6 Weeks later...

Well, it has been a very long time since we’ve worked on our house, and thus, a very long time since I’ve blogged. Sorry. Life happens.

About six weeks ago, Jaron and I tore up the wood-looking linoleum, which still had remains of the shag carpet that once layered its surface. We took out the bathroom doors so we could reach under and around everything (the bathroom has a door from the hall, from our bedroom, and for a closet—all way too close to each other).  And, we took out the not-so-functional toilet. After too many trips to Lowe’s, we finally agreed on new linoleum and a very manly toilet. We were lucky enough to install both without much mishap.

cleaning the nasty toilet remains

From that Saturday until April 19^th when Jaron finished his last final of Tri 5 (of 10! Woohoo!) we did absolutely nothing on the house. We didn’t even put those doors back in . . .

We did, however, travel to Chicago, I met my grandparents in D.C., and we both became overwhelmed with school and work.

It wasn’t until Jaron’s 3-week break that improvements continued. He’s done a fabulous job so far. We now have new six-panel, white doors for our bathroom (still missing knobs and paint). Our landscaping is trimmed and tidy, our office nearly unpacked and mostly organized, our living room cleared out and nice, and our living room shambled and dirty again…

Our double-door bathroom

the "nice" living room

Thanks to our wonderful friends, the Newmans :)

We had hoped to get the whole room painted this weekend. All the walls are prepped and textured, except this one:

 The unique and tasteful artistry of the wall has caused us only slight grief. We had hoped to simply plaster and texture over the what-looks-to-be-torn-paper-bags effect, but found that it was glued with a water-soluble paste, so it bubbled up with plaster on it. We now have to peel it all off… If only it was that easy. Some spots come of neatly, others are so stuck on there we have to gouge the wall to get a good grip, soak it with water, and scrub with a sponge to clear off the papery remains. Oh joy. We spent two hours on it yesterday afternoon while watching/listening to the King and I. (Apparently one of the only ways I can get Jaron to watch a musical with me is while doing manual labor at the same time. It wards off the femininity, I guess.) Then we spend another 2 hours continuing to scrape after it got cooler outside.

I forgot to mention that our AC doesn’t work. It was 91 degrees yesterday. And very humid.  The repair man comes on Tuesday.

Unfortunately for us, we’re only about half-way done with the paper bag scrape. But, “tomorrow is another day.”