Down with the old...

 

This girl

had a very productive week. Can you see what I did? Here I am tearing out those ceiling tiles. I believe they went up with the house in 1948 and they were holey, and drawn on, and I'm glad they're gone. Even with the mask, I still had black boogers. Before I attacked that, however, I removed the wallpaper:

I really didn't want to score the wallpaper, so first I peeled of the top layer, which wasn't terribly hard. I think it only took 2 or 3 hours.

Then I took 8-ish hours to peel off the adhesive layer. I soaked each section in a 3:1 water/fabric softener solution, then it really wasn't that bad to scrape off.

Oreo did her best to help me. It was nice to have her company.

The biggest threats were on this darn south wall. That's black mold alright. Yup. My dad gave me some amazing industry-strength mold killer and some Kiltz to get rid of it. And the other problem presented itself at about 10pm on Friday night. I was up there, finishing tearing down the tiles and came across a large number of dead wasps caught in the spider webs between the insulation and tiles. I asked Mark to come up stairs and keep me company while I finished up and together we pulled and yanked at the tiles till the very end. We found about 12 little dried up mud nests within our ceiling. ew. creepy. At least now we know why we were finding 1 or 2 wasps a week just chilling in the attic and what we can do to prevent it this and all following summers.

So now the attic is naked. The carpet, of course, will be staying down until I'm finished painting the walls and ceiling. Then I'll remove it and paint the floor boards (carefully).

My plans for this week include installing new insulation-contact recessed lighting cans, consider installing a third one, for better lighting and more electrical practice, and put up as much of the dry wall as I can. Since it's just me most of the time, I don't really know how much of that will get done. Poor Mark's always at work or school. Then in 2 weeks, I'll get all the mudding done and change out all the electrical outlets the previous owners  painted over.

I've got my work cut out for me but I'm having fun. I feel empowered with every accomplishment. I'm already laughing at it now, but as I was finishing up my last little bit of wallpaper removal, I started talking to myself about being so good, I could probably build my own house. Yeah...no.

Make Myself Make it Happen

Tomorrow, I have a job interview for a different position in the metroparks. It's only three miles from home and only from late March to September/October. Doable, I'd say. We'll see how it goes.

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If you've been through the "virtual tour" of our house, you may recall our shabby attic.

These stairs I can work with. In fact, I'll work around them.

this is the closet. It's what's to the right when you come up the stairs. Holey cow.

And here's the essential whole of the attic. not terrible looking, I guess, but  not cohesive.

I am repulsed by it. I know that if I get rid of that wallpaper and remove the carpet and patch up the walls, I'll be happy with it. But I don't want to! It's not like I can't handle a rotten project: I spent a large part of January in the basement stripping and sanding our bedroom door so I didn't have to look at the teal anymore (May I add that the teal is ironically the SAME teal as the outside of the house. That's right. There was still paint left over so, "Hey, let's use this outdoor paint on these beautiful doors!"). That was a nightmare project and since I absolutely loved removing wallpaper from my room in high school, I guess that my mind is on a one-nightmare-a-season track and that's why I'm stuck in a rut and not just yet very willing to attack this attic which I loath so much.

I need to make this change happen. I just don't want to. Not at all. Yuck. Eww. Gross.
Anyone dying for a really tough service project?