I am taking advantage of the break and I am in the middle of a million projects :o)
Not sure what all will get finished but I am going until the phones start ringing again. Hopefully some of them will be completed by then!
It is killing my allergies but will be better when it is completed and the dust has died down.
My carpet in the living room, dining room and hallway is GONE!!!! YEAH!!
I won't even get into how disgusting and nasty it was.
For those of you that know my dad he was here one day when the girls were taking some of it up to the dumpster and he was going to help them heft it into the dumpster. He did not try to salvage any of it -- so I rest my case on how disgusting the carpet was. Carpet and Florida are not a good mix!!
I vacuumed the floors (600 sq feet)after the carpet was taken up and filled my canister up twice with Sand and baking soda (Rox always used baking soday to refresh our carpets)!!
It just really grosses me out to know it was like that!! I knew it was just had to wait until it would not effect the shows because of my allergies (which yes are currently a mess!!)
So, right now I have bare plywood floors and we are Sanding and painting the drywall (so my bare floors are becoming speckled floors).
I have to go find some HUGE rolls of plastic today so that I can paint the ceilings. I think we are going to spray them so I have to cover the entire house with plastic. Oh I wish I had a coupon!!!
Once the ceilings are painted we are going to spray the walls so will be moving (hopefully the same plastic) down to spray the walls (or maybe they are doing the walls and then the ceilings -- not sure which they are doing first)
Once that is completed I am going to try my hand with laminate flooring.
I did a lot of research and it has some really great reviews. I was a bit leary because all I had seen was what Big Lots carried and I was not impressed at all.
I could scratch it with my fingernails!!
I found some nice laminate at a store in Brandon (found them on Craigslist). It was not the color I would have initially chose. I went strictly for price and quality. The salesman just smiled at me and then looked at Tim and said "smart woman". I don't know if he meant it or was being a salesman -- doesn't matter. He came up and said what can I show you. I said -- the best quality for the lowest price. He said -- what color? I said -- it doesn't matter -- I am on a budget. He did not push at all!!!! I guess he figured if I didn't have the budget why bother. So, a god line even you have the budget so you don't have a salesman hasseling you!
So I ended up with Caroline Hickory which was on a Managers Clearance. I feel I got a really good price. It has a 25 year warranty and looks a cinch to lay.
Oh and by the way -- for any of you do it yourself people out there. You tube has awesome instructional videos for pretty much anything.
Tim is working so a lot of this I have started while he was gone (my theory -- I can start it -- he can fix it !). It is amazing what you think needs done and then when you get into it a lot of other things start showing up. A lot of this I have just blocked out of my view during show season (to keep my sanity), but when you start breaking it down there is a lot of little things that need repaired so I am doing it while we are at it.
Anyway -- I am rambling but back to the drywall.
Any of you that have ever lived in a mobil home, double wide or modular know how insane they are with the trim boards on the walls. If they nick a wall, they grab a trim board and stick it up (even if there is already one there 1.5" away -- I don't know what they are thinking!!!). Anyway -- a lot of my more traveled areas had broken trim boards where something was being carried bumped against it and it broke. I also had an area where I had blocked puppies in and they had chewed on the trim board. So, I priced my trim -- $.79 per foot!! I have 11' ceilings and I had more than 20 that I wanted to replace -- 13 of them being 11' ones ($112.97 - before tax -- this does not include the shorter ones)!! So this is where the youtube videos come in. I started researching. I had an idea how I could fix it but wanted to know how difficult it would be. I watched them mudding the drywall. Ok, I decorated cakes for over 10 years -- looked really similar (I just couldn't use a paper towel to add the texture at the end).
So, before I did something totally insane -- I called Denny to make sure it would work. He was like yeah!! No problem. So I went off to Lowes and spent Tims entire paycheck he made that day. He got home and I was like "sweetheart -- you didn't make anything today because I already spent it!!!" He just grinned at me (sleepily - he had been up since 3:30 and I think the haziness made everything look fine -- even though the house was totally torn apart and upside down).
Youtube has all the how-to videos on corner beading, mudding, sanding etc. and I had watched a lot of them so I was ready to go. I was going at it and Denny called and wanted to come over and help. I was torn between the satisfaction of doing it myself and getting it done in a hurry -- getting it done in a hurry won out. I had gotten 1.5 layers done (started at 4:00 yesterday morning -- Denny got here about 4:30 last night) when Denny and the family showed up and they got another complete layer on -- finished my corner beading (which I had only gotten 3 pieces screwed on by the time they got here) and had everything coated at least once (some of it twice) by the time they left at 9:30 last night. So, they got done in 1 night what it would have probably taken me 3 days. He used a powdered mud added to my mud but the powdered mud (was like mud on steroids) and it dried waaaaaayyyyyy faster than what I had been using!!
Anyway -- I am not going to drag this out. This gives you an idea of where I have been and what I have been up to.
And I wanted to throw in -- if you have something you have been wanting to do but cannot afford the labor -- check out you tube and learn how to do it!!!
It is fun!!! Exhausting -- but fun!!
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