mereilin

Started renovating the kitchen finally, after 20 years of looking at that ugly-ass colonial blue wallpaper that came with the house. There was a chair rail on the two papered walls, with the same paper above and below. The other two walls were covered with brick face, so we can't do anything with them unless we tear them down completely and put up new drywall.

I peeled the paper from above the chair rail and found unpainted plaster with varying amounts of damage. I patched some of it, and left it unpainted for a few weeks. The paper under the chair rail seemed to be mounted on something other than plaster, so I was considering painting over it. After much hemming and hawing, my husband painted the top half of the room, then got some Kilz (stain-hiding) paint to cover the wallpaper on the bottom half. And then we took a close look at the paper and found it wasn't that tightly adhered after all and probably wouldn't paint well, so we stripped it off. Underneath was masonite, sloppily cut and fixed to the wall with half a million one-inch nails. We talked rather unenthusiastically about patching the masonite and painting it, and then I took a closer look at it.

"What's under here?"

My husband was sure we'd find damaged plaster and advised me to leave it alone. But it was seriously ugly and not even neatly installed, so I pried off a bit. Just to see.

I was rewarded with a lovely row of bead board, which has since been sanded, sealed, and painted white. It looks AMAZING, and we haven't even painted the trim yet. We moved the fridge to pull down the last piece of wallpaper, but underneath that was only plywood. I was confused until I remembered that there had obviously been a doorway in that section of wall -- the unevenly patched, door-shaped section of drywall that's visible on both sides of that wall above the chair rail gave it away. They must have just nailed some plywood onto the studs and papered over it, because that's the sort of home-remodeling geniuses we bought this house from.

Disappointing, but not insurmountable. I have some ideas for the rest of the kitchen that involve MAJOR demolition -- pulling out the cabinets, tearing down the brickface and drywalling over the studs (oh, maybe we can even insulate the outside wall? woohoo!), putting down some new flooring, and combing flea markets and yard sales to find Hoosier-type cabinets to keep our stuff in. If I'm lucky, maybe we'll even find a freestanding kitchen sink (slate would be awesome, but I'm not getting my hopes up). I figure that no matter what I do to fix up this kitchen, the next owner will just want to remodel it. So why not clear it out and put in some furniture? Then when we eventually sell, we can take it with us and the next owners can design the kitchen they want. Or they can pay us extra for the Hoosiers; nice ones are really expensive!

Anyway, the kitchen is WAY nicer even with the small amount we've already done. I can wait until spring and a couple of lucky flea market excursions to start on the rest and if I change my mind by then I'm no worse off. And I'm so much happier with it already.

There's a fairly stupid amount of happy going on, actually, without much good reason for it. I mean the stress is still here, but the hopeless feeling hasn't been hanging around too much.

And in related news, there's a beginning Japanese class being offered at the local tech school on Tuesday evenings. I am SO signing up. It'll be fun to have people to talk to who are also trying to learn. My husband, despite his heritage, just isn't that interested in the language. I can get him talking about the cultural stuff, and he enjoys watching shows and movies with me (as long as there are subtitles, which is fine with me), but he could really care less about writing, reading and speaking.

So! Kitchen renovations and Japanese classes. Oh, and stuff with the kids, but that's a topic for another post.

じゃあ、またね!

The wall is up. All of the black-and-white floor tiles are down. I dearly wish I could come up with four more, but the pattern has been discontinued. For now it's bare. If I get time I'll patch in the parquet tiles I bought as a sort of accent. It should look okay.

For now, it's good enough to let people use it, so attention has duly been turned to making the rest of the house presentable for the family gathering tomorrow.

I hope the weather is nice. Today we had scattered thundershowers, which canceled Danny's baseball game, but I did take a break to take the kids downtown for the community festival. They got to ride a "train" and pet a baby alligator. There were many lollipops. We had umbrellas. It was a pretty good day.

One of these days I'll get pictures uploaded.

I just saw my nephew's prom picture and was struck by how much he reminds me of his uncle -- the guy who 25 years ago was my first "serious" boyfriend. There's something weird about that.

In other news, I ripped up the vinyl on the bathroom floor to discover that the subfloor appears to be a 1/4 in. sheet of luaun plywood nailed right onto the existing hardwood flooring and carefully pieced around the base of the toilet bowl. This means, folks, that it's extremely likely that this toilet has been sitting on this exact spot for 75 years without so much as a bolt being removed.

I'm no longer surprised by the oddities that passed for improvements in the minds of the previous owners. Sure, there was some shock when we realized they'd removed a loadbearing wall in the living room and replaced it with a decorative sytrofoam beam. We were dismayed when we realized they'd chosen to line the shower stall with wallcovering that wasn't actually waterproof, compounding the disaster by perforating it with the nails they used to install it. This floor? So not a surprise.

It is a little exhausting, though.

Aside from that it's been a pretty unproductive day. I'm feeling the weight of the clutter again, to the point where I don't even know where to begin. I found a website that talks about how to manage clutter, and it says to begin by determining what kind of clutter-personality you're dealing with. Are you a hoarder, sure you'll never be able to replace your STUFF if you get rid of it? Or are you sentimental, and can't bear to part with it? Maybe you're the kind of person who just wants to deal with things later (whenever "later" actually comes, which is totally negotiable). Or perhaps you're a rebel, determined to live like a slob because BY GOD YOU CAN because it's YOUR HOUSE.

I'm not one of those.

I'm THREE of those, and so by God is my husband. On top of that, this week I am in PMS hell, which is contributing to the "why bother" mentality. (I suspect PMS hell is also when I notice the clutter most, which is sadly ironic.)

Oh, well, Maybe noticing it is the first step to doing something about it.

Right now, I have a bus to meet.

... he might put Dad out of business. I can't wait until he's big enough to tackle Major Home Improvements, but it was pretty cool that he spent half an hour removing all the baby locks on the cabinets and checking the hardware so the doors would close properly. Baby steps.