The House, Part 1

So, I am finding myself struggling to come up with interesting, funny material for the blog. I don't have many standard stories left. I began to think over the things I had done in recent years to see if there was a story in there. Then I remembered, THE HOUSE! Some of you have already heard this story, but it was pretty funny, if I do say so myself. So I am posting the original email I sent out to my peeps keeping them updated on the renovation process...

...the other thing that has me so busy is my new home. I am moving into my grandmother's old house. No one has lived in it since she died 8 years ago. But she wasn't a very diligent cleaner due to age and short stature. Two less inches and she would have been considered a little person. Many things higher than arm level were just never cleaned. And, the amounts of spiderwebs are really scary. But no actual spiders, so that is good, yet strange. Anyway, it is an old farm house. Probably built in the 20's or 30's. And for the last few years, everyone in the family has been using it as storage for any and everything. Let me give you a run down of the layout.

I am only using the back rooms. That is where the kitchen and bathroom are, and this will prevent me from having to heat and cool the whole house. So I will be making the back door my main door. Besides, I think I am allergic to the carpeting in the front rooms. Anyway, the back porch is a bit on the rickety side. Well, it will be motivation to keep my weight down so as not to cause it to cave in. Some genius left a box of newpapers and magazines on the back porch. They of course got rained on and have caused the floor beneath them to rot.

The kitchen is the worst room, at least I think so for now. I wonder if it was ever cleaned. The ceilings are probably 13 feet high (that's higher than a regular room, right?). Above the stove, there was years worth of grease splatters all the way to the top. I had to break out the Thunder Blast to get it off. Thunder Blast is the most amazing cleaner EVER! 20 year old grease comes off like it was nothing. 2 bucks at the Dollar General. Get some. Really, you will be astounded. Back to the kitchen. The top cabinets were pretty bad. Not as bad as the bottoms, but I will get to that. Anyway, they had this contact paper from the 70's in them. Thumbtacked to the wall and shelves. Hundreds of little green thumb tacks. Everywhere. During the great cleanout, my sister and I had found probably twenty half used packages of thumbtacks. We wondered why there were so many half used packages of tacks, but none in the wall or no corkboards to put them in. Now we know.

So, I got all of the groovy contact paper out of there and began the chore of cleaning them. Then I got to finally start painting. I did the top of the walls in this yellowy orange color much like that of Cheez It's. I guess I was a little hungry when picking out the color. The bottom portion is brick red. On the top part, we did a painting technique using plastic sacks. It was fun at first, but toward the end, up near the ceiling, it became less so.

Next I tackled the cabinets. I was really ambitious and took the doors off their hinges which I then stripped and spray painted. The poor things had been painted over at least 3 times. They needed to start over. I sanded all the paint ridges down. I then started the fun job of painting them. It actually wasn't too bad. Then I moved down to the lower cabinets and began removing them. See, everyone thought someone else had cleaned them. No one, of course, had. And at some point in time, there was a filth explosion. There was brown stuff splattered everywhere. We came up with some fun theories, the grossest of which was rats with explosive diarreaha. It was so weird. The brown splatters were mostly contained to the far right cabinets. There were some splatters on the far right wall, but nothing at all in the middle. And trust me, the middle hadn't been wiped down, possibly ever. So the mysterious brown splatters were removed, as well as more thumbtacks. Painting occured. Prettiness followed.

The bathroom will be the next room I work on. There wasn't ever a shower installed. Just a tub. And cabinets were placed above the foot of the tub. When we removed the cabinets, we realized that they were built into the wall. Well to be more precised, they were installed over some groovy teal wallpaper featuring a peacock and pink orchids, then sheet rock or something was installed around the cabinets. So, this will have to be fixed. While cleaning out the bathroom, we kept finding all of these bottles of shoe polish. Probably 20 bottles. And these people did not wear white shoes or decorate cars for game day. What was all of the polish for? That is coming up. Just keep thinking about it. Anyway, back to the bathroom. I am going to install new tile panels and fixtures. I am nervous, but I have watched Trading Spaces and Chris of Austin work, and I think I can do it.

What room next. Oh, the entry way. This is the wash room/ computer room, and probably my pseudo walk-in closet, as my bedroom is ill-equipped for this clothes and shoe horse. It has unattractive paneling which I am going to use to my advantage and turn into striped walls. The most fun thing about the entry room is the door facings. I noticed that they were browning from dirty hands returning from the fields. So I got the trusty Thunder Blast out and began scrubbing away. The more I scrubbed, the more white "paint" began to wear away. And it was strangely foamy. At first, I thought that my superhuman strength might have finally kicked in. Then I realized. It wasn't white paint. It was white shoe polish! Now I know where my habit of "touching up" my black attire with a Sharpie came from.

The bedroom is rather unremarkable. Although, I did discover that the rugs had been nailed to the floor. That will ensure that it doesn't move. Taryn is probably thinking about to doing that to her rug right now. Also, the bedroom is home to the one and only three prong outlet.

The last room is the former dining room, now living room. There were these cool black metal shelves, probably about 8 feet tall. Well, they rusted a bit at the bottom, and discolored the floor. While bleach has done little to fix the problem, I have high hopes for Thunder Blast. The dining room used to be home to a large freezer filled with mayhaws and turkeys. Andie and I managed to move that thing by ourselves into the old living room. We were very proud. Men were disbelieving. But my niece vouched for us. We actually just put the thing on some boards and pushed it on its "skis." Pretty smart, huh? My idea. Oh, the weirdest thing in the soon to be living room: exposed breaker box. It isn't built into the wall. It's just all exposed. With a large wire/cord coming out of. I think that the cord goes to the washer, but I am not sure. What I do know is that it is large and ugly. I think a ficus tree will cover it nicely.

Well, that is my future home. More tales to follow.