Grocery Shrink

My hopes of a timely floor installation were misguided, lol.  Everything my husband does, turns out amazing.  He’s a perfectionist and has great skills. But that means it takes time and before he can start he has to know how to do it right.  If I push him to move faster he has a stress outburst.  So I wait and tiptoe around and ask if I can do anything to help.  Around 6pm, (2 and a half hours after I expected to lay the first board) he announces he needs to buy a sliding compound miter saw and a rotating saw to lift the door trim (which was installed all the way down to the subfloor.)

I’ve been dreaming of owning a sliding compound miter saw since the first day I saw Ana White’s blog.  So initially the sound of buying a saw gave me this happy feeling deep down. But shopping for such a large tool needs time:  Reading online reviews, consulting Consumer Reports, finally choosing the exact model and then waiting for a sale/coupons or finding an online deal.  And I wanted this floor done…today.  I encouraged him to go quickly. He called me from the store, saying the good saws ranged from $400-$600.  YIKES! And that he would find someone to borrow a saw from.  What? How long will that take?

Amazingly he was back by 7 pm with NEW saws.  The drama.  And what a cool miter saw it was.  It had a laser guide light and a self retracting blade protector.  I didn’t have have the courage to ask what THAT cost.  But we have 3,000 square feet of floor left to lay as part of the kitchen remodel–it will pay for itself.

We started laying out foam underlayment.  (By “We” I mean Mom and Darren.)

Put that camera down and help us or I’m going to suck YOU up this vacuum.

 I didn’t know that the underlayment had to go up the wall 2 inches, so am glad I resisted the urge to lay it out earlier in the day for him.

The cool thing was it had this self adhesive water barrier tape stuff to connect each section to each other.  Other types of foam underlayment require an additional tape purchase (which I also didn’t know about so didn’t have on hand.)

At this point I’m living on Theraflu just to stay in the room as an emotional support.  The first row of boards goes in (I’m laying on the black foam underlayment saying things like, “Wow, you are amazing.” “I’m so glad you know how to do things.”  “This is looking great.”

And Darren says stuff like, “How do you make sure this floor is square with the wall?” “It’s floating, will it move off square?”  “Did you notice any squeaks in the floor that I should fix before we go further.”  (I’m thinking, “Don’t stop!  Don’t get distracted…lol.”)

At this point I figured out I could help and stopped taking pictures.

We knew we wanted to off-set the seams in the floor and since these were manufactured boards and not real hardwood, every board was the same length.  It turns out, when he cut the last board in the row to fit, the rest of the board could start the next row automatically varying the seams.  Perfect! And no waste.

There were only a few different patterns of boards (which we didn’t’ realize until we had locked two identical boards in side by side.)  Which Darren was NOT happy about, but I said my phrase that had been my signature phrase for days, “There will be so many beautiful things in this room that no one is going to look at THAT.”  (That referring to any flaw that was bothering Darren at the moment.)

After the third row of flooring went down, Darren told me the story of a youtube video he watched.  A handy-man videoed his non-handy wife laying the floor,  click click click.  I listened to this and I thought, if she can do it, I can do it.  So while he went to cut the last board of the previous row, I clicked in the next row.  It WAS easy.

So for the next few hours we worked like that. I almost forgot I had the flu.  Then 1:30 am hit and the night-time Theraflu dose was forcing me to sleep.  I reluctantly left my Mom and Darren to finish.  When I heard him come downstairs to bed, I looked at the clock, 5:30 am!!  My poor mother husband!

“When did Mom leave?”

“Oh, she left early–around 4.”

Me “Gasp.” When I planned this project I expected to be miserable myself, but I didn’t mean to make everyone else miserable too.  I need to learn more wood working skills!

After a few more hour sleep it was time to move in. This was the best day ever.  We had a ton of work to do before Heather got home the next morning:

 Hang the curtains and artwork.

Assemble the bed.

Clean up the hall. Cringe.  And reinstall her doors.

Sort through all her things still in Caleb’s room and create a place for everything so she could keep it clean.

Rub and Buff Gold the details on the white frames.

Annie Sloan Clear Wax a protective coat on the painted desk.

Heidi was amazing!  I was still not feeling great and stumbled around in a fog while she was the real brains behind the organization.  Mom was sick from staying up so late the night before.  (I feel really badly about that.) I called her to let her know we were doing ok and just to rest.

Already dark again?  And there was still so much to do!  Darren was busy nailing in trim around all the furniture I moved in prematurely.

 At 2 am, we called it quits and went to bed.

Tomorrow — is the big reveal 🙂

Sickness had me knocked to the curb.  I got up early and try to prep the room for Darren to lay flooring but only got as far as emptying out the room.  I was supposed to paint the closet trim, lay the underlayment and carry up the boards.  But it wasn’t happening.

My mom showed up soon after to help me cut out the upholstered headboard from the 4 x 8 sheet of plywood I bought the day before.  (Thinking of a shape like above) She also brought upholsterer’s batting and a bolt of white satin with woven roses on it for a slip cover (all from her stash.) She found me on my office floor pinning Heather’s duvet cover together.  She helped me pin and encouraged me to sew it right then.  It felt great to get that part done.  I had found a duvet insert at Cargo Largo (salvage and surplus shop) while I was there looking for painting supplies.  It was $20, the same price I could get Target’s cheapest option (I expect a discount at CL).  But Target was sold out and this one was better quality, so I grabbed it.  We stuffed the new comforter inside the cover and it looked amazing.  All it needed was snap closures to finish it off.

We went out back to look at the plywood next to the Craigslist trundle bed I snagged for $50.  It was originally ugly and I had planned to scrap the original headboard and foot board and use the hardware from the bed on a new head and foot set that Darren would build. Darren was so swamped with other projects, that I just painted the original set instead.  It was adorable!

We held up the plywood and tried to imagine the finished curved headboard between the spindle foot and head.  Our silence was full of words.  We looked at each other and both said, “Why do this?” The painted bed was cute all by itself and a totally different style than the upholstered piece would be.  It was going to take all day and I was sick.  Darren came out and volunteered to take the plywood back to the store and get my $25 back.  And I wouldn’t have to buy 2″ foam…..

She went home, and I went to bed.  I could hear Darren on his lunch break watching youtube videos on how to install the new floor…maybe this day would work out after all.

This was the day I’d been waiting for, the day I got to see the new wall color for real.  First I had to put a coat of paint on the ceiling, finish painting the wood trim, wash the ceiling texture off the walls, then patch, sand and prime them. No problem, right?  

Also, I had to find a solution for the floor problem since whatever we went with had to be finished by the next night.

I got up early and painted the ceiling with a gusto.  I kept telling myself that the streaks would disappear when the paint dried.  They didn’t.  Heidi tried to help me roll, but it proved to be even more awkward for her than it was for me.  So she washed dishes and did other chores around the house to let me keep working.  Mom showed up again and took the boys back home with her.  She has an acre backyard, a wii, and cookies—what more could boys want?

As soon as the ceiling paint was up, I painted the baseboards their final coats of paint. Then Heidi brought in a bucket of water and wiped down the walls, while I mudded behind her.  The goal was to finish by lunch.  Then go shopping for flooring options come back and sand and paint.  We made it!  it felt so awesome to finally be on track.

On our way to the car, I noticed a curtain rod, finials and brackets from my old dining room window sitting in a corner of construction stuff.  They were almost identical to the $50 set I just bought, except that the rod was too short.  I grabbed the new finials and brackets to take back to the store….the price of them would more than cover new hardware for Heather’s desk.

We shopped at 3 different hardware stores for flooring and at the last one, found a special price set of hand scraped dark hickory laminate boards for $.99 a square foot. They were by far prettier than anything else we’d seen, so I used my blogging money plus the return money to buy the floor, underlayment, new desk nobs, and a huge sheet of plywood for Heather’s headboard.

Finally it was time to paint.  I cut in while Heidi rolled behind me.  She’s a good wall roller!  We were halfway around the room when I realized one gallon wasn’t going to cut it.  My sister, Elizabeth had just called and offered to come over at seven to help paint.  If I left right then,  I could buy a gallon of paint and be back before Elizabeth got there.  It felt like my wallet was bleeding money.  How much was this room redo costing in total?  I made plans to figure that out soon.

When I pulled in with the paint there were several cars in front of my house.  Elizabeth was walking up to the door and Mom was bringing back the boys.  But who’s was the third car?  I stepped inside and met 2 priesthood men from church in their best suits and scriptures under their arms.  That’s right! We had a family visit set up for tonight.  I knew it two days ago, but in the bustle of the day, I totally forgot.

Elizabeth is such a great sport.  She went with Heidi up to the room and took over my job of cutting in.  They 2nd coated the room while I visited with the priesthood about our family struggles, our concerns for the church and ways they could help us be a stronger more faithful family.

When our visit was over, I peeled off the asbestos floor tiles out of the closets (leaving behind still sticky black tar) while Elizabeth pulled out the closet trim and pounded the nails.  Darren gave the ceiling a final coat of paint–which made it look amazing!

Then I started to sneeze, and sneeze and sneeze.  My throat hurt, my head pounded…..I was sick.  It came on all of a sudden.  Not. Good. Timing.

The plan for Day 5 was to prime and then paint the ceiling.  Then catch up on laundry and dishes and cook a real meal.

The wrencher:  the fresh mud from the night before still needed sanding.  I got up early and went after it.  Oh man…this was serious work.  My whole body was sore from the efforts of the last 3 days.

My new goal was to be done with sanding by noon then clean up all the dust and be ready for priming.   But the boys were running crazy–chasing, fighting, screaming.  Leaving piles of tiny toys in their wake.  I called Mom who came and took them home to her house, whew!  Just the help I needed.

Darren came home for lunch–which was perfect timing, I needed his eye to see the spots I missed.  Since I had my heart set on a perfectly smooth ceiling, the sanding needed to be perfect too.  He found several spots I needed to fix….it was a good thing I had him look.

I could see my dream of catching up on laundry in a pile on the dusty floor.  I went downstairs to get a drink of water and found my 13 year old daughter on the sofa, watching D.C. Cupcakes on Netflix and surrounded with beautiful piles of clean folded laundry.  Both machines were humming and she had a fresh basket of clothes in front of her that she was working on.  I love that girl!  Now why didn’t I take a picture?!!!

I created the red wine chicken recipe on the fly during my water break. I wasn’t sure it would turn out, but  I could smell it cooking towards the evening, Even though I didn’t get done working in time for the meal I had hoped for, that chicken was AMAZING!  We ate it without any side dishes, lol.

By evening, I had the first coat of primer on the ceiling.  And had pulled the baseboards and primed them too. Mom and Dad brought the boys home and came in to see my work.  Dad said, “Now that you have the primer on, you’ll be able to see better the spots you need to mud and sand again.”  Um, Dad, those are fighting words.  I am DONE mudding and sanding ceilings, maybe forever.  

Day 3 was brutal.  We went to church in the morning, came home for a fast lunch of creamy tortilla soup from the slow cooker.  And then to work! Normally we would nap, study and do other sacred things on this day. But my ox was in the ditch to make our deadline before Heather’s return.

The plan was to give the ceiling a quick sanding and then prime it in time for a nap and off to church in the evening.  Bwa ha ha ha.  What was I thinking?

I sanded down the ceiling from the first mudding job and saw that it need another coat of mud.  I’m not a fan of working with my arms overhead.  My shoulders muscles were getting really pinched feeling, but I found out I could keep going if I kept icy hot on them.

Darren was frustrated that I started this project even though our kitchen is not finished.  My excuse was: I wasn’t about to let some contract workers who couldn’t meet a deadline steal my daughter’s birthday surprise.  That is just not right.  My Mama Bear was raging.  So I said some stuff I shouldn’t have, and picked a fight with Darren when he was still in Sunday mode–resting. Did he not get the memo? This week was not going to be fun, but the look on our little girl’s face would be worth it.

Somehow he still found it in his heart to help me in the afternoon.  He started to tear up our family room floor which we planned to reuse in Heather’s room for a no-cost option.  We had already planned to replace that area as part of the kitchen remodel.  Only, the tongues were glued to the grooves and there’s no way to uninstall it without destroying each board.  He called the previous home owner just to make sure.  Things were not looking good.

I said, “Let’s buy her a laminate wood floor.”  He said, “That will be $500.”  I rolled my eyes.  Then got out my tape measure.  I found the cheapest laminate and underlayment I could—It was $450.  He was right.  Phooey!  I could paint the underlayment with porch paint….only I’d have to buy the paint.  And it would need an extra day to dry.  I could put down a paper bag floor with the leftover supplies I had from our dining room–only that needed 3 days to dry. What to do?

I took a break from the ceiling and sanded, deglossed and spray painted Heather’s bed and desk. I underestimated how much paint I needed and since rain was on it’s way, made a trip to the hardware store for more.  I looked fabulous:

While at the store I also purchase a wooden curtain rod, finials and rod holders ($50!) for her window.  And shopped for new drawer pulls.  With all the shopping I did ahead of time, I hadn’t thought of everything and it was adding up.  Her desk is not good furniture and buying 2 cans of spray paint, 1 can of primer, and 1 bottle of deglosser was $20, plus new hardware would be between $12 and $20 more —I needed time to think about it.  Did I really want to put that much money into junk furniture?  I left without hardware.

My mom showed up late afternoon.  Darren abandoned the frustrating floor to help her with the ceiling. Both of them are way better at mudding than I am and several hours later the ceiling had a new coat of mud.

It still needed to dry and then be sanded down again.  But it was way past bedtime.  We were officially behind schedule.  I showered and made peace with my husband.  We both agreed that we would hire the ceiling mudding for our big kitchen project.  I went to sleep praying for strength to be nice during the rest of the project and vowed to remember that people are more important than projects.

The goal for Day 3 was to peel the popcorn off the ceiling, then remove the carpet and baseboards.  I woke up to the sounds of Eden’s tree crew in my yard!  Hooray!  It was going to be an even better day than I thought. They had 2 climbers.  One was the best climber in the midwest (not pictured.)  This second guy was really good too.  And hilarious.  The first guy was having promotional pictures taken while he worked on our property.  The second guy said, “Hey, I want my picture taken too.  I want to be famous.”

Another crew member said, “Can’t, You’re too pretty.  We are about tree service here and if we put your picture on the flyer, girls would be calling for dates.  We’re not that kind of company.”  So here you go on my blog.  Now you can be semi-famous–second tree climber.  

They took down 2 huge walnut trees growing way too close to the house.  The climber would cut off 3 foot sections.  Tie it off and then slowly lower it down to the crew on the ground.  This made sure they didn’t crack the driveway just dropping stuff and to make sure nothing hit the roof.  When the logs were on the ground, many of them were hollow.  The tree was not healthy and I’m glad we didn’t put off the project any longer.

But back to Heather’s room.  Heidi was faithful to work with me until the project was done.  What a great big sister!

Darren got into the action a little too.

We finished in just about an hour–hooray!  So after lunch, we worked on mudding and patching the divets.  I was feeling really great about things at this point.  Since we weren’t scheduled to mud until tomorrow…but ahem, patching and sanding is a LOOOONG process, especially for the unskilled.  Time would tell that if we hadn’t started patching early, we would be too far behind to make our deadline.  Lesson for the day: rest when the project is done.  If there’s still time  keep plugging ahead.

We said goodbye to Heather at 5:00 pm on Friday.  As soon as the car was out of sight, we started working.  I was hoping that Heather didn’t forget anything and decide to come back for it—not sure what story I would have told, lol.  This is My daughter Heidi with her friend JJ and little sister Bea (names changed to protect the girls.)  What a pretty crew!

Bea is one of Heather’s closest friends.  She called not long after Heather left to see if Heather could walk down the street to play.  I told her the sad news that Heather would be out of town for the week, and then told her why.  She said, “Why didn’t you tell me!!!! This is a huge surprise.  If someone did this for me, I would die!”  Then she rushed over with big sister support to lend a hand.

Here’s Heather’s room before:

It’s a big room–15 x 11.5 feet.  With a small walk in closet (door above) for storage and a 6 foot traditional hallway closet leading into the room where Heather puts her clothes.

Here’s a close up of the toy eating orange shag.  In it’s defense, it is super soft and I’m sure it’s super cool.  Only I’m not cool enough to appreciate it….

Bea assured me it IS super cool.  She said, “You’re getting rid of this carpet?!!!!! I LOVE this carpet.  Can I have it for MY room?”  Sorry, Bea, but it fell apart in the removal process—it is 43 years old you know.

The pretty crew had Heather’s room packed up and empty in 30 minutes.

We stacked all the stuff across the hall in a corner of brother Caleb’s room.  He was not thrilled.  It’s only for 6 days, Caleb.  Deep breath.  (Yep his room is original to the house too.  Red shag and check out that wall paper.  He loved it when we first moved in, but is ready for a change too. Only I can’t talk about that right now….too many projects going on.)

Darren ran out to get McDonalds, because I had hives already just thinking about the next 6 days.  I spent the rest of the evening cutting, hemming, ruffling, pinning and sewing on ruffles for Heather’s duvet cover.  I finally called it quits at midnight.  That’s a lot of ruffles….

When I’m done, it will look something like this–only in ombre:

Duvet originally from Urban Outfitters, but discontinued.

That’s the end of the short day 1.  Tomorrow I’ll show you day 2.

We’ve  lived in our gigantic house that needs lots of love for 18 months now.  The first room we did was our oldest daughter’s bedroom.  She is 13 and will graduate High School in 5 years.  It could be 5 years before we get to every room in our home–so we wanted her to be able to enjoy hers as long as possible.

You can imagine how our second daughter felt about all this.  She was a great sport, but it was a little hard to see Heidi’s beautiful new room and to be living in an orange shag paradise for who knows how long. About a year ago, Heidi and I started planning a huge birthday surprise for Heather.  We started a pinterest board for her and encouraged her to pin room inspiration ideas that she loved.

She pinned these:

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Whew, that’s a pretty big mix of styles.  And if pressed, Heather doesn’t like to choose just one.  So Heidi and I decided we would try to surprise her, choosing from the elements she loves.  Here’s what we decided:

1.  Curvy daybed with lots of pillows in bright fabrics

2.  Turquoise blue walls (we are going VERY pale to let the other brighter elements in the room take center stage)

3.  Hardwood floors–her previous shag rug ate small toys.  I also want to add a fun area rug–so far it’s sold out and won’t make it here in time for our big reveal :(.

4.  Paint her desk in a fun accent color (we chose coral pink.)

5.  A bed drape with bed crown

6.  A huge furry beanbag

7.  A gallery art wall

8.  A reading corner with hula hoop tent

9.  White trim to make the light blue walls pop

Darren’s mom came and picked Heather up last Friday to spend the week at the farm.  All Heather knows is that it’s her turn with Grandma.  And I don’t think she suspects much even though I’ve had to sew on things while she was home last week.  We have 6 days to complete the transformation–and there’s no HGTV crew here to make the magic happen.

Come back tomorrow to see our day 1 progress.