Nostalgia in advance

 

So we're getting ready to do some painting around here. 

It should come as no surprise that "getting ready" has a very sketchy meaning for the husband and me.  We "get ready" for household projects by daydreaming about what we want, and then going out for a cup of coffee, and then maybe a month or two later wondering how much it will cost, and then cracking open another bottle of wine, and then stumbling across a paint sample or two, and then going away on a business trip . . . .

 

The girl in charge figured us out a long time ago, and thus is the only member of the family whose room has been painted to her specifications.  And it was a lot of work for both her and me -- work that involved geometry, y'all.

This summer I plan to paint my bedroom, the sunny girl's new(ish) bedroom, and the little roomlet she used to sleep in when she was not yet a 5'10 ballerina.  The roomlet will become an place for me to stash my work-related stuff (part-time faculty have no office privileges where I work).  Right now I keep all my crap in the back of my car.   I'm excited to make a little office for myself, and as usual I have all kinds of unrealistic expectations about how fabulously perfect it will be.  But at the same time, I will be sad to see the sunny girl's little roomlet go.  It means saying good-bye to some of her "little girl"-ness -- and: the room is so stinkin' cute!

 

The four-year-old sunny girl's roomlet was decorated for her by Grandma Carol, right after we moved into our house in 2001.  Grandma Carol has a great eye for what a little girl will like, and she and Grandpa have the motivational oomph to actually get a project done instead of just dreaming about it.  So the sunny girl's little room was a tiny ballerina's dream come true!

Check it out:  the flowers all over the walls were created by first using a big rubber stamp and some craft paint (that's the lavender colored basic flower).  Then Grandma went back over each flower several times freestyle, adding the pink detail, the white outline, and the swirly yellow center.  The random blue swirlies were "to give it a little color pop."  Just as I was oohing and ahhing about how cute the room was, Grandma got out her glue gun and attached flat pink glass marbles to the centers of all the flowers.  I mean . . . .  And you see how she instructed Grandpa to paint the walls flat pink, and then add a stripe of glossy pink of the same shade, right?  Grandma Carol created a lovely little room for my sunny girl that could be out of a magazine.

The kicker for the four-year-old, though, was the chandelier.

Snapshot: then and now

So some of you may remember that I mentioned once a long time ago that we had a hole in our carport ceiling from when the tall boy fell through it.  Here's how it happened:

The young tall boy (he was twelve) was fetching camping gear from the carport attic, in preparation for a Boy Scout adventure, when he stepped in the wrong place.  He crashed through the drywall ceiling of the carport, bounced off the top of the minivan, and landed flat on his back on the cement floor, right next to the trash dumpster.  Inside the house, the husband and I heard the crash, and seriously -- one of us said to the other, "Huh.  I wonder what that noise was."  Then we both picked up our coffee mugs and went back to whatever we were reading. 

And people, I swear that's exactly what happened.  When you think I'm exaggerating, or making something up for comic effect -- that is when I am telling the precise truth.  The stuff I make up cannot hold a candle to the shit that really happens to me.

Well -- after a spit take as we both realized that our beloved child was in the carport attic -- and the noise had come from the carport attic! -- we put down our coffee and strolled outside to see what all the racket was about.

Actually, I did make that part up.  Once we realized that the noise and our boy were probably connected, we did bolt out the door pretty quickly.  We're morons, but caring morons.

There was the tall boy, splayed like Wile E. Coyote after he chased the Roadrunner off a cliff.  The husband said, "Can you move, buddy?"  And the tall boy said, "Uh, no . . . ."

Insert all your own worst nightmares here.  They will be an accurate representation of the thoughts that ran through my head in slow motion.

While I was imagining my new life as the parent of a paralyzed child, and looking around for a discreet place to throw up, the husband responded to the horizontal tall boy:  "Listen.  Is it that you can't move, or that you're afraid to move?"  And the tall boy shot his father a pitying look.  "Dad.  I just got the First Aid merit badge.  You're not supposed to move a back injury."  And the world bounced back into place.

After determining that our boy could in fact move his fingers and toes, his arms and his legs, the husband got him up off the ground and dusted him off.  "What do you say we head on over to the hospital and see if you're brain-damaged?"

The tall boy laughed dismissively.  "No way, Dad!  We're going camping!"

And that was the end of that.

* * *

Well, so the hole in the carport ceiling was huge, and needed repairing in the worst way.  But somehow we never quite got around to it.  I have joked that we are lazy, and it is true -- but we're not that lazy.  In the ten years since the hole appeared, we have painted almost every room in our home, replaced flooring, renovated our kitchen, built a lovely fireplace mantel, gutted, designed, and restored one whole floor of our house, replaced a deck, and put up a split rail fence.  Some of these chores were accomplished by hiring professionals, but many of them were done by us, our own lazy selves.

And yet the hole in the carport ceiling lingered.  Why?  What was the weird dysfunctional thing going on that would not allow us to get rid of this unsightly and dangerous and embarrassing open wound?

I have no answer.

But it's gone now!  Our long national regional local pathetic nightmare is over!

And somebody needs to slap me, because I did actually say out loud to the husband, "You know, if we wait just a little longer, we can have a tenth anniversary party for the hole . . . "

Renovation progress report: the finish line . . .

So we're just about at the end of our renovation project; Juan Pablo will come by tomorrow and  shave the bottom of a closet door -- and then I'm sure he will be so glad to be done with us and move on to his next miracle-making project.  The worrisome part of this of course is that now it's up to us (us!) to do the last few things that will make the basement picture perfect.

Here are a few before and after shots -- so you can really understand how ecstatic the husband and I are about this makeover. Because, really.  Without evidentiary proof, no one would believe what a hellhole of sloth, despair and shoddy construction the place used to be.

What started out looking like this -- and you need to imagine this cabinet vomiting puzzles, games, Legos, broken crayons, Polly Pockets, random batteries and empty soda cans . . .

 

. . . went through an unfortunate phase of looking like this.  This explains the delicate scent of mildew that ever-so-gently used to waft through our basement.  It also may explain the ongoing breathing difficulties of both the tall boy and the sunny girl.

Juan Pablo to the rescue!  He washed the walls, then coated them liberally with a water-resistant sealer/primer.  You will notice that he also framed the walls so that they could be insulated.  Maybe this winter we will not have to resort to cowering under blankets and comforters -- and warming our hands over electric space heaters.

For real, y'all.  We were like some kind of twenty-first century Dickens novel, except what the hell, people?  The husband makes a fine living, and we pay the bills, and it should not be 55 degrees in our basement!

Here's the same corner now. 

You see why I'm giddy, right?

As I think I may have mentioned a time or two, there was no bathroom on this floor of our home, because a rustic, Daniel Boone-esque wet bar is much more practical.  But we really wanted the tall boy (and our guests, while the tall boy is away at school) to have the ability to go about their daily ablutions without having to climb two flights of stairs and climb over all of the accumulated girlie items in our other bathrooms -- by which I obviously mean laundry and blow dryers.

The dilemma here was that the best space to put a full bathroom was where a water supply was not.

But is this the kind of problem that can stop Juan Pablo?!  Pish-posh!  Just give the man a jackhammer and look out!

 Some people call this scary, but I call it progress!

All better now!

You can see here (temporarily covered with gravel) the path that the sewage drain takes from what will be the toilet and shower drain to the main drain on the other side of the house.

And here are the copper pipes for hot and cold water for the sink and shower -- running above what will be the ceiling.

Juan Pablo's tile guy is an artist.

  Here's the finished product.  I just love it, don't you?

 And now Harry Potter the tall boy has been sprung from the cupboard under the stairs, which was actually a junk-filled guest room, furnished with leftover furniture from the grandparents or college or the dump.  This picture shows the former bedroom in a pristine state that was so rare that it's really just a lie.

God, I hated this room.

The closet was a do-it-yourself affair, and some former homeowner felt it was important to have quick access -- through the closet -- from this back bedroom to the storage room.  Maybe it was a speakeasy! As an added bonus, there was one electrical outlet in the entire room.

Now that's a closet!

 
This will do nicely for the tall boy!

So that's our renovation -- and that's why we're so stinkin' happy about it!  We still need to bring back our bookshelves and my mom's old upright piano, and hang a few pretty things on the walls.

But we sure do love it!

Renovation: progress report

  
So our basement renovation project is moving along smartly.  These pictures show you the fabulous bathroom tiles (in the fabulous bathroom, which never existed before); they make me so happy every time I look at them.

They are going to make the tall boy happy, too; his new digs are going to be so excellent!  He will no longer feel like Harry Potter -- stuffed into the cupboard under the stairs. Of course, one might argue that the tall boy kind of likes feeling like Harry Potter, but that's a story for another day.

Our own projects (the ones we actually do ourselves) tend to go something like this:

ME:  I think we should paint the trim on the exterior of our house.  [He and I are formal like that.  We say "exterior" when we really mean "the ugly, peeling, painty stuff around our windows."]
HIM:  When you say "we," who exactly are you talking about?
ME:  Well, us, or, you know, like, people we could pay money to . . . .
HIM:  Well, that would be a waste of time and effort and money, because we're going to re-do the whole carport in a little while, so why don't we just wait?
ME:  Good plan! 

Then we go to Starbucks.

So it's kind of a miracle of modern marriage that our basement is actually being renovated. 

We actually owe it all to our dear friend, Juan Pablo, who is a professional contractor.  He actually has the skill, the motivation, the crew, and the lack of laziness to see this project through.  God bless him!

And just for laughs, look what Juan Pablo's crew found when they were in the middle of the demolition phase of this project?  This box of bullets was found hidden above the ceiling tiles in the back bedroom.  My Dolly Madison friends and neighbors can just imagine who among the famous and infamous former owners of the home stashed this little prize.

I know, right?

Basement renovation: Here's why

So our basement is still one big collection of jackhammers, sawhorses and halogen lamps; we blow dust off of any food we're considering eating before we put it in our mouths, and we have learned to jump into the shower early, before all the work begins each day -- we never know when the water will be available.

But it's so worth it!  Because here is what our basement used to look like:

At some point, some previous owner put up plaid wallpaper that matches nothing. There is no excuse for this except maybe the early enthusiasm in the seventies for all things that could be seen as colonial and bicentennial, but somehow also gave off a "swinger" vibe, which overwhelmed supposedly intelligent people who should know better.  To complement this, navy blue wallpaper was applied to an adjoining wall.  There is so much wrong with this . . . .

Of course, being the procrastinating family, we complained about this ugly wallpaper for eleven years, while yawning and fixing ourselves more coffee.  It began to lose its sticky and peel from the walls before we did one thing about it.  But still.

So this level of our home boasted a bedroom, but no bathroom -- not even the so-called "powder room" so beloved by realtors everywhere.  Some previous homeowner somewhere along the way decided it would be way more fun and useful to require people who used the bedroom to climb two flights of stairs to take a shower; instead of a bathroom they installed a rustic, Daniel Boone-esque wet bar.  There's that navy blue wallpaper in the background.

Actually, after talking to friends we feel kind of lucky.  My Contractor and her husband are the proud owners of a 1970s tiki bar in the basement of their house -- palm frond roof and all.  We merely had to contend with striped wallpaper that was purchased -- on purpose! -- to match the plaid wallpaper used elsewhere in the room; apparently it could have been so much worse.  But still.  The wet bar had to go.  The down side is that the tall boy and his buddies will no longer have a mini-fridge to stash their contraband beer in -- but the tall boy would never do such a thing anyway,  so everybody is happy.

And!  All of the carpeting will be replaced, which is such fabulous news!

 You would be wrong if you thought that the entire family is nostalgic about these stains, which represent the maniacal temper tantrum I had when I discovered, the night before my sister and her family were to arrive for a visit, that the dog pee stains left by Toby, the Round Mound of Hound, may he rest in peace, were impervious to every product I tried.  That's when I dumped straight bleach on the carpet.  Which, in case you were wondering, does a great job on the urine-ish smell -- but is very unpredictable when it comes to knowing what color the carpet will end up.  A little tip from me to you.

Yep -- this basement renovation is a very good thing.