Things That Are Kicking My Butt These Days

Here are some photos of the current state of our house.  This is why my brother laughed when I said it might go on the market next week.

 When Rob came home last night, I was using Chomp (much better than Dif!) to remove wallpaper in our front hall. This looks like a lot, but is actually like 12% of the hallway. Groan. I was watching Justin Bieber's "Never Say Never," which lets you know a little about my mental state at the time. Rob said I can call and get an estimate for its removal and also texturing.

 Oh, and then there's this pile of stuff. And the dog.  The dog is fine. He is choosing to sleep through most of this process.

 The hallway needed some crack repair and nail hole patching.  However, the owners did not leave paint color names, and I could not for the life of me match the color.  (The hallway color was the same as the color in the photo below.) I first chose to paint it the same Swiss Mocha as the kitchen, then realized it looked lovely in the kitchen but like a hospital ward in the back hallway.  This is (I believe) Desert Tan.  I realized about five seconds into the painting that I needed to check this new color against the carpet, so am currently waiting for the carpet guy to drop by the sample I chose.  Please go together. PLEASE go together.

Here you can see what I did the other day: patching cracks and nail holes.  Again, like with the hallway, I couldn't match this color and will have to repaint the largest room in my house.  I am softly crying right now.  No, I'm not.  I'm fine.  I am a fast painter.  This is the job that I think I'm least dreading.

If you're wondering about all the painting, the thing is that our house looked fine before we started all this.  But minor things sometimes require major work.  The realtor mentioned that the color in the kitchen needed an update and that it didn't look professional.  That led to priming, sanding, patching, and several layers of one color, only to realize it needed a flat coat and another color.  Patching nail holes and dings in our room and the boys rooms was easy because I know those colors. I chose them.  But in these rooms that I don't know, I had to buy.  Stripping wallpaper also requires painting. I would not have stripped it knowing we had just a few weeks to get ready for the move, but I had already stripped it months ago and just had the under-paper.  I really thought I could paint over it, but it bubbled.  So: strip and sand and prime and paint. Ugh!

To save (some) money on paint, I have chosen colors that all work together and used some in several rooms. I also plan to keep a record of ALL the colors for the new owners.  You know, in case they want to paint something and like what we used.

Now, here are a few things I'm doing well.

 I left the caulk gun and dirty towel in there to keep it real.  But I am going through and caulking things that should have been caulked but never were: like our tub. The guys we hired to tile used grout, and it didn't look right and really needed caulk.  I (of course) did not take before pictures, but I think you can see how fresh and clean this looks now.

Especially here, where there is no dirty towel and you can't even see the toys in the bathtub.  I need to scrape down a bit on the left side of the photo, but you actually can't see it in person, just in the flash of the camera.

Sorry if you are sick of all these home improvement posts!  This is pretty much the only thing going on right now, and hopefully we'll move to house shopping (and maybe doing all this kind of stuff to a new house?) in a few weeks.  Oh, and I totally fell in love with an impractical house built in 1906 with one bathroom and no central air yesterday.  LOVE.  Hopefully it will sell before we get a chance to look at it, because then Rob might have to drag me out of there as I hold onto the door jambs for dear life.  You can view it HERE until the listing is gone.