adventures in do it yourself...

as home depot says, "you can do it. we can help." true. absolutely true! but not without some colossal mishaps along the way! lol

ok, to start with, i must confess that math has NEVER been my strong suit. algebra, aced that one with a breeze, but....other than that - not so much. specifically geometry - man, that was hard. i could NOT wrap my head around that AT ALL. it didn't help that i was so OVER it in just a few weeks and developed a "when am i EVER going to need THIS information?!?!" attitude about it! well...apparently DO IT YOURSELF HOME OWNERS need geometry.

major things on the fix-it list from the realtor - painting & flooring. moving junk & landscaping was the rest of it, but it was seriously almost ALL painting & flooring. (oh goody - i get shivers just thinking about the paint - the smell STILL burns my nose! lol) how much paint to buy? how much flooring to buy? don't forget to get extras, in case they run out of what you need. you can ALWAYS take back what you don't need. ....except that paint they mixed for you. :S

so, we're calculating our supply list, and cameron's a math WIZ! i mean he can seriously be like "what's 27 & 3/4 + 38 & 3/8?" of course, i look at him like he's from mars, because he KNOWS that i can't do math like THAT...especially without a calculator! (pencil & paper, yes....in my head? NO!) so he then proceeds to calculate the answer - IN HIS HEAD!!!!! :o (with the CORRECT answer, i might add!) but, apparently he struggled with geometry in school too. off to home depot we go.

so excited, so full of anticipation about all the work we're gonna do to the house to make it all pretty to sell it. so focused & determined. so optimistic. so NOT expecting things to go the way they do. we buy all our paint, paint supplies - all of our vinyl & laminate flooring. (let me interject here that this was totally NOT our only trip to home depot! to say that ALL of the employees know us by NAME now might be underestimating it a little bit...) then we head back home to get busy.

painting the outside of the house is numero uno on the list. it's a big job, and desperately needs to be done. we know there's a TON of painting left to do, so we try to pace ourselves. we hired a friend from church to come help us with the painting. day 1 - he doesn't show. has to take a friend somewhere. ok, no biggie....we'll get started & do what we can....he says he'll be here in the morning. so we paint the actual HOUSE on the first day. spent the better part of 11 hrs in the sun (the mojave desert sun, mind you! lol) getting the house finished. TONS of work, but totally worth it. we can SO do this!

day 2 is for the trim on the house. painter guys working on the house next door said that's the easy part & goes real quick. friend from church is committed to coming to help, so....we'll be done with this in NO time - might be able to get started on something else on the list. especially if we go out & get started while we're waiting for the friend. i wear a tank top because i about DIED from heat the day before in a t-shirt. after 6 hrs, the friend from church never shows up (nor can we get ahold of him or even FIND him!), i am SCORCHED by the sun - one of the worst sun-burns i've EVER had, and we're not even halfway done with the trim. after about 3 days of trying to find the friend & him committing one more time to come help (and me still working on the trim when cameron is at work), a friend of mine comes over to help me get it done. it's too hot & we both were about to literally pass out, so we call it a day. we finally end up hiring a handy-man in desperate need of work to come finish the trim. i hate painting.

after the painting is the packing & moving of the junk. you never realize how big your house really IS until you try to get everything OUT of it. i started out by going through things very meticulously, so we wouldnt be putting things we werent going to keep in storage. i figured since we literally had to PAY for everything we KEPT, it would be easy to be ruthless about keeping those "treasures" that we held so closely to our hearts (but forgot we even had!). well, i was right about that part. i didn't factor in the time it would take to do that! in the end, we were throwing stuff in boxes til they were full, sealing the box, & marking it with the room it came out of (what part of the room, when possible - ie. "cori's junk, master closet"). and, after we took the last load & got started on the inside painting & floors, i'm STILL finding junk that needs to be taken there. ugh. but...that's not really do it yourself stuff...at least not in regards to home depot! lol

painting the ceilings. not quite recovered from painting the outside of the house, so we figure to give the friend from church another chance. he seems eager to have another chance & really wanting to earn some money, so he agrees to come help. i figure with 3 of us painting, it can't take all THAT long. my house isn't quite 1360 sq ft. again, he never shows. and the ceilings turn out to be more of a fiasco than the trim! apparently in the 80's, it was cool to have 2 toned ceilings - a cream color, and then i'm guessing it used to be a slightly darker tan color in stripes down the ceiling. (really?? stripes? on the CEILINGS??? i kid you not - i actually took a picture to post here so you guys would believe me! lol but first i have to finish all of this so i can take time to remember how to upload the pics to my computer!) well, over the years, the darker tan stripes have somehow turned to some disgusting smoker's yellow color, which is near impossible to paint with a paint roller. so..i spent almost an ENTIRE WEEK doing NOTHING but painting ceilings. i had to use the roller for the ceilings panels (yes, panels! apparently paneling isn't ONLY for the walls! i SO hope they have stopped manufacturing paneling! lol), and then paint each individual stripe with a PAINTBRUSH. i did most of it while cameron was at work, because it needed to get done. and...if there's stuff to be done, i can't just kick back & relax. i feel guilty. so...i had cameron's help with the high parts (in the main living area of the house, the ceilings are high, but through the bedrooms & stuff, they are low enough that i could reach them standing on a chair). and one day my youngest son from cameron's first marriage came & spent 2 hrs helping me - we hammered out 3 rooms with high ceilings that day. other than that, i did ALL of it. we had 2 guys in mind to hire to help with the ceilings - one of them never called until we were FINISHED, and the other guy took one look & said, "i don't want to do it." lol i hate painting.

ok, so...ceilings are done - now to paint 2 walls in the living room & 1 of the bedrooms. piece of cake! after the neck-breaking work of ceilings...walls are actually going to be FUN! (or so i thought! lol) we're painting over wallpaper (again, apparently that used to be cool), so we have to do a coat of KILZ before we can start. umm...home depot guy - when it's OBVIOUS that one has never used KILZ before, please warn them about it. the odor is SO strong that the first lift of the lid (remember, on a paint can, you have to lift several sections of the lid before you can actually get the lid OFF of the can) about knocks you over. it is the consistency of water - WHILE it is in the can. the second you pour it out or begin to paint with it, it is the consistency of GLUE. it glops onto the surface you're painting & is difficult to spread, so a little goes a long way. there's one spot in the boys bedroom (thankfully BEHIND the door!) that has a nice KILZ bubble under the paint. oops. lol get the bedroom all KILZ'd up, and take a much needed break. every bone in my body aches at this point, but i'm DETERMINED to get the last of the painting done. after a bit of a break, i figure i'll KILZ the living room walls, too...by the time i'm done with that, i can paint the bedroom - finishing up the living room when i'm done with that. no problemo! that was another 11 hr day of painting, but i DID get it all finished. YAY! all with less than half a can of paint! but wait...we bought THREE cans of paint! custom mixed eggshell paint. that we can't take back. there's $70 down the drain - i guess we can leave it for the buyer. :S oh...and...i think my hands are going to fall off.

the next morning, i woke up, and my hands are so swollen, i can't even wear my rings. (still can't - swelling isn't quite as bad, but still there!). it hurts just KNOWING that i have hands - please don't touch them. please dont look at them. please dont make me use them. but alas, flooring must be done, and we have like 5 days to get it done. and cameron is scheduled to work 3 of those days. no rest, not yet.

so, the same son that helped with the painting came over & spent his ENTIRE SATURDAY (and his first day off of work in TWO WEEKS) helping us do the laminate in the dining room. laminate is actually pretty simple to do - except the measuring & cutting. :S i shudder to think what our dining room would look like if we hadn't had stuart's help! we got that finished & part of the kitchen finished on saturday. and here's where the fun starts! lol

so, the way that stuart had us doing the laminate, he kinda backed us into a corner. see, you start against the wall with the laminate. when you snap in the next board, you use the wall to support the piece you've just put in while you put the sealer in & use the soft mallet to "gently" tap it into place. stuart had the great idea to start in the dining room & work sideways into the kitchen, so it would all flow like one big floor. EXCELLENT idea! except that it means starting the kitchen in the CENTER of the room & working towards the walls. our oldest son was here helping by that point & i was at youth (down 2 leaders, so i can't skip to stay home & help...), but i hear it was QUITE the adventure. then, when i got home, we were over to the cupboards (which kinda make the one wall), but we have to do all kinds of fancy cuts to make the board fit, and then trying to figure out how to snap it all in underneath the kickboard of the cupboard from the opposite side (i know i'm not describing this correctly - hopefully you guys can still get what i'm saying). so we take a break, since it's like 1030pm and figure it out in the morning.

first thing in the morning, we get started - and we GOT it! first try! YAY! home depot was right - we CAN do it! (at this point, i am CONVINCED that handy manny & bob the builder are more skilled at this stuff than i am! lol) so we keep working on it here & there, but our hearts are totally NOT in it. and my house looks like a total construction zone. my refrigerator is in my LIVING ROOM. maybe great on super bowl sunday, when you don't want to walk away from your tv, but...not for a solid week. no. that's just wrong - in SOOOOOO many ways! lol

so yesterday - after 2 days of meltdown, freakout (and threatening to NOT sell if realtor has more he wants us to do after this...), i finally regain my footing yesterday afternoon, and can finish. we're SO close - it would seriously be MORE work to undo it all & put it back the way it was, at this point, than it would be to finish up. so, we press on. yesterday was more working on laminate & doing the vinyl in one of the bathrooms. so...we're working on the vinyl, and planning on finishing up the kitchen, when we have this gut-sinking realization. there's a heater vent in the kitchen in front of the drawers. under the laminate. goody. i'm doing my best to not COMPLETELY fall apart & cameron says, "no biggie! once we find the register, we can measure & just cut a hole - we don't HAVE to rip the entire thing up." (to add to the adventure, before we started actually putting IN the laminate, we realized that we didn't have enough of the laminate, no sealer, no installation kit....that was another 4 trips to home depot...) so we begin our search for the register. we looked everywhere it made sense tohave set the thing down. we looked everywhere it would be WORK to set it down. we thought we threw it away. we looked in closets of rooms at the other ends of the house. we CAN NOT FIND the thing.

we installed the laminate OVER the register! :o lol...cameron didn't believe me, but i was sure that's what we did. sure enough, mt. register right over where the heater vent is. but cameron just didn't think it was possible...the lump in the flooring would be a lot higher....the laminate wouldn't have snapped together....so many reasons it just COULDN'T be under the laminate. but i am SURE of it. stuart had said that he was going to come by after he & his wife finished their dinner, because he wanted to see how far we'd gotten. when he got there, he felt mt. register & agreed that yes, the register is probably still in the heater vent - UNDER the laminate flooring. so we gingerly lift up all of the flooring we'd done to that point, and he reached under to see if he could feel anything, one way or the other. and, indeed. the register is right where it's supposed to be - in the heater vent. UNDER the laminate. home depot never mentioned this! lol (ok, i must confess that i now know WHY they have some of the most ridiculous warnings on products! for people like ME! hahaha) by the grace of God, stuart is able to lift the register out of there (which is probably a good 3 inches deep, mind you!) and pull it out from under the laminate without us having to unsnap a single piece! PRAISE GOD!!!!

they are coming over tonight after they are off work to help us finish the laminate and paint the hallway & at least one more wall. and we've only got one more bathroom to put the vinyl in. today is going to be a mad dash, crazy day, but we WILL be done in time for the carpet tomorrow morning.

so....paint? check. flooring? check. too many supplies? check. not enough supplies? check. keeping home depot in business in my town? CHECK! lol yes, home depot, i can do it. it's quite the adventure!!! i pick someone else to paint! lol

ok, cameron's in from his pipe break, so time for laminate. thanks for your prayers (and patience with me! ha!) during this entire process! lol