as could we, and when you are standing next to some peeling wallpaper that you can't touch until you own it, "just" seems to sum it all up. If you could just peel that bit of wallpaper, the whole dream would come true, "just" after "just" after "just" after "just".
Fortunately, we were able to buy the place, and yes, we did run in and tear down (lots of ) wallpaper pretty much the first second we got in there. And the second second. And hours after that. There is (still) a lot of wallpaper in this house and I've been steaming and scraping since that first day.
Where we are right now, a few weeks in, is in the truth that our realtor must have known having been through a similar purchase and re-hab himself: there is no "just". This is a lot of work.
No-duh! You say. Yeah yeah yeah... no-frickin duh.
Did I mention that when I rub my finger tips together they make the noise that two pieces of sandpaper would make? Or that when I washed my hair tonight I had a panicky moment that the dust from the old horsehair plaster was actually paste that was regaining its sticky-power as it combined with the hot water from the shower and matting my hair into human-horse-hair-plaster-paste? Or that Ryan and I have embraced the convenience of frozen pizzas to such a disgraceful point that I have to remind myself that Biggie Smalls probably had the same diet when he was working on his first album and yeah, he got famous but he was also huge and now he's dead?
Let me just say, the house is really great, it really really really really really really really is. I totally love it.
And I have a lot of wood paneling shrapnel that you can have for free if you want to come and get it.
And thirty-odd trash bags of thick plaster and wall paper that are sitting in a future bedroom. You can have that too.
Offer ends in a few days after I research and decide on the best dumpster company. Which will allow me to start throwing things out the second floor window and hear them crash satisfyingly into the dumpster below!
It's the small satisfactions that make the bigger project feel more like lots of "just" moments.
Let it be known here that I have grown addicted to pulling out carpet staples with pliers.
Such a freakish enjoyment factor makes the following question and answer scenario real:
"What did you do this weekend?"
"Oh, I just removed a bunch of carpeting, pulled out all those little staples they use to fix it into the floor, you know, just working on the house...what did you do?"
I will describe the clawhand that results from such work in a future post.
Thanks for reading!
xx~Amy
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