Belated Weekend Recap

Y'all.

Yeah.  😆

First off, I hope you guys had an awesome weekend.  I hope you were able to get your groceries for the holiday because our orders were all running behind which is fine but notify someone like more than 15 minutes before pickup and then don't say it will be ready a certain time then say 'sike!'  

The drywaller cancelled on us Friday so we could do the things we wanted to do last weekend.  I use that term loosely...more the things that needed done to edge us toward end goals.  We spent Saturday getting a decent amount done but less than we wanted to.  I got a second coat on the ceiling where there weren't gaping holes.  I must say while some 'pros' (a term I no longer respect or care about now) poo poo the color changing ceiling paint, it makes a hell of a difference to make sure you're getting the areas you need to.

Don't get me wrong, you will still need a minimum of two coats and likely a third in some areas but putting white paint on white primer is a brand of hell I don't care to go through again.  It was enough trying to do it with two coats of primer.  The Mr worked on getting the bathroom walls back in order.  Of course some of the pipes got moved a bit so the shiplap didn't line up anymore and we needed to get a bigger cover for the water line to the toilet.   Then when he was done with that, he got the new bath faucet installed.  I bought new fixtures for the shower but he went white(r) when seeing it.  I thought it was just something you unscrewed like YT vids showed but apparently not.  We were both beat after that and while we wanted to do more, our bodies said nope.  We did get that sample of the Mannington LVP for the bathroom and while it's not an exact match, I know from lots of research we're not going to get closer.  I think the only thing I'll have to do is sand back the poly on the transition and maybe add a layer of the dark walnut stain we still have to marry the colors so we ordered the flooring which will be here tomorrow.  We do have a forced break coming up which is much needed because we both agree our mental health needs it so I'm leaving it up to him if he wants to do it before or after that.  Part of me wants to just get it done but I'm also somewhat indifferent.  Our vanity can't be reattached until it is but it's fine.

Sunday I took this carbide paint scraper I got because I knew the stair project was in our future and I scraped a patch on a baluster to see if it was as easy as videos showed.  I had about 5 layers of wax, 3 layers of chalk paint, 2 layers of poly and 2-3 layers of opaque stain or paint from the original build before getting to wood.  So minimum of 12 layers.

This made it look fairly easy so I thought it might be time to strip down the handrail which we have been without for a month.  We've faired okay but I don't like as our bodies get more worn down with stuff that falls on us not having a 'catch' ready.  (Especially when we have to head up with our hands full to eat on mattress island for every meal.)  So the Mr set up the sawhorses and I got to work.

It seemed like it was going decent.  To give you an idea of the time involved, this took two hours.  😖

So that took about 4 hours to get basically the front down to raw wood.  I still have to sand with 320 grit to get it smooth.  I went back and planed the leftover white off of it until my hands gave out and they did in spectacular style.  I couldn't do a dinner that required me to use utensils and no way could I do a post because 3 of my fingers were blistered in addition to flaming tendinitis in both thumbs so bad it woke me at 2am.  I won't lie, I'm worried.  There are several knots they wood filled, wood filler does not stain well and we want to stain it.  I plan to put dark walnut wood filler over it, sand and then pray as I stain.  I still have to get the white off the end if it's not veneer.  If it is, that puts another level of suck on it that I'll need to figure out especially since the bottom is veneer.  I think I can grab some leftover Retique It to slap on there and hope for the best.  If it doesn't stain well, I'll have to shellac it and then paint it anyway.  I REALLY hope I don't have to do that but you know how it goes for us.  

Monday the drywaller showed up which is of course the same day the painters showed up from the HOA to power wash the outside.  😑  The dude who told us he wasn't going to fix the stuff on the wall that original drywaller dude messed up said that he talked to his uncle who does the actual mudding stuff and he said no, if it was bad, they'd fix it.  Uhhh, scusami?  I am not used to hearing good news and I was not going to get my hopes up especially after overhearing a conversation where they told the Mr we were using too short of a roller nap.  Essentially to cover up imperfection we need to use a stucco like nap so that drywallers don't have to put a whole lot of care into doing things right.  Um, I didn't yank the 3/8" nap length out of my butt; every website says to use that or a shorter nap for walls and ceilings!  So my confidence was lower after the bump of dopamine I got from the 'we'll fix what my nephew originally denied' comment.  Every swipe of the mudding trowel was sending me into palpitations.  Clearly I have mild trauma associated with that sound now but I will say these guys taped off the baseboards, put drop cloths on the stairs, cleaned up drywall dust with their OWN broom the second anything got anywhere so on that merit alone they were leaps and bounds better than anything that has stepped foot in this house in the past year.  Now, if that could translate to our ceilings/walls being pristine and "like those holes were never there" as promised the previous week, I would be ecstatic.  So they wet sanded the patches, collected their two grand and left.  We were told we couldn't touch them for two days which kind of sucks and puts the poo poo on any plans we had to get at least one big thing checked off the list.  Then it was time for the plumber to come back.  Oh yeah.  They used the 28 year old manifold where all of the pipes connect in the basement.  I was under the impression that was going to be new as well but apparently not.  It was consistently wet/sweating and we never had that problem before.  The Mr checked and it was covered so he had to come back and remove that and re-crimp all of them.  Then it was time to ask about the charge for the shower stuff which he quoted about $300-400 depending on how long it takes them.  Uhh...you don't have to cut a hole in the wall and the fittings are new, how is this little attachment going to take a long time?  

We were over it and went to the park for a walk for our workout/sanity.   HA!  I said sanity like we still have some.  Though we did get three very concrete signs from Grandma and our pup so it feels like even though this is putting a fork in us we've got some angels on our side blatantly saying "we're with ya!  Hang in there!"

How was your weekend?

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