Sunday, November 21, 2010

Delays

I feel like it's been a while since I posted on the blog.

We've had a few delays in our plans this past week, as can be expected with these sorts of projects. But as a result, I've been grumpy and very wrapped up in what I'm doing. I've been stripping wall paper. Well, it started with stripping wall paper, but the paint started coming off too. So I've been stripping paint really. It started very easy! It always does, doesn't it? Then came the tough spots. There are a number of spots where the plaster walls have been patched, or sanded, or are rougher than the rest of the wall for some unknown reason. The paint DOES NOT want to be separated from these spots. Unfortunately, the back of the wall paper doesn't want to be separated from the paint either. So we've been scratching, and picking, and chipping, and scraping these spots off. I think, it retrospect, a bit of water might have helped do the trick, but I suppose that would have to be scrubbed at too. Ahhhh, retrospect..

Anyways, I have been working on that for 8 days now! But finally, the walls are bare (almost!) Honestly, there are a few spots to go, but the dining room is finished and ready to be patched, and then sanded. I will be doing that tomorrow.

Earlier today, as I was trying to finish the scraping of the walls in the dining room I realized that there were some bare patches in the ceiling where Ian had removed the crown molding and chips of paint had come off. I poked one at one, the paint around it seemed loose. Don't ever do that. It fell off. The paint across the whole ceiling of the dining room could be picked off. We couldn't paint it like that. So we had to chip it all off! The floor was a disaster! I'll try to post pictures of what this looks like later, when I have more energy. Maybe I'll make a post on DIY disasters! We were hoping to have all the scraping finished, and the walls washed tonight. Also, Ian has a few other projects I was hoping he'd finish off this weekend, but we've been tied up with other things. So this additional delay was NOT a welcome one. I'm sure you can imagine what I was thinking as I started knocking chunks of paint off. But maybe in every disaster, good things can be found if you just look hard enough. We had no light fixture in the dining room, and no attic access to install something, so we couldn't figure out what we were going to do to light that room appropriately. But underneath all that paint we chipped off, in the center of the ceiling, Ian found a perfectly round patch that wouldn't come off! Could it be..? Hmmm, there is also a small rectangular patch on the wall beside the kitchen door! Is it..? How do we find out for sure? We chip them out! (Another delay, but at this point I'm starting to think this annoyance may have been quite worth while!) So we did that, starting with the wall, and sure enough, the rectangular patch contained a metal switch box, complete with live wires! So Ian knocked out the circle in the ceiling, and sure enough, there was a ceiling box, also complete with live wires! (The wires were marretted, BTW!) And now, because the paint on the dining room ceiling was chipping off, we get to shop for a new lighting fixture, and we will have light when we eat!

1 comment:

  1. this is just the joys of renovating. You never know what you will find when you start a project everytime we go to do anything there is something that comes up that we didn't know existed.

    Have fun hun you have only just begun lol.

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