From Bad to Worse

I know this is not exactly revolutionary information, but I feel the need to point out that buying a house, and renovating it, is a very stressful process. It's expensive, it's hard to plan, and there is an immense amount of pressure to get things done quickly. This was compounded by the fact that my closing date went over by 2 weeks, my carefully planned renovation schedule went out the window, and I was effectively homeless. This is not how things were supposed to go!

As I mentioned in my previous post, there was a fair amount of demo that had to be done before the real work could start. We're concentrating on the bedroom, but we also had to rip out about a third of the kitchen cabinets, just to get a refrigerator into that space. Oh, this is after replacing the electrical panel, and adding outlets to every room (and GFIs in the kitchen and bathroom). This is post-demo...

I know it's horrifying, but it has to get worse before it can get better!

Back in the bedroom, we tore down the ceiling (or, more accurately, we poked the ceiling and it fell down), replaced the broken window panes, and ripped out the carpet in both bedrooms and the hallway. The spare room and the hallway had pretty pristine wood floors underneath, just like in the rest of the house. Jackpot, right? Not quite. For some reason, in the bedroom, the entire floor was covered in some kind of thin green adhesive. It wasn't sticky to the touch, but it sure as hell stuck to the floor. Sanding didn't work, floor scrapers didn't work, soaking didn't work... the only thing we could do was get on our hands and knees and chip it up, bit by bit, with 5-in-1s. This is also the week I learned what a 5-in-1 is.

Little by little, we got it all done. And my bedroom is officially the first "done" room in the house. I readily admit that it's not the most polished design in the world, but with the time constraints and not having the budget to buy multiple new rooms full of furniture, I did what I could with what I had. And actually, it feels like a cheerful little island in a tumultuous sea of sawdust and joint compound.

Remember the "before"?

Here is the very yellow after..

An extra special thank you to the kind friends who are letting me take turns crashing in their spare rooms! Love you guys!