Week Five, Day Three

It would seem that my house has reached just the level of livability that I don't quite feel pressured to do regular home improvement. That, or I have reached my stress threshold and have exhausted my work reservoir. At any rate, there are clearly still things to do but these last couple of days I have had a hard time getting my energy levels up. I think this is just a slow point in terms of house stuff, as I'm very overloaded with school work, and I anticipate getting back on the wagon very soon. In the meantime, I will try to accomplish some small task each day, even if its just pulling a few nails out of the hallway floor.

Week Four, Weekend

Well, there are times when having a more intimate (read: family/friends) following for your blog is a good thing. One such time is when you have set some very laudable but perhaps slightly unrealistic goals which were subsequently lost in the hustle. This weekend was one such time in what will likely be a steady flow of goals belatedly obtained (but nonetheless obtained!).

All that is just saying that I was not quite able to reach my four weekend goals. In fact, I would give myself a scanty 75% on just one of the goals. I managed to get most of the living room painted--just one more wall needs one more coat, then I will be taking my painting party up the stairwell. I also got much of the furniture arranged in a semi-pleasing arrangement. I picked out a new shower curtain rod that isn't ridiculously small and got my curtain up (must cherish any accomplishment these days).

As I like to say, last week I was "big" and was able to set some large goals. I wasn't so very big this weekend, but I still did something and was able to cut myself some slack. I did get a plant diagnostician (aka boyfriend of a friend) to take a look at my plants on Saturday, which revealed that my apples are shot for the season due to a fungus, but it seems that I am "lucky" that my fruit trees are separated by a house, as the peaches and pears are flourishing. Those are exactly my kinds of plants--low maintenance yet high achieving. A new metaphor for life!

Let's hope I grow in psychological stature this week...much to be done, and only a thirty year mortgage to get it done in...

Week Four, Day Five

In order that this weekend could be jam-packed with house repair fun, I took this evening off to work on a project about achievement assessment. Tomorrow I will be having a local expert examine my fruit trees/grape arbor/blackberry bush to determine if their bounty can be salvaged somehow. More pictures coming soon!

Week Four, Day Four

I will get to my cliff hanger, but first: this is my bathroom one month ago and today. The drywall was ripped up from someone tearing out all the fixtures before I bought the house. There was a sickening bluish green wallpaper of the walls, which blended well with the vomit I spewed every time I had to climb over the piles of rubble to get to the duct taped toilet. Clearly, this bathroom needed some work.

The repairs to this bathroom were to lay a new floor (vinyl), replace and repair the drywall, paint, purchase three light fixtures, buy a new special-order square toilet seat, and add install the vanity. The floor was around $50 including glue, the drywall was free because we already had it, although we did spend about $30 on various goops and powders needed to fix the walls, paint was $30, the light fixtures were about $50 all together from Walmart, the toilet seat $40, and the vanity free because my dad had it extra, with the plumbing and faucet about $50 all together. So adding this together, the bathroom roughly cost about $250. Add in the little things I'm not remembering right now, and it probably was less than $300 tops.

Although this is a very reasonable price, I would like to set the bar ever-higher and refurbish the upstairs bathroom for a fraction of the cost of the downstairs. This will be quite a feat, as the upstairs bathroom is in shambles even more than the downstairs was. To make the upstairs acceptable, I would need to replace some subflooring where someone left a candle to burn (THROUGH the carpet, THROUGH the padding, and INTO the subfloor...how did the house not burn down?), get a new sink and toilet, do something about the hole-filled paneling on the walls, fence in the outside balcony that opens off the bathroom, and lay a new floor. This is besides the inordinate amount of cleaning that I will need to do to make it passable. Anyway, here is my big idea: I would like to conduct a little experiment to see if I can fix the upstairs bathroom for less than $50. I realize that this might be crazy. But I have the time to give it a try, and magnanimous as Obama is, he did not in fact give me a bottomless pit of money from which to make home repairs. So I plan on scouring the "free" ads over the next few weeks and months to see how this goes...I am anticipating success. Here's some pics of the upstairs:

Week Four, Day Three

Another successful day! I am beginning to overcome my compulsive desire to know how to do (and personally implement) all things "house". This was mainly accomplished as I noticed my total lack of frustration and dread as I entered the house to find my bathroom sink largely installed. I observed in myself that not doing any work is surprisingly relaxing...

Two trips to the hardware store today. Once was a walk-through to buy more rollers (my new secret weapon to painting is avoiding sub-par tools...or at least replace sub-par tools frequently) and to pick out more sample baseboard. This now constitutes a fun after-work activity, so lives do change. The second was a rushed trip with my brother and the generous friend of my mom's who is helping me. We purchased new faucet handles for the clothes washer...exciting. It was rather fulfilling to get the washer working, though.

As my FIRST EVER cupcakes prepared in the new house were fluffing up in the oven, I spent a few minutes edging and painting in the bathroom. I completed one wall and enjoyed myself thoroughly using the most adorable mini-roller of all time. The ridiculousness of using another brush to "paint" the paint onto the roller was even offset by how much fun tiny things are. I find that when painting alone, a girl must take some joy where she can find it.

While painting, I took a moment to develop the following weekend goals:
1. Lay the dining room floor.
2. Finish painting the living room, no matter how tiresome this becomes.
3. Lay the baseboard trim in the sun room.
4. Invite guests over for Sunday dinner!

This thinking-while-painting thing is very effective. One of my greatest ideas in recent days (which is still saying a lot, as I tend to develop many creative ideas each day that are easily strewn aside/given up on/otherwise rejected) is to...

...since it is a great plot device, I will live this cliff hanger until tomorrow.

Week Four, Day Two

And on the slothful day, she rested.

At least, that is very nearly true. The only house work that I did today was (shocker!) painting. I added a coat of my favorite sunny yellow paint before leaving for school.

This brief hiatus from new home information calls for a flashback.

Picture it: having spent months searching for the right house, I had finally found "the one". This I could say with utter certainty from the very first moment (this, incidentally, is both a blessing and a curse, as I tend to form immediate, strong opinions that are rarely swayed with new information. On this particular occasion, it was a blessing.) The battle that ensued to actually obtain the house was an unexpected battle to keep my sanity. Problem after problem occurred, with most of them centering around the poor planning and inefficiency of my bank. I was not aided by the seller's lackluster approach to salesmanship. My whole experience could be summed up in the adage "hurry up and wait". I would rush to get my earnest money to the seller, having been informed that it was needed that day literally minutes before the bank would close, then wait days and days to even hear a response. The banker's utter lack of interest in the whole affair meant a trying four or five weeks from offer to actual transfer of the deed.

I could go on for quite a while about the fiasco which was my home purchase (exception: my realtor was charming throughout), but I am told that I have a tendency toward negative fantasy and slight rumination, so I will cap myself here. Tomorrow, I am back from the dredges of schoolwork and into bathroom repair.

Week Four, Day One

Working out the balance between student/paraprofessional and part-time home contractor has proven tricky indeed. Today was a prime example: I woke up at the reasonable hour of seven thirty to prepare hash browns and coffee. This was after a night of clutching a spray bottle full of water aimed at my ever-pouncing kitten's face (I'm allowed to say this without it being deemed kitten torture--I'm vegan). Of course, housing projects wait for no potatoes, so in the interludes between cooking and eating, I did edging and rolling of "prairie willow" green paint in the bathroom. I was hurrying to get it painted so that I could install the vanity later in the evening. This proved to be a mistake, and leads to my listing some things that I learned today:

1. It takes considerably longer to spot-remove paint with noxious paint remover than it does to paint correctly the first time. Lesson: do not paint in a hurry.
2. That being said, wall patch is an excellent cure-all for most minor house problems. It is duct-tape's cute but unremarkable cousin. Lesson: if you must hurry, plaster will help to cover the areas where you ripped off bits of paint in frustration.
3. Big Lots has paint rollers for 75 cents each. Lesson: don't reuse the same roller countless times. Lumps of roller fuzz smashed under the paint cannot be passed off as a decorative finish. I have tried it. No one is convinced.

My fourth lesson of the day occurred on my now-daily visit to the hardware store. Having finally settled on a store that I found to be moderately acceptable, my hopes were high that the sales associates would be able to telepathically determine the pipes that I would need to do the set-up of the bathroom vanity. This was not the case. Of course, this did not deter me from purchasing a small array of pipes, none of which fit properly. I think my referring to the drain plug as a "trap" was incredibly upsetting to the sales person, who continually corrected me and demanded that I magically determine the width of the unmeasured pipe through some sort of information osmosis. The whole conversation was permeated with the vague sense that young, unknowledgeable women need not attempt plumbing work, or set foot into the hardware store for that matter. His incredulous "you are going to install this?" was impetus enough for me to decide that my hands only would install that sink.

By the time I got home and determined that a 1.25 to 1.5 converter was needed to complete the job, some of my vehement anger about gender roles had worn off. Sometimes even the most competent of women needs some assistance. Thus, I have come full circle today: I need not be the sole laborer in home-repair nor do I need to be the "perfect" graduate student. Tomorrow, sloth!