So, it's only been almost a year since I last posted in this. I got the house into completely liveable conditions, except the two back bedrooms, and the upstairs bathroom. I don't know what's stopping me from taking care of that bathroom, besides the smell. Mom's cats used it as a toilet room for years, and there's still poop on the floor, and it just smells appalling. But that can be easily cleaned. The toilet also needs to be replaced, because there's a crack in the tank. As it stands, I could still use it for showering and brushing my teeth/washing hands/doing make up. But something keeps stopping me from working on it. And eventually I need to get the doll rooms consolidated and emptied. I've sold most of the dolls, that whole shitshow can be moved into just one room. There's still so much crap - clothing and accessories, and dolls no one seemed to want to buy.
Given that I can't find anyone I'd want to live with me, and the people I HAVE thought, yeah I'd be okay with you living here, have decided to just move out of the area. So I may as well make the smaller of the 2 back bedrooms a room for the cats. Put some carpet-covered jungle gyms in there and let them go nuts. In a perfect world, I'd love to tear down the wall between the 2 rooms, but that's a horse of another colour and I'm not up for tackling any demo right now.
My main priorities right now are these:
- Replace mudroom flooring w/3/4" plywood subfloor, w/waterproofing sheet beneath
- Cover with 1/4" stain grade plywood (actually, paint grade is fine, i'm not staining it)
- Paint
- Strip and paint mudroom walls
- Figure out situation with sill rot
- Sand and paint kitchen cupboards
- Replace cupboard knobs and pulls with nautical theme
- Plywood strips as wall planking on exposed kitchen walls
- Strip and re-finish following furniture:
- Dresser in DR
- Hutch
- DR table
- DR chairs
- Wainscoting on stairs - could be wood planking w/chair rail...
- Paint top half of stair wall navy
- finish painting stairs
- fix the one broken stair?
- Rip up carpet, cover existing plywood floors with stain grade plywood flooring - LR/DR
- Same as above, upstairs hall, my bedroom
- Wood planking on hallway walls?
- Paint wall tile in bathroom
- Finish stripping wallpaper in bath
- Paint walls in bath
- Epoxy finish for tub?
- Reupholster my chair in blues
- Reupholster couch (HAHAHAHAHA? Cheaper to buy new from Ikea or Bob's?)
Thank god for Pinterest. I can search for any silly idea my little heart desires, and someone on Pinterest has already done that project, AND posted photos and tips.
Thus, behold my ideas in pictures:
Plywood flooring
Painted Dresser
Wood Plank Walls, from plywood
Blue/white staircase
White kitchen w/dark lacquered flooring
Not on my list, but bold pop of color behind books?
Also, couch surrounded by bookcases!
I'm quite sure there's other stuff I've got on my lists, and other stuff that's shown on Pinterest. But at the moment, I'm just so overwhelmed with what I want/need to do, and the prohibitive cost involved.. let's hope I can find a way w/o having to work 60 hrs/wk!
the dumpster's gone. finally. there's an abnormally large divot left behind that i could drop a liner in, and keep koi fish come spring. or at least, you know, a water feature. another contractor came out to look a tthe house, he's thinking both bathrooms have to be gutted down to the joists and replaced there out, and that possibly the wall of the porch is rotting, but give it a year and see what happens. meanwhile, both decks/steps are rotted, fuhreals-fuhreals. like i bought hazard orange spraypaint and painted them to point it out to the oblivious, of which there are many. but the home owner's insurance won't cover any of it.... unless, say, a truck drives into the house. or a tree falls on it. here's to hoping.
the master bedroom is now my bedroom, and it's liveable, and nice and ....well the floor/carpet needs help, but i can live with that. so... here's before, and then i'll post after and if you want to see the in betweens i can post those too because i took them. and obviously, shit's not done. trim, ceiling, a type of finish on the dark walls, a coat of lighter silver on the silver walls.... a new tv because literally 1/3 of the screen of mine is pixelated like it was dropped (i swear i didn't drop it). but that'll be a black friday purchase. but here's a before and after/now.
i'm really tired, and don't really feel like writing, and i'm kind of bummed out by stuff the contractor told me i need to get done, which probably won't be covered by home owner's insurance (install a water barrier under the house, replace the entire external wall and load-bearing beams of the sun porch to begin), and that the bathrooms don't have to be torn out and replaced b/c of mold... and he specifically said, focus on the structural issues first and get those dealt with, and then worry about the aesthetics. and i know he's RIGHT but.... i don't have money right now! i don't have the financial ability to deal with the structural issues right this minute. yet, i have paint. not that i can paint, b/c it's raining, but still. plus, as i said, i'm really tired, and my back is KILLING me, so here's some before and after pictures. the piles of crap is all dolls and doll related items that hopefully the doll auction house will take away. i've done all of this myself. no one's come to help yet.
anyway, before, then after.
okay so in the back bedroom i just tossed shit out onto the porch roof, then hurled it into the dumpster. shockingly, i only got about 2/3 of the stuff into the dumpster on the 1st shot.
creepy-ass doll furniture to go with all the creepy-ass dolls.
and also the hallway by the creepy door to the attic, one before, and a few afters.
that hideous striped floral wallpaper is only 10 years old! and already it's peeling like that! quality install job. except not at all. and seriously, who uses WALLPAPER anymore?!
it's hard to tell, but the door panel has been painted, then wallpapered, then painted, then wallpapered. WHY do people do that?
i also got rid of the computer desk in the living room.
actually MOST of the stuff in this photo is gone now!
i'm super tired. and i'm so in love with my woodstove, even though the guy said i should have a bigger one, and that's a couple thousand bucks... i'll make do with this one for now. it's nice and hot and i like sitting by it so i'm not sitting here SHIVERING otherwise. if you were curious, it's about 43, and rainy.
you DO realise that at some point, i'm going to either mis-number these posts, or i'm going to just give up on numbering altogether, yes? good.
so i got up REALLY FUCKING EARLY today for some reason. perhaps the cat was yelling at me to get up because it's food time. he'll do that sometimes. just sit a foot from my head and meow really loudly until i get up and stumble to the kitchen (please note: i do not pour myself a cup of ambition). so i did something i've kind of been avoiding, and took trashbags, my drink, and my computer upstairs so i could listen to music while i started cleaning out the master bedroom (formerly mom's, now mine).
i got both dressers emptied, one entire side of the room cleaned out, and the front portion of the upper hallway done as well.
then the dumpster guy came, and i explained i'd be throwing the trash out the window, and please put it here. well he informed me to get it where i wanted it, without potentially running over my septic tank, he'd most likely take out half of my enormous hydrangea tree:
He did indeed knock quite a bit of it off, but not as much as we both thought he would:
Now, I explained to him that I wanted the container in a SPECIFIC location, because there are two upstairs windows out of which i will be tossing trash. he got it as close as he could... i guess. but a few feet closer, and I would not be having the problem I am continually having. which is, i toss a bag of trash out of the window, it hits the edge of the container, the bag splits, and most of the contents fall onto the lawn. i ALREADY USE FORCE FLEX BAGS SO DON'T GO SUGGESTING THAT, SMARTASS. Also, sometimes I use caps, sometimes I don't. roll with it.
Anyway, I'd spent the morning bagging up trash in my room. I emptied out both dressers, and cleaned out one entire side of the room (the side with the alcove), plus the hallway from the stairs to the window (as it's the window through which trash flies). To wit:
You get the gist. I still have to do ALL her clothes, which were just piled in the corner and not in the dressers for some reason (??), but that's going to charity, not trash, so that can wait til I get all the trash out. I also cleaned out everything downstairs, trash-wise. I even went into the china hutch and threw away the incomplete services of patterns I hated, and other various glasses I thought were ugly. Books that hadn't been touched in years that were taking up space on the built-ins, bagged up all Mummy's winter coats and sweaters.... Basically threw away everything in the bottom of the house that I possibly could. Except in the garage. That'll be tomorrow. ANd also the rest of the bedroom, plus whatever I can bag and trash out of the other two bedrooms. I have to figure out where to store all the dolls, because hopefully an auction house is coming to take them all away to auction. I was planning on putting them all in the dining room before I bring the dining table back in, but I don't know if there's enough room... I mean... Mummy had a LOT of dolls. Multiple-hundreds.
So I did get a lot done today. I look back and what I did and I myself am awed. I mean, the dumpster's like half full already! And I have it for a WEEK! I can't overflow it though, or it'll be a 2nd $450 dump charge....
i'm not usually one for whining, or complaining overly much (or overly seriously), and life has given me a LOT to complain about, but i take most everything in stride while gritting my teeth and reminding myself i can adapt to and survive anything.
but this commercial for google chrome just about broke me this morning:
when my dad first died in 2006, right before father's day, i could never watch a father's day commercial. i avoided the fathers day card aisle, i entirely avoided men's sections of stores, i cut the date out of my life. and except for helping the kids make something for their father, the day no longer existed to me as a holiday.
my mom's birthday was about 2 weeks before mothers day, and i remember complaining to daddy when i was about 6 that it was unfair she got two sets of presents so close together (then again, so did my dad - his birthday was 12/27, yet i never complained about that). and as i got older and my mom and i drifted further apart, it WAS difficult coming up with two different presents for each day. eventually, it came down to e-cards and emailed photos. part of it was knowing she was a hoarder and didn't need any more STUFF and part of it was also knowing she was a hoarder, and had everything she could possibly really want anyway. bitchy of me, but realistic.
some of my friends, some whom i consider family, have gotten on me about saying i'm an orphan now. technically, i am. both my birth parents are dead. i have a step mom, but she's not my blood relative. and i'm not close to any of my blood family. if i'm to be honest about things, i'm not really close to many people, because i'm terrible at staying in touch. i don't know why, i just am. of the people i think of as my BEST friends, some of them i haven't really talked to in months. well, i've talked to them since mummy died, but prior to that it had been ages.
it's sort of funny because mummy had been a hermit, and in his own way, daddy was too. i'm definitely more social than they were, and i want to be even more social than i am, but at the same time i find it emotionally exhausting.
i guess the summary of this whole post is, i'm alone in the world now. it's a very surreal feeling. yeah, i have the kids, and yeah, i have the rest of my step family, and they've been around more than half my life, but i've always felt like the outsider with them, even when i was anything but. i'm not writing all this out of pity for myself, but just in description of how i feel. it's all very disappointing, and ... not belittling, but it makes me feel very small, and inconsequential. of all the people in the world, i have no direct blood connection to any of them.
it's frightening to not even be 40, be an only child, and have lost both parents. everything happens for a reason, but i'm struggling with what the reason might be behind these shenanigans.
also, as you may remember, i SHOULD have a dumpster coming today. if it does not come yet again today, i might just flip my shit and throw trash outside onto the porch because i'm tired of looking at it in my house. and also? i'm totally resisting going back into what was my mom's room to continue throwing stuff away. and i really need to get on it becuse so much of the trash is papers, and i cn't just heave papers out a window, they'll flutter down everywhere. i'll be making it rain tax laws from 2006. i don't know why i feel so uncomfortable in her room. i need to start thinking of it as my room. but i also need to grab the box of trash bags, and my laptop and my drink and go up there, blast some music, and fill up some trash bags. because honestly, i don't have time to procrastinate.
i don't think i've mentioned, but my house was built in 1854, 1864, something like that. and it was added onto over time. the main part of the house has walls of plaster mixed with horsehair over wood lath. because of this, and because of years of former inhabitants doing things WRONG, there's no such thing as "an easy project." in example; i need to tear up the carpet on the sunporch because it's stained with cat pee and it's gross and it just has to go. but you know what's probably underneath it? plywood over wood lath. and if i'm going to lay down tile, i'm going to do the floor right, and lay 1" foam insulation, then 1/8" sub-floor, THEN the tile. and none of that is cheap. except the tile, the tile i'd picked out is like 40% off right now. but all the rest of that shit is not cheap! and it's getting cold. and i'm going to have that dumpster any day now. i need to rip it up and throw it away while i have the dumpster. ugh. pain in the fucking ass.
and it's the same thing with the carpet inside the house. it's stained and nasty and gross and i just don't like carpet. i cut a piece up and there's 1/2" padding underneath it, then BLUE plywood, then 1" wood lath. then you can see straight down to the ground. i was SO hoping there was like pine plank flooring underneath. hope springs eternal.
i feel a little bad for the contractor coming on friday, because i've written out like 10 pages of questions for him.
ever since i moved to maine, it ceased to matter what day of the week it might be. i could work any day of the week, and things didn't change on weekends at home either. so i never particularly cared that it was friday.
but THIS friday, the chimney cleaner is coming. and let me tell you something - it's fucking COLD. weatherbug says it's 43, but that's inland, that's not on the water where it's usually 5-10 degrees colder. I NEED A FIRE IN THE STOVE. i'm fucking SHIVERING. my wife called me tonight from australia, and i was so cold my teeth were chattering a little and she was having a hard time believing i wasn't crying. i finally explained the cold to her, and my lack of heating other than a SHITLOAD of tiny ceramic space heaters (though i only use one - however, there are about 8 in the house). she's australian, they don't know from cold. also, hi sasky :)
so the chimney will be cleaned, and the contractor will be here to check out the mold situation, and HOPEFULLY tomorrow but maybe not until wednesday, i shall have a dumpster in my front yard. and it can't get here fast enough, because my house is just filled with trash and trashbags and stuff ready to go out the door or window into the dumpster.
seriously, i'm freezing. this some BULLSHIT. i should also probably dig out my actual cold weather clothes, instead of light pj pants, t-shirts and plain hoodies, haha. i should probably take this opportunity to just go to bed.
