Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Renovation Marathon

So…Saturday, I received a surprise.  I woke up and worked (SHOCKING), and I received a little chat message from my bestie.   I’d been badgering her to come and help me out with the house, despite that she lived three hours away from me.  Her family are like, house-renovatey people (technical term) and she’s probably the most amazing person on the planet and every, time I’m like, “House make angry!” she’s like, “Hey, how about do that thing that’s totally easy that you never thought of before” and then I’m like “OMG I love you a whole bunches of lots.  Please move in with me and live here forever”, and she’s like “No” and then I’m like “But…but…!!!!!!!” but she won’t listen. 

So anyway, she says that she’s coming to help me.  LIKE, FROM A THREE-HOUR-AWAY LOCATION.  She’s packing up her husband and she’s driving to help out, ON SATURDAY. Squees ensue to a dog-barking-pitch.  I bounce.  I titter with glee. 

I get to the home to slap on a second coat of trim-paint, all the while whistling while I work.  I’m stupid-excited, y’all.  And how could I not be?:


Look at that face.  What’s not to get stupid-excited over?  Exactly.

So I finish the bedroom before they show up.  Touched up the walls, last coat of paint put on the window sill/baseboards/trim!  I am glee.  Would you like to see it?  Okay!  Total before and after!!!

Before (Sorry Sue!)
After!  (Without fixtures re-put on)


It's like a different room, amirite?

It's gorgeous.  I'm so excited it's over!  Now all I have to do is finish painting the doors (see pics below), clean up and reattach the outlet covers, put the blinds back in, and put in the new air duct cover we bought and...it's move-in ready!  After eight days.  Y'all, I cannot tell you how big a relief it is.

I have a sidenote topic regarding taping that I will discuss in a separate post.

So anyway, after being done with the bedroom, I don’t want to start on The Next Big Project (read: kitchen) because I’ll be all, in the middle of it and they will be coming over and then we will be wanting to eat the food at the restaurant (and celebrate, because HOLY ACCOMPLISHMENT BATMAN!), so…I just dug at the backyard philodendron more (sigh) and waited for them to arrive.

After the long tour of the home, and the Mexican-food-and-margarita-pitcher break, we split up.  The womenz go to the Wal-Mart for supplies, the boyz go to the apartment for the beds/sheets/etc.  Amanda has decreed that we will have marathon house-renovatin’, and therefore will sleep at the house this evening and work until our tired arms and legs can no longer sustain us, crash out on our beds, and be promptly woken up the next morning by this:
What I was threatened with.
So...we gals return home with supplies (including energy drinks) and begin prepping the kitchen.  Amanda starts on the taping and I start on the ceiling.  (Oh yes.  The ceiling.)  I am briefly attacked by a very aggressive (but tinier than my pinky-nail) little house spider which launches himself off the ceiling and onto me in an attempt to, I dunno, perhaps kamikazi-bomb me?  Who knows.  He is unsuccessful, and falls to the ground, where he promptly remains in the same location (stunned, no doubt) until I accidentally step on him later.  Oops.

The boys return to the house with their bounties and, after unloading, I put Drew (the other husband) on wall-sanding duty.
Why such a blurry shot, you ask?  Probably because my shoulder/arm muscles were spasming involunarily from all the ceiling-texture-removin' I was doing.  Or maybe it was latent trauma from the suicide spider-bomber.  Whichever.

Husband rescues me, giving me the opportunity to photograph the awesomeness of our marathon-renovation.


The fruits of Drew's labor.

The haze you're seeing is ceiling dust.  Oh yes.  And possibly wall-dust as well.

The boys were so helpful!  Of course, we also had other items to help propel us into action for the long night:


Winning!
Once complete, the boys disappeared into the bathroom for full-on Demolition Mode while the ladies painted.


Yes, that is a garden tub on its side.

In addition to this awesome work, they found us a souvenir.


Fully. Intact. Rat. Carcass.  Amazing!!!  *fist pump*  It was, as all of my newfound friends in this house, destroyed soon after.  Someone beheaded it with an errant foot.  Le sigh.

So this progress kept us up until 3am, when we all promptly crashed.  I have a vague memory of halfheartedly putting a sheet over the mattress and then just falling asleep.  That is all. 

Shockingly, I was not awoken to any drill sargeants on Sunday.  I think someone was as sleepy as we were.  :)

After we drug ourselves out of bed and put food in our bellies, it was back to work.  Amanda tackled cleaning and taping all of the baseboards, while I put the second coat of paint on the kitchen walls. 


Witness the paint on her!  Adorablest Person Ever.
Husband and Drew cleared out a lot of the debris from the master bath and then husband came to me with the news that we'd be very quickly replacing our water heater.  Sigh.

So they were gone forever, and they came back with a shiny new one.  Then they had to build a new house for it, I guess. 

Wooden housey thing, lovingly built by husband's adept hands.
There was a lot of banging and sawing and grunting and other manly noises.  I'm pretty sure they didn't come from Amanda, so....yeah.  This is what it looks like now!


Moldy-Insulation-No-More!
The top of the master-bath-area

He also purchased new insulation, sheetrock, etc for the bath. We won't discuss price.

It waned into the evening, and sadly the crew had to drive back home.  But Amanda had to pose on my engagement car (and I'm sure she humped it at one point too) before leaving:


Thank you to the best helpers ever!!!  Y'all are awesome.

I am sad to notify you that I do not have an after picture of the kitchen presently.  Cry me a river.  But two coats were painted on it, as well as four coats of paint in the pantry, and that sucker looks goooooood.  Like, awesomegood.  After I put some coats of shiny stuff on the trim, I will take pictures.  Speaking of kitchen, husband and I are scheduled to pick out granite Thursday, so hopefully it should be a full-on after shot here soon.

4 comments:

Booyah said...

Things that are amazing: Your awesome friends, your amazing demolition skillz, your work ethic, your determination, your new fridge, your prettier paint colors.

Things that are keeping me from ever visiting: Spiders.

Jessica said...

When you're done, you should totally do a video tour! :D

MaryAmanda said...

I can't wait to see more pictures!! I just know that there's going to be a chandelier painted picture ANY DAY NOW! Wish we could have stayed longer. Love the house. The pictures of the bedroom do it NO justice!!

Lori said...

It looks awesometastic! I love the rat skeleton...and the great friends who helped you! Rock On Amanda and Drew!! No pics of Donny's butt???

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