Slow and Slightly Unsteady

One Year ago, plus eleven days, I began the biggest transformation my home has ever experienced. Dehoarding doesn’t happen in just an hour like on TV.  It takes a while.  My mentor, Mrs. Passion, warned that it would take 6-9 months.  I’m at the year mark and still not done.  I blame it on life.  Six kids and a crazy schedule tends to shoot the best laid plans out of the water.  You know the whole two steps forward, one back. 

However, I am still progressing – in the right direction as well.  I’ve been itching to show you progress, but I’m such a fruity-tootie perfectionist that I want to wait until everything’s done.  Then you’ll get the WOW effect to the oomph degree.  Now I’m kicking myself, because makeovers don’t happen in one post.  Unlike ‘Hoarding, Buried Alive’ on TV, the work to declutter can take weeks, and sometimes months, and in my case I’m now in it a whole year.  One of my biggest lessons:  Procrastination equals Pain… and anxiety.  Neither of which is fun to deal with.  In the past I’d bury them with more projects and stuff.  Now I’m confronting them head on.  I still don’t like pain.  But getting through it is finally worth more than letting it fester.

Case in Point:  Never, and I mean never let your house scream at you for a paint job like this.

Twelve years ago we paid an arm and a leg to have a professional paint it.  Within 5 years we noticed the paint bubbling, and three years ago we really knew it needed to be done.  But the unbloggable happened and stuff like painting the home retreats to the back of your mind.  When we started the whole transformation process a year ago we knew that our first outside order of business was to paint the home.  This summer we realized that if we didn’t tackle the project now we would be forking over thousands to replace the siding as well.

So began the most painful home improvement project we’ve tackled to date.  Believe it or not twice as stressful as retiling the kitchen floor.  What we thought would take a week has turned into four weeks of nightmarish adventure.  Add in the fact that we’ve never attempted a project to this magnitude which played into the tension as well.  We helped a friend paint her home and it only took 6 1/2 hours from start to finish.  Yes, a lot of people showed up to help.  It gave us a false sense of confidence that it would be easy-peasy.

We pressure washed our home for nearly three days trying to knock off all the chipped paint and not tear up the siding.  The results were disappointing.

Sure we got a lot of paint off but there was still too much chipped paint hanging on by a thread waiting to be scrapped.

  Some of the siding didn’t survive and had to be replaced.  In replacing some of the siding we also discovered shortcuts taken by the original builders where they had cut corners, not laid down the vapor-barrier in full which led to rotten wood underneath the trim and siding near the bottom.  So some lower trim had to be totally ripped off.  Our efforts to save money by doing the job ourselves ended up costing us as much as paying someone else to do it.   But only because we had to replace damaged sections caused by our procrastination. The only redeeming note of comfort is that I don’t think a professional would have fixed the damage, just covered it up.

Abner, my boy, was my rock.  He and his friend Chet put in hours daily for nearly two weeks scrapping the paint down to this.

Our favorite tool of choice was an angle grinder with a steel wool bristle brush.  The paint sander attachments made for chipping off paint didn’t last nearly as long.  So we were thrilled with the recommendation of the steel wool attachment. 

Another hard lessons to learn was don’t buy cheap tools.  We burnt through the motors on two angle grinders and even a paint sprayer before we bit the bullet and bought the proper equipment.

Poor Abner had to also deal with the nasty heights.  Our home sits on a hill which makes two stories nearly three on the backside.  Thankfully we’ve the best friends in the world who loaned us scaffolding and ladders, ropes and harnesses.  Friends are the best.  So glad I’m not a recluse.

Triple glad I’ve got a son willing to help.

Then there was another couple of days spent caulking every corner, window, door,  and siding seam.

Since we were down to bare wood on two sides of our home it only made sense to prime before we painted.

We were blessed with some more wonderful help our first day of priming.  Our church was wrapping up a community service project for Northwest Day of Service and many members stopped by after the community project to give us a hand with our adventure.  It’s amazing how many hands can make quick work of taping up and priming.

And another lessons learned was…

Teenagers all will volunteer for any work if they get to be on a roof.  I had to pray like crazy that no one would get hurt.  I think I drove a couple people bonkers with my worry.  Sorry Prince Erik.

Here’s my manly men priming the back side of our home, while dancing on boards in the effort of trying to give me a heart attack.  I am not a fun person to be around when I’m worried.  Yet they survived me.

And as for the what our home looks like now…

Well, it’s painted…

mostly, except for the trim…

however… it’s raining…

but we beat the rain.  Our home is safe and protected and we learned some valuable lessons.

*  If you want something done right – do it yourself or find someone you really trust to do the job correctly.

*  Plan on it costing more than you thought.

*  Don’t skimp on tools.

*  Plan on it taking three times as long as you thought it would.

*  You’ll also be amazed at how many wonderful people there are that are angels on earth.  To the S.V.’s of the earth and especially to Abner’s friend Chet and his family.  They are the best sort of friends one can every hope for.   

*Abner learned he wants to get a great education to land a great job, earn some big bucks to pay someone else to do the work so that he will never have to ever do something like this again.  That’s my boy – he’s a dreamer like me after all.

There, now you know the before and during part.  I’m praying the liquid sunshine lets up so that I can show you the after pictures by Wednesday or Thursday.  Until then I’ve got to tackle the housework and laundry that’s been piling up while I was distracted outside.

Tootles,

FawnDear

When you give a 5 Year Old a Hammer…

When you willingly give a five-year-old a hammer you better be prepared for this.

Fortunately for us, this was a planned demolition.  Yeah, the 3-year kitchen remodel is finally moving forward.

Yes, our remodel continues.  I’m so wishing I had some more before and after pictures to show you, but the AFTER is not quite done, yet the demolition, and remodel continues to engulf even more rooms as the list of rooms almost done, but not quite continue to grow.  Some how we are all surviving all the paint dust and paint fumes.

And in between all the chaos we did manage to find a little Christmas spirit.

See how high you can get on paint.

I never want to paint on a ladder that high again.  Can you tell I’m nearly crying with fear as Abner does the Please-don’t-fall-on-me-MOM, happy dance.

Between the mad makeover mess we were able to throw in a one day family trip to the quaint town of Leavenworth, WA.  Loved it.

 

We even took the obligatory family photo and true to form chopped off heads, arms and toes.  You know our typical snapshot.

The miracle was that we even put the tree up and decorated it with only a week to go before Christmas.

Ate some yummy food and way, way to much sugar.

And dreamed, and worked and dreamed some more of when this extreme home makeover would be done.

I’ve got a lot of sewing, tiling and painting still ahead of me.  And yes, the After rooms will knock your socks off.  Who cares of Myth Busters busted that myth. 

I’m loving being creative.  Found two broken lamps for super cheap and put them together to make this little beauty for my future fairy desk.  You are not going to believe how perfect it all turns out.

My kids are dreaming right along with me.  See here’s Abner dreaming of being a grown-up.

Thank you for being patient while I continue to inhale down more paint fumes than can be healthy for anyone.  I know I’ve been missing from blog land for so long, but I can see the light at the end of the remodel tunnel.  It’s still a tiny pinprick, but it is growing brighter.

The Mental Yo-Yo!

I almost feel as if I can appreciate mood swings the likes of which my Bi-Polar son experiences.

Super duper highs one moment to feeling beneath the dirt on your shoes the next.

The highs are incredible and I hold onto them with fervor whenever the lows pop up (which is happening a lot more lately.

One of my super-duper bestest buds called last night telling me her contractor hubby was free Saturday to come help on our home. So we dropped all our less important activities and got to work.

Adios Kitchen!

I’d say it was nice knowing you but I’d be lying. Especially with discovering all the hidden secrets you’ve been keeping in your closet over the past couple of years.

Be warned – If it’s anywhere near meal-time you will not want to view these next few visuals.
You may loose your appetite for an entire week. I nearly lost lunch seeing this after we ripped the counters out. Eewwww!

The rot was so bad under the dishwasher that once the vinyl was up you could stick a finger through all layers of floor without really trying.

So the highs had to be that fact that we are actually moving towards resolving this mess, the lows are seeing how bad it is.

Highs – Good friends who volunteer to help. Yes there are angels among us.

Lows – It’s still ugly and we have no sink for the immediate future.

Had another whammy when Erik went to work to pick up our truck. We’ve kept it at his work for a couple of weeks to dry it out – it tends to get wet with no back window in it and you live in the pacific northwest.

Well the whammy came when he went into the parking garage this morning and the truck was missing.

He had forgot to leave his employee parking permit in the window and security had the blasted truck towed. They have our license number on file – you think they could have called. Nope.
So towing fee + daily $60 impound fee (And they are closed over the weekends as well, so we automatically have to wait until Monday to get our hands on it) Cost = $500plus!!! Poor Prince Erik is kicking himself so hard he might leave bruises.

I’m laughing right now – not crying like a normal person would be. I’m also grilling my kids to see who broke the mirror or walked under a ladder because you just can’t get such bad luck. This will be one year end that will live in infamy in our family’s memories. The Winter everything went wrong. EVERYTHING! But it will pass.

So I went to our church’s Relief Society party feeling all ‘Wo Is Me’, blah, blah, and cursing my horrible luck and making my friends suffer through my whining. I was channeling the Grinch to a T. My turning point was when our Ladies president started going piece by piece through the symbols of the nativity.

Then it happened, I got a wonderful Ah-Ha, Ding-Ding-Ding-Ding moment.

Sure my house has humbled me to my knees over the past few weeks. But in doing so I’ve received an amazing gift. For a moment, at the party, I gained an even bigger appreciation for how I’ve been given this amazing experience to share with my Children.

Grinch, “Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store”. “Maybe Christmas… perhaps…means a little bit more!”

Maybe it’s remembering the most humble Christmas ever. The first Christmas! You can’t get much humbler than giving birth to the Savior of the World in a smelly animal stable.

So believe it or not I’m excited, grinning my goofy grin because I tasted the true meaning of Christmas. And I’m going to hang onto it for all it’s worth. And I’ll try my darndest to help my kids see the beauty of a simple Christmas.

And what happened then…?
Well…in Who-ville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart
Grew three sizes that day!