The DIY project at my house

We've been home for more than a week from our major road trip.

Couldn't have done that on purpose if we'd tried. 

It was a fun and fabulous time I will describe in great detail in later posts.

But first...

I told John months ago when summer vacay began and after our trip, he should expect a major ceiling DIY project at our house. The reason is because I super duper hate my popcorn ceilings so much. They're dingy and little dust thingys are all over it and impossible to eliminate successfully. I've tried many times. It was my intent to begin the work on Tuesday after we got home and after we had unpacked. Sunday was rest and relax day. People who had to go back to work Monday were pleasantly surprised at how "untired" they were. Then Tuesday came and kicked us all in the butt. For some reason we all awoke and felt like limp noodles all day. Delayed car lag I guess.  

Because the strength was zapped in me as well, the DIY was pushed back to Wednesday. DIY day began with some problems regarding the attachment I'd borrowed from Melanie and the lack of proper thing-a-ma-jigs to allow it to be attached to my bathroom sink. After consults with Melanie, a trip to the hardware store where she and three men discussed what was needed, (using the terms female and male parts in reference to plumbing attachments otherwise it would have been so inappropriate) as well as a trip by me and John to Home Depot, I finally began the process in our hall. Easy peasy no furniture or do dads lying around on other stuff to become covered in wet popcorn residue. But it was kinda pretty messy. 

The contraption that allows for an inside hose. FYI. It's almost never a good idea for an inside hose. 

The process is as follows...spray the popcorn with water, wait a short period of time, scrap it all off hoping as much of it as possible will fall onto plastic sheeting draped everywhere. Well, OMG I've never in all my born days seen the mess we made as we worked to get all the little pieces of stuff off the ceilings. Once on the sheeting it cakes up on your feet if you don't wear shoes and cakes up on your shoes if you are wearing shoes. It's a lose lose situation for the feet. Owen was my helper, God love him, my boy doesn't have the heart of a DIY'er. Truth be told neither do I. But! I desperately wanted smooth ceilings! Well he helped me up until about 5:00 when he became distracted by a pool party with friends and then he was out. Of course once John got home from work and got involved it was much more refined and thought out. Laziness looks like scraping the stuff off into my face rather than getting down for the hundredth time and moving my step stool two feet. Moving step stools and up and down and aye yi yi. Thankfully by Wednesday night we'd gotten almost all of our den freed from the grasp of the awful dirty and dingy popcorn. 

My house photographs rather nicely. 

The area around the light and into my tiny kitchen is all that was left to do. 

Thursday was rest day, (my arms....and the rest of me...was exhausted) as well as John had to make an overnight out of town trip. Together we'd made the decision to wait until Saturday to finish. But then on Friday I got a wild hair and with Owen's help, (he was unable to secure other plans or successfully disappear from the planet), finished the dining area, kitchen and bathroom. Yay us.  

By Friday evening I was dragging bad, but the clean up was complete and we were ready to attack sanding and prep day on Saturday. OMG. I cannot describe in enough detail the nightmares of sanding in a preexisting house. 

Even after wiping and mopping and wiping and re-mopping....days later I still have dust films on all surfaces. By Saturday night once again we were exhausted but satisfied with our progress. 

Had to research a good ceiling paint. After all the hard work I WAS NOT skimping on paint! 

Sunday was a rest day, as well as we had something else super serious and unfun to tend to. 

Monday morning I began the painting of the world...also known as my den, kitchen and bathroom ceilings. It felt like a LOT of real estate whilst painting. It took 3 ish hours to paint it all and then I had to decide if it needed two coats. I wanted to cry when I realized it did. So back to Home Depot I went for two more gallons of paint and when John got home he helped me as well. By 8:30 I wanted to only look down and hang my arms until they dragged the floor. Everything hurt. And everything wanted to hang. We finally finished around 10:00 Monday night. Tuesday I treated myself to sitting a lot. It was grand. We still have a few issues to deal with about the hall ceiling, but we're very close to phase 1 of my summer reno project being complete. We have so much more we need to do to our house. Three bedrooms and a utility room still have popcorn, but I'm avoiding looking up when I'm in those places. The only way those are gonna be de-popcorned is to completely empty those rooms, so those are on the back burner for now. 

Some other things we need to do: bust out and replace a shower, replace a door that's rusting out at the bottom and leaking when it rains, furniture replacement, painting other rooms. Tight budgets don't work well with redoing a house! But we are on our way to some improvements and I'm happy about that. 

The final product. It may look shadowy, but it's not.

Bathroom.

As soon as I find a money tree to plant and harvest, I'm gonna run right through all my renovation projects. With a hired hand that is.  

Until then it will be slow and steady as she goes. 

This post took forever to do! In the midst of the project that is.

I'm off to bed to snuggle with my pillow. 

It's gonna be fab.