Afters

And, now, the long-awaited after pictures. I'm really pleased with how it all turned out. It's warmer, cozier, more welcoming. I'm tired, sore, and earned a few mysterious bruises, but hey!--I didn't have to write a check for $5000 to the painter-guy.

The Scary Part

I decided to start with the easy parts--the places I could reach with my husband's 9-ft ladder. That got me pretty far, but didn't do the whole job. So, once that much was done, my husband rented me a scaffold and a beam to use with one of his ladders so that I could work on the wall above the stair case. Here's what I was working on:

The bad part about the scaffold is that it wasn't tall enough, so you see that step stool up there? I had to stand up on it to reach the very top. It wasn't toooo bad when I was in the center of the scaffold, but getting close to the edges made my stomach feel really funny.

Yes, I had to walk out on that thing. And, yes, it shook. A little. But a little feels like a lot when you're about twelve feet above the floor. I just kept telling myself, "$5000, $5000, . . . "

The afters are coming next week.

Befores

OK, here are the befores. I didn't give you every angle, and it's not like it looks awful or anything, but you have to admit that it's kinda blah. The walls are so light that they blend right into the ceiling. Plus there's very little contrast between the walls and the white trim. It's just not very warm and inviting.

Summer 2010 DIY Project #2

I told you we were do-it-yourself-ers. I also told you that we follow a pattern:

1. Decide to have something done.

2. Get a professional estimate.

3. Be shocked at the exorbitantly high quoted price.

4. Decide to do it ourselves.

Well, we did it again.

When we built our house about seven years ago, by the time we got to the painting stage I was too stressed out to choose paint colors. So, I took the safe way out. I chose a nice beige, which we used throughout the whole house.

Now, the beige did its job. It covered the walls, let us move in, and matched all our stuff. However, it didn't take long for us to become bored with the lack of color. So for a couple of years, I'd choose one room each summer to paint. Then came classes at Ole Miss, comprehensive exams, and dissertation writing. The painting was put on hold.

But this year, we said, "It's time!" We really wanted to paint the main living area of our house. Our kitchen and living room are connected in such a way that you can't paint one without painting the other, and you can see the upstairs sitting room from downstairs, so it probably should be painted too, we decided. The problem? Vaulted ceilings. About 18 feet tall in places.

We'd painted the whole house ourselves when we first built, but it's a lot different painting with no flooring down. Then, you can nail blocks of wood right into the floor to brace ladders. Plus, there's no furniture to spill paint on and no stuff on the wall to take down.

So, although I'd done the other repainting, I suggested that we get an estimate for this job. My husband agreed. And so we did.

We called the paint store and got the name of a painter to call. We called him. He came. The verdict? $5000. Yes, that's right. $5000. Plus, he said it would take him and his assistant two weeks to do the job. Two weeks? Really? I didn't want two strange guys hanging around my house for two weeks!

Soooooo . . . . guess who decided that she could do this job? Right again. Me.

[To be continued . . .]

. . . To This

So, what all did we do? First, we laid a small stone patio off the back of the raised one. Then, we landscaped all around it with crepe myrtles on the west end (which we hope will, in the not-too-distant future, provide shade in the late afternoon and evenings), encore azaleas, firepower nandinas, and mountain snow pierises. We bought urns for the top of the columns and large pots for the stone patio, and we filled them with gorgeous red geraniums.

Of course, this patio-laying and landscaping required multiple trips to Home Depot in Cabot, where we loaded stones, and retaining wall blocks, and capstones, and edging stones onto carts, then loaded them into the back of the truck, then unloaded them from the back of the truck, then lugged them into place (or at least I lugged--my husband seemed to find it much easier to move all that heavy stuff).

A lot of work, but you know the upside? You can skip your weightlifting that day without feeling any guilt. You get a good tan. You feel a great sense of satisfaction when you survey the work that you've done, and that good feeling returns every time you enjoy the new outdoor living space you've created. And, you save a lot of money.

Another thing-- After several consecutive years of intense mental labor, it felt really good to spend a couple of weeks doing physical work instead. Although both types of work are hard, honorable, and make you tired, the tiredness is very different. When I spend whole days reading and/or writing I may accomplish a lot, but at the end of the day my brain is exhausted, my eyes won't focus, and my body feels awful. I usually have a headache, and I'm kind of sick to my stomach. Often, I don't sleep very well--I keep waking up thinking about what I haven't finished or some new idea that suddenly pops into my head. On the other hand, after a day of physical labor, my muscles may ache, but it's a good feeling. My vision's sharp, my head's clear, and nobody has to rock me to sleep.

Here are the results of our labors:

From This . . .

We are a family of do-it-yourself-ers. Oh, it doesn't always start out that way. Here's how it usually goes:

1. Decide we want something done.

2. Get a professional to give us an estimate.

3. Be shocked by the incredibly high estimate.

4. Decide that we can do it ourselves.

We did a lot of things ourselves when we were building our house. My husband did all the wiring and plumbing, and we worked together doing all the painting and laying the hardwood floors. And of course we weren't about to pay someone fifteen or twenty dollars an hour to clean up after the carpenters, so we did all that too.

The house was finished in January and we were in a hurry to move in, so the outside--lawn, flowerbeds, etc.--was not completed when we moved in. The first summer, we seeded the yard, poured sidewalks around the front and sides of the house, and landscaped those flower beds. The next summer, I designed a deck for the back of the house, and our oldest son built it (I'm sorry I don't have pictures of the completed deck to show off his excellent craftsmanship). We had not yet landscaped around the deck, though, when disaster struck.

We'd gone to early church one Sunday, come home and grilled out for lunch, and then had gone into town. Somehow, the air vent on the bottom of the grill came open, spilling hot coals out onto the deck, catching it on fire. If not for a wonderful neighbor who cared enough to stop and check as he was driving by and saw the smoke, we'd probably have lost our home. As it was, it destroyed the deck and did some damage to the back of the house, as you can see in the pictures below (The white stuff in the pictures is not snow--it's the foam sprayed by the fire department).

Anyway, to make a long story short, we tore down the deck and took a year to decide what to put in its place. We decided on a raised patio, drew out our plan, got an estimate, recovered from the shock of it, and began work on it late last summer. The only problem was, by the time it was finished, there was no patio furniture to be had (unless we wanted to pay thousands of dollars for it as a specialty store, which we didn't) and no plants left to landscape with.

So, this summer's project was to complete the patio, which we spent the first two weeks of my summer break doing. Tune in tomorrow for pictures of the completed project.

Snow Day