It continues. It’s a process. You can find Part Un here.
So, once again, my lovely friend S. came to let me cry on her shoulder because BEIGE OH MY GOD IT’S FUCKING BEIGE I CAN’T help me paint my living room. I should mention something here about my friend S. She LOVES to paint. I mean, LOVES IT. Give her a paintbrush and a can of paint and a blank wall and she will be happy for days. If it weren’t for her, I’d put this de-Gothening off forever. No, really…she’s the driving force behind this. Well, that and the fact that it’s nearly June and I want to get my house on the market and the realtor is waiting for my call and I hate my annoying barely-out-of-diapers neighbors who have kids of their own and party every fucking weekend and have little yappy dogs that get under the gate of my fenced yard and poop and drive my own non-yappy dog crazy and there’s so much to do…. So, yeah. S. is freakin’ awesome. She’s helped me out so much. I feel totally lazy compared to her, even though I’ve been busting my ass working on something almost every day (I make it a point to do something to get this house ready for sale every day possible). Usually in the garage that’s been stuffed full of crap the last *mumblemumble* years since we’ve been here, so it’s Not Visible Progress Unless You Go In There, but hey…it’s progress! S. also brings me gorgeous pastries from this amazing bakery in the city when she goes up there. Her yarn stash is beyond epic. I aspire to her greatness in many ways.
Friend T. has also been instrumental in this endeavor. Friend T. has The Truck of Awesome. It hauls many, many things to and fro. A good number of trips have been made to our local dump waste transfer station thanks solely to T. and his Truck of Awesome Which Hauls All The Things. There will be more Hauling Of The Things once I obtain an offsite storage unit for Things I Want But Don’t Need To Show Prospective Buyers. Like the *cough* twenty-plus twelve gallon totes of books ready to go in the library *cough*. While awesome to behold (I will take a pic before we haul them to the storage unit), prospective buyers will be coming to see the house, not our literary addiction.
But! You’re not here to read about my Friends of Coolness. You’re here to see the pics of the de-Gothening. *sigh* But…but I don’t…
Please don’t judge me for the normalcy you’re about to see. This isn’t about me (I WILL NEVER GET USED TO SAYING THAT OH MY GOD). This is about selling the house to people who want one, and making it look nice for that.
I’m stalling, aren’t I? All right. *takes deep breath* Pics below the cut. Click if you’re brave.
Here we have the first coat of Navajo Sand (it matches the outlet covers and was the neutral color I was told is good to use for sales, okay? WE ARE NOT JUDGING ME ON “MY” COLOR CHOICE HERE. I DID NOT CHOOSE THIS. I WOULD NEVER CHOOSE TO LIVE WITH THIS COLOR.) going up over the two coats of white Glidden Ultra-Hide done in Part Un. This paint is also Glidden Ultra-Hide (for those looking for a good tintable cover-up paint, make sure you get the “Base 1” can). In this photo you can see I’ve taped off the hearth, baseboards, window trim, and crown molding, as I want to leave those white (eggshell finish). Just the walls are getting the beige Navajo Sand.
By the time we got all the way around the room (I did the cutting in with a brush, friend S did the rolling on the walls), the starting area was dry (takes about an hour between coats to dry) and ready for a second coat.
That part didn’t take as long, as things were already cut in. I went around after we were done to catch any thin spots or missed areas. This session took only a few hours as opposed to the whole weekend of Part Un. This is about 3 hours work (not including the 2 hours of taping and prep done the night before so we could paint right away once S. arrived).
And there you have it OH GOD OH GOD IT LOOKS LIKE A FUCKING HOTEL HELP HELP I CAN’T. One room in the house is 100% done. Whee! Now for the other thousand square feet….
Next up, the foyer. Now, when I say “foyer,” I actually mean “open entryway that is vastly huge and has all my media and shinies out.” See here? I made you all some floor plans so you can follow along at home. I have a little over 1300 square feet in total (meaning “for both levels”). Actual living space on the upper level is closer to 800 square feet, which isn’t all that large. It’s been fine for the two of us for a long time. Now I would really, really love a second bathroom and a washing machine that isn’t in the basement.
You know, when you look at it, it doesn’t look like I’ve done all that much.
But I have! Really I have!
I should explain that the garage area was full of junk. I mean, junk. Stuff that should have been taken to the dump ages ago, but just wasn’t. Out of sight, out of mind, and it wasn’t hurting anybody being in there. I’m talking about things like an old portable dishwasher we’d been storing for a friend. They’d bought a new house that already had a dishwasher in it and didn’t need that one, so we offered our garage space (as their new house didn’t have anywhere for it), and it just ended up staying there. The idea was that it was supposed to get sold at a garage sale that never happened, so…yeah. Other things included wood left from a project, old lattice work from our decking, huge cardboard boxes that stuff came in…just stuff. Stuff accumulates over the years, and it’s amazing how much stuff does that. We have a game of “what’s the oldest receipt found” going on, and so far I’m ahead with a date of February 2001. Go ahead. Gasp. Laugh. Boggle. Be horrified. And we were in this house before that, so that’s potentially NOT the oldest one to be found.
There’s lots of things yet to go through. These last few years I’ve been on a decluttering/cleaning bender, so the upper level is pretty much done. Most of the closets have been gone through for old clothes and other things not used anymore, but the kitchen could use another round (there’s a LOT of cookware He Who Enables My Crazy doesn’t use/was gifted), as could the linen closet and bathroom cabinets. Most drawers have been sorted, and my office is pretty much done except for the painting part. We’ve already spent days taking down the horrid, HORRID wallpaper that was in here – I have pics but won’t inflict them on you – that revealed this room to be a terrifying shade of yellow. I will actually be grateful for the beige when we get it up in here.
But painting while actually living in the space is hard. Everything needs to be moved away from the walls and draped to prevent paint dripping on them and so on and so forth, then you have to weave your way between everything in order to paint, hopefully without tripping over anything or knocking anything over (especially the paint!), so it’s slow going. There’s still a hell of a lot to be done, but I can see progress now. Again, very special thanks to my Friends of Coolness for all their help. Without them, I’d be nowhere near as far along as I am, and we’ve been at this since I got back from Scotland in January. (What? I SAID this is slow going!)
A bare bones list of things that still need doing, for my own sanity and in partial explanation as to why my online presence will be scarcer than usual this hot season:
– Foyer; pack up knick-knacks and collectibles, take them and their display cabinets to storage area, paint
– Office; take packed things to storage, paint
– Bathroom; declutter, paint
– Bedroom; move armoire out to storage, paint
– Kitchen; declutter, paint
– Dining Room/Office #2; declutter, paint
– Cat Room/Library; move packed things to storage, declutter, paint
– Utility room; DECLUTTER OMG YOU HAVE NO IDEA WHAT’S IN THERE AND NEITHER DO I
– Workshop; see utility room
– Outside; touch up paint around trim, make sure blackberry brambles remain in fear of my wrath
– CLEAN ALL THE THINGS!
You know, it doesn’t sound too bad when I list it. Thinking about all I still have to do overwhelms me at times, but listed like that, it’s not that terrifying. A shit-ton of work, sure, but not terrifying.
For I am fearless and will not be cowed by a mere paint can. The utility room and workshop area are another story. I WILL VANQUISH THEE! FROM HELL’S HEART AND SO ON AND SO FORTH! RAAAAAAH!
(Did that work? Is the clutter shaking? Is it because of spiders? It’s because of spiders, isn’t it? Please let it be because of spiders….)