Progress

So today I ripped out the rest of the carpet in Garielle's room, except for her closet. I'm so glad I invested in a set of really high quality knee pads - they cost like $40 and look like part of a space suit. But they really helped when it took me 2 hours to crawl around on the floor pulling out staples and nails.

The next step is to pull up the carpet in her closet, pull up the nails, etc. Then I have to figure out how to get shoe molding in. See, the wood around the perimeter of the room indicates that there was once some shoe molding, because it's quite a bit darker than the rest of the wood. And the ends are uneven, not quite being covered by the baseboard.

So I guess I need a miter saw. It's hard to believe I need to invest the $150 - $200 in a compound miter saw. I thought the only other alternative was a miter box, but I see in this woodworking manual that I bought yesterday that there is a non-power miter saw outfit kind of thing.

There's a Lee Valley woodworking supply shop here in town. When I get to the point where I'm ready to put in the shoe molding, I'll go there & visit & pick some brains.

In the meantime, I started reading this woodworking manual last night. It's so interesting!

There's sooooo much to be done with this house, and progress is so slow. It's just about impossible to do anything during the week. Weekends are necessarily full of all the stuff there was no time for during the week - laundry, tidying the house, and so on.

As I've been intermittently trying to clean out our basement as well, I have about 5 carloads of stuff to take to storage. Plus the carpet that I ripped out remains in garbage bags in our hallway. I was going to put them out with the garbage, but Eric thinks there's a better way to dispose of them. He's not clear on what that is. However, I don't want those bags to sit in the hallway much longer. So if they're not out of the hallway by next weekend, I'm taking them to the landfill myself. And I guess I can't keep waiting on him to help me take stuff to storage, so I might have to do that by myself.

Here are other things that desperately need to happen in our house. If they're not handled by the time I get around to them, I'm doing them myself:

The back door needs replaced entirely - including storm door. I think the frame needs some work. Before now, I figured we'd have to bring in a professional. But now I'm starting to think perhaps I could do it, with the right tools and some instructions.

The front door needs replaced entirely. For this, we will have to call in the pros. That whole wall upon which the door resides needs completely reworked. There are these fake glass blocks along the side of the door, in the actual wall of the house. Turns out they're plastic stuff, and one good kick will knock them right in. Fortunately we don't have much worth stealing in our house, but still . . .

The door to our den just sort of ripped off the hinges. It's a french door thing, you know, glass all divided into squares. Eric took the door down & put it in Garielle's room, against a wall. I moved it out and put it into the hallway because HELLO, I'm renovating in there, don't be putting a bunch of stuff in there! Problem is, Garielle saw it and pretended to open it. I about had a heart attack envisioning the door coming down on her head. I asked her to never, ever touch it, and she hasn't done so.

Anyway, after I finish Garielle's room, that's next on my list to fix.

We haven't replaced the dishwasher or the garbage disposal yet. Again, the pros for that.

What's left to do in Garielle's room:

• Pull up carpet in closet
• Install shoe molding
• Paint baseboard, shoe molding, trim
• Touch up walls where I accidentally put my feet while yanking out carpet, nails, and so on
• Decoupage the wall plates & put them on.
• Move furniture into her room.
• Hang paintings, mobiles, etc.
• Lower the clothes rack & shelves in closet.
• Decide what to do about her doors. They're ugly.

Then, unless there are other emergencies, I'm going to rehang the door to the den, then turn my attention to the back door.

After that, I'm going to look at the living room floor and decide if I want to install laminate flooring. I think I do want to.

If I decide to do that, I think we'll see about painting the living room first, while the hideous gold shag is still on the floor. Eric doesn't want me to do this myself. He wants to hire pros. The thing is, the wall curves into the kitchen - there's no sharp corner. So we almost have to paint the kitchen at the same time.

Which brings me to the kitchen ceiling issue, but I'm not that far along yet. We'll get there.