Finished....finally!

The repair/remodel of the room that started months ago is finally finished! Finished!! I can't tell you how good it feels to have everything done  and to finally be able to get our house back in order. The guy we hired to repair the wall and ceiling (after water damage from a leak) was slow to come and finish the last little bit of work. Gregg finally texted him last month and told him, "You have to come finish up. I may have cancer treatments starting in the near future" and to Rick's credit, he came over the very next morning and finished everything that day. He did a really good job for a great price, even if it did take him way too long to finish up.

Then we had to paint. That took almost a week of careful prep work before Gregg and I could even get started on the actual painting. The last people to paint the room did a really crappy job, and the last owners left lots of scuffed places and nail holes. We finally startaed putting on actual paint on Sunday, and yesterday, we finished. 

Such a great feeling, and we're really pleased with how the room (and the coffered ceiling) turned out!

 

Updates

Just a few short updates on everything going on this month:

We did it! My friends helped me complete 400 Postcards to Swing States this past Sunday afternoon! We had a little postcard party over at Barbara's house. Out of the 400 postcards I committed to, I had already finished 275 (!!) ahead of time, so I only brought the remaining 125. Karen H. brought an additional 100 postcards she needed help completing (for down ballot races in the non-swing state of Ohio). We made short work of those 225 postcards, and had a little time left over for talking and eating the potluck snacks we'd brought. 

It's a relief to have it done.

Left to right, clockwise: Maggi, Marian, Barbara, Paulette, Karen, and Yours Truly, struggling to get a selfie that included everyone.

I may or may not have mentioned that I'd planned to have the Postcard Party at my house. Obviously, that didn't happen. Barbara was kind enough to offer to host because our small renovation project is still not done. Yep. Still not done! Our house remains in disarray with one room emptied out and being worked on.

This is what happened. The guy took longer than he expected, and at the end of the week he'd allotted for us, he was only about 70% done. He had other job commitments starting that Monday that he couldn't get out of. It's meant some delay in the finishing work, and he's been coming over for an hour or two here and there when he can. It's been dragging on a lot longer than I expected, though.

To be fair, Rick's doing really good, careful work. He's taking his time and every part that he finishes looks great. He pays attention to detail. We're also getting an absolute steal on the price of his labor. Since he'd never tried coffered ceilings before, he wanted to get some experience with them, and I think he lowballed the price a little bit because he was unsure of how it would go. Well, it looks terrific! So, if it takes him a little bit longer than we expected, so be it....

but DAMN I'm tired of all the furniture from that room being crammed into the rest of the house! We can barely move! It's okay for a week, but when it's stretching into the third week, it gets old, fast.

Then to add insult to injury, day before yesterday we discovered an ant infestation in our pantry and kitchen shelves. We had to move all the food out, and everything stored in the kitchen cabinets where we saw ants, because the exterminator guy is coming later today...my house is a shambles. Seriously.

The only other thing I wanted to mention is that my skin is almost healed (and much, much better). Thank you all for the kind words and encouragement on my last post! Once I got started on antibiotics and prednisone I started to feel better, fast. That's a relief, at least.

I'll sign off with a picture of the front porch that I've been getting ready for Halloween. Several of our neighbors have been decorating, too, which is fun. As soon as I buy some candy, we'll be ready for trick or treaters. 

More home improvement

I'm on fall break this week. It's nice to be off work, especially now that it's getting cool outside. Lots of pleasant dog walks are happening at the moment. 

Speaking of lots of things happening.....this is my den right now:

Demolished wall!!!

The ceiling in there had developed a crack that started to leak during the last storm that rolled through. It was a bad leak, and the crack got bigger and bigger. Then, it quickly became obvious that water was running down behind the wall, too, because the boards by the window started to warp. Not good.

 Here's a picture I took this morning before work commenced:

There's a place where the roof of this room joins the main house (the room was an addition to the original floor plan) and some sort of flaw there was letting the water in. That will be fixed first, then the wall with the warped boards will be repaired. And we decided instead of just patching up the damaged part of the ceiling, we're going to go ahead and redo the whole thing.

Something like this is what we're going for:

                        

Coffered ceilings

We're getting those same recessed lights in the "coffered" ceiling, and the old, clunky ceiling fan will be replaced with a smaller, simpler one. We've hired the same guy who remodeled our porch last summer to do the work. He seems to do solid work, and his prices aren't unreasonable. 

As soon as he's finished, we plan to paint the room a fresh new color. I'm hoping we can do that next weekend and have everything done when I go back to work on Monday. That may or may not be possible, though.

It always comes in threes

It's been quite the week in this house. Let me tell you how my time off has gone so far:

We decided to repaint the bathroom, since we both had grown to dislike the coral color we painted it last year. The weekend was spent matching color swatches to the tile, picking out the paint, gathering (and purchasing) supplies, and finally, a lot of careful prep work. We sanded walls, taped corners/edges/windowpanes, and covered everything in plastic drape cloths. Last time we didn't prepare carefully enough, and it showed. We were determined to do a better job this time! On Monday morning, all the preparation was finally done, so we started applying the first coat (primer) to the walls. An hour or so into said application, I started to drip sweat. I had an uneasy feeling....and went to check the thermostat. 

The air conditioning had quit working. Horror (mostly on my part) ensued. 

All work on the bathroom came to a screeching halt. I called around until I found an HVAC repair service that could come out in two days, on Wednesday. The office person I spoke to assured me that if a technician had an opening sooner than that, they'd call. Of course I told her we'd take what we could get, especially with the holiday coming up. 

So.....we had no air conditioning. In South Carolina. In July. Add to the fun the fact that the entire main bathroom (our only source of a bath or shower!) was draped in sheets of plastic and tape. It looked like one of Dexter's kill rooms. 

Y'all. I nearly cried.

But the fun didn't end there, oh no! After setting up fans around the house and opening windows, we sat down to watch some tv for the distraction. As soon as we turned it on, there was a weird flash, and the screen went dark. 

For no apparent reason, the tv had just up and died! We couldn't believe it. There's something else we'll end up replacing sooner or later. *

That was Monday. We were fortunate in that Monday night the low temperature was lower than it had been in weeks...67 degrees. It could have been so much worse. Then we got lucky again and early yesterday morning the HVAC place called and said they had a technician who was free to come by before lunch. Hooray! It ended up being a relatively simple repair, and our unit is still under warranty for defective parts, so for less than $200 we had a/c again. And had only been without for 24 hours. What a relief!

Well, back to business, right? We finished the coat of primer in the bathroom and were waiting for it to dry...when we noticed water seeping out around the toilet. A lot of water. It was immediately obvious that we were going to have to find a plumber. F*ck! 

At least this time I wasn't too worried. We have another half bathroom we can use, so there's that. But it was sure aggravating after everything else that had happened. 

A plumber came out this morning. It was a really, really simple fix and ended up taking the guy maybe 10 minutes. It was also very cheap, something I've never had the privilege of saying about a plumbing repair before. Again, it could have been so much worse. 

Moving on.......

Last night we stayed up until after midnight, painting. It's all done now save for a few minor touch ups, and today after the plumber left it was dry enough that I could finally take a long, hot shower. We're really pleased with how the paint job turned out, too.

Tonight I'm grateful for a working air conditioner, a non-leaking toilet, and a finished home improvement project. 

This paint color is called "River's Edge".

*We're not in any hurry to replace the tv. There's a smaller one in the spare bedroom that will do just fine for now.