The sanding in the family room is DONE!!! FINISHED! COMPLETE!
WOOHOO!!!
AND....the painting in the master bedroom is finished as well! Touch-ups commenced tonight and, if all goes well, we might actually be sleeping in our new bed before the end of January! WOW!
(I've gotten so used to sleeping on a mattress on the floor that sleeping in anything higher than 4 inches above the ground seems daring, radical even!)
Speaking of the master bedroom.....
While stripping the windows, I called out my discoveries to Jasun as each layer of history was peeled back: "Red! This trim was painted a bright red before the white high gloss latex!" Then, "Ooooh, look at this olive green. Wow, that's pretty, almost the same shade as the color we were thinking of putting in here." And finally, the Reveal: "Oh my gosh! Jas, come look at this! This is the original paint color! It's the exact same shade as the paint color that we're using!! COOL!"
That's right! Completely by accident, we are painting the master bedroom trim the exact same shade that it was painted by the original owners sometime in the '30s. How's THAT for restoration?
Monday, January 21, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Doing it Right vs. Doing it FAST
"I hate this house!"
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I felt myself stagger backwards a little under the force of them. I knew that Jas was frustrated, knew that those words had been germinating for several weeks now, lodged just inside his throat, but how could he say them? Our ship had officially entered Dangerous Waters, and I had a mutiny on my hands.
"Jas, I know you're frustrated. Seriously, I know. I'm frustrated too. This has taken a lot longer than we thought, but we signed on for this. This is what we wanted...together, right?
"Well, I guess not."
So final, those words. What could I say to that? This moment would pass, just as all of the others had. We had been doing this back-and-forth for months now. One of us would get so frustrated that we'd throw up our hands and stomp into the makeshift family room in the back of the house, desperate for a break, convinced that the dust and clutter and construction would never end. The other person's job at moments like that, whether they truly believed it or not, was to say an encouraging word, provide a hug, and then continue working, with the intention of giving the other person hope that, someday, this too would pass. Today was simply Jasun's turn to be The Frustrated One and my turn to be The Encouraging One....except that he'd said the banned phrase: "I hate this house." Ouch.
"I'm tired of camping on our mattress in the spare bedroom!" he continued. "It takes me an extra 15 minutes to get ready in the morning because my clothes are in piles on the floors of two different rooms! There is dust everywhere, and I'm sick of it!"
"But you like camping!" I said, at a loss to come up with anything better. No smile met my attempt at humor. "Go downstairs," I said, softly but firmly. "Take a break. I'll take care of this."
The final straw that had released this maelstrom was the question of the windows in the master bedroom. While I've been sanding my heart out downstairs in the family room, Jas has been painting the master bedroom. Sounds easy, yes? Except that we've chosen a scheme that requires him to paint all of the trim in the room, sometimes in two different colors, and the room has a lot of trim: baseboards, closets, bookcases, a large built-in dresser, and two very old wooden windows. During the summer, the wood in the windows expands just enough that we can barely force the windows open due to several decades' worth of caked paint globules that surround the stops. Since we're restoring this house, I wanted to strip the excess paint from the stops only, which requires taking out the windows, stripping the stops, and then painting the windows and the stops separately. This process would take longer, but ensure free-sliding windows, and a more professional-looking paint job. Jas, on the other hand, was torn. I could see the internal struggle in his face as we talked about the windows before his outburst. Of course he wanted to do this right and he wanted everything to look good, but he also just wanted a bedroom to sleep in where he didn't feel as if he was living like a vagabond. He knew the right course of action. It was just a matter of doing it, and his brain was screaming at him, "I don't want to do that! That's going to take a long time!"
The words hit me like a physical blow, and I felt myself stagger backwards a little under the force of them. I knew that Jas was frustrated, knew that those words had been germinating for several weeks now, lodged just inside his throat, but how could he say them? Our ship had officially entered Dangerous Waters, and I had a mutiny on my hands.
"Jas, I know you're frustrated. Seriously, I know. I'm frustrated too. This has taken a lot longer than we thought, but we signed on for this. This is what we wanted...together, right?
"Well, I guess not."
So final, those words. What could I say to that? This moment would pass, just as all of the others had. We had been doing this back-and-forth for months now. One of us would get so frustrated that we'd throw up our hands and stomp into the makeshift family room in the back of the house, desperate for a break, convinced that the dust and clutter and construction would never end. The other person's job at moments like that, whether they truly believed it or not, was to say an encouraging word, provide a hug, and then continue working, with the intention of giving the other person hope that, someday, this too would pass. Today was simply Jasun's turn to be The Frustrated One and my turn to be The Encouraging One....except that he'd said the banned phrase: "I hate this house." Ouch.
"I'm tired of camping on our mattress in the spare bedroom!" he continued. "It takes me an extra 15 minutes to get ready in the morning because my clothes are in piles on the floors of two different rooms! There is dust everywhere, and I'm sick of it!"
"But you like camping!" I said, at a loss to come up with anything better. No smile met my attempt at humor. "Go downstairs," I said, softly but firmly. "Take a break. I'll take care of this."
The final straw that had released this maelstrom was the question of the windows in the master bedroom. While I've been sanding my heart out downstairs in the family room, Jas has been painting the master bedroom. Sounds easy, yes? Except that we've chosen a scheme that requires him to paint all of the trim in the room, sometimes in two different colors, and the room has a lot of trim: baseboards, closets, bookcases, a large built-in dresser, and two very old wooden windows. During the summer, the wood in the windows expands just enough that we can barely force the windows open due to several decades' worth of caked paint globules that surround the stops. Since we're restoring this house, I wanted to strip the excess paint from the stops only, which requires taking out the windows, stripping the stops, and then painting the windows and the stops separately. This process would take longer, but ensure free-sliding windows, and a more professional-looking paint job. Jas, on the other hand, was torn. I could see the internal struggle in his face as we talked about the windows before his outburst. Of course he wanted to do this right and he wanted everything to look good, but he also just wanted a bedroom to sleep in where he didn't feel as if he was living like a vagabond. He knew the right course of action. It was just a matter of doing it, and his brain was screaming at him, "I don't want to do that! That's going to take a long time!"
(Master Bedroom "Before" Picture - pretty room, but a little cave-like, don't you think?)
We (well, I) ended up stripping the window stops, and two hours later we were laughing and joking as I scraped paint while Jasun primed and painted the windows. Inevitably, the frustration (for both of us) will continue until we finish at least one room, but we'll have the satisfaction of knowing that we took longer to do things right instead of doing things fast.
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