Change is Good
You take for granted all the little niceties that are part of your daily life at home with mom & dad. Electricity, a shower, furniture, a TV. We used to be afraid to leave the house with the lights on. One night our dining room light just sort-of fizzed out! We didn’t have a refrigerator as the present electric could not handle the drain of a modern one or of an electric stove either. Until the electricians had finished, we bought our food from the little market down the street, kept it in a cooler and cooked with a hibachi grill-isn’t love grand! Those claw foot tubs sure are pretty until you are getting ready for work and realize you have to take a bath-because you don’t have a shower! Solved that problem pretty quick by buying an old fashioned ring tub enclosure-yes they still sold them at Sears!
The kitchen was our first interior project on a grand scale. It had a hosier cabinet for cabinet and counter space. I used a card table as my center island. I remember using a heat gun to strip paint off the woodwork and feeling a bit woozy till we opened some windows. Lead paint-who knew!?! I asked hubby to hang a plant in front of the window and it nearly brought the ceiling down on top of him. Apparently the tub had been leaking down through the ceiling for years. The plaster was being held in place by the wallpaper-oops! We hired a contractor and with plans in hand proceeded to change them till he had to revise his original estimate. Now we learned to appreciate the kitchen we already had. Once the electrical work was complete we could have a stove and refrigerator. Now that the room had to be gutted for the new kitchen, the refrigerator was in the sitting room and the stove was pushed against the wall in the dining room-unplugged. What were we going to do for a sink-why the bathtub of course-on the second floor!
Like all projects you start out full of enthusiasm. Midway through you are less enthusiastic, less tolerant, and tired of washing dishes in a plastic basin in your tub. You have grilled every meat in every way you know how and are on a first-name basis with your pizza delivery guy. Your backsplash is held up because the tiny, little accent tile you have chosen is still on its way from Italy. You also think it is a great idea to seal the tile yourself-it will save you a hundred dollars. You don’t count on being on your hands and knees for hours with a minute paint brush cleaning the grout lines of dust partials before you brush on the sealant.
Now being a pro at do-it-yourself, I decide to stain and varnish the tongue-in-groove wood ceiling I have chosen. I am half way through before I realize I have been doing things bass-akward, sealing before staining. Anyway the painted white ceiling in the bedroom looks lovely! We wised up a bit and sent the trim to be professionally dipped & stripped. I stripped the doors myself and refinished them. Let’s say it is not my favorite project.
You take for granted all the little niceties that are part of your daily life at home with mom & dad. Electricity, a shower, furniture, a TV. We used to be afraid to leave the house with the lights on. One night our dining room light just sort-of fizzed out! We didn’t have a refrigerator as the present electric could not handle the drain of a modern one or of an electric stove either. Until the electricians had finished, we bought our food from the little market down the street, kept it in a cooler and cooked with a hibachi grill-isn’t love grand! Those claw foot tubs sure are pretty until you are getting ready for work and realize you have to take a bath-because you don’t have a shower! Solved that problem pretty quick by buying an old fashioned ring tub enclosure-yes they still sold them at Sears!
The kitchen was our first interior project on a grand scale. It had a hosier cabinet for cabinet and counter space. I used a card table as my center island. I remember using a heat gun to strip paint off the woodwork and feeling a bit woozy till we opened some windows. Lead paint-who knew!?! I asked hubby to hang a plant in front of the window and it nearly brought the ceiling down on top of him. Apparently the tub had been leaking down through the ceiling for years. The plaster was being held in place by the wallpaper-oops! We hired a contractor and with plans in hand proceeded to change them till he had to revise his original estimate. Now we learned to appreciate the kitchen we already had. Once the electrical work was complete we could have a stove and refrigerator. Now that the room had to be gutted for the new kitchen, the refrigerator was in the sitting room and the stove was pushed against the wall in the dining room-unplugged. What were we going to do for a sink-why the bathtub of course-on the second floor!
Like all projects you start out full of enthusiasm. Midway through you are less enthusiastic, less tolerant, and tired of washing dishes in a plastic basin in your tub. You have grilled every meat in every way you know how and are on a first-name basis with your pizza delivery guy. Your backsplash is held up because the tiny, little accent tile you have chosen is still on its way from Italy. You also think it is a great idea to seal the tile yourself-it will save you a hundred dollars. You don’t count on being on your hands and knees for hours with a minute paint brush cleaning the grout lines of dust partials before you brush on the sealant.
Now being a pro at do-it-yourself, I decide to stain and varnish the tongue-in-groove wood ceiling I have chosen. I am half way through before I realize I have been doing things bass-akward, sealing before staining. Anyway the painted white ceiling in the bedroom looks lovely! We wised up a bit and sent the trim to be professionally dipped & stripped. I stripped the doors myself and refinished them. Let’s say it is not my favorite project.
But in the end....it will be even nicer!
No comments:
Post a Comment