DIY Hangover

How was your weekend? Good? Oh, I’m so happy for you. Mine was…you know, I’m not even sure how to sum up this weekend. Productive? Check. Exhausting? Check and Check. Frustrating as all get out? Checkity-check. I’ve got a serious DIY hangover.

Is there some sort of ghastly drink I can choke down to make it go away? My head is pounding, my body aches. I’m tired, nay, I’m exhausted and I even went back to bed for a nap at 8:30 after all the peeps were out of the house. I still struggled to wake up at 10:30 11 a.m.

Here’s how my weekend went down. It started with this list:

Okay, it may be hard to read, but I’ve got a running list of projects I need/want to do in this house and I was anxious to knock some of them off my list. One of the things I wanted to do was get the laundry room put together a bit.

When we first moved into the house, we moved the laundry room from a very small, narrow room to the larger room that had been used as a pantry. We basically flopped rooms. But, this was a lot harder than it sounds. Why? So glad you asked.

Cinderblock. Right behind the drywall. Which meant for a lot of holes in the wall to figure out where to put things. Also, Hubs had to punch through the cinderblock to put in the electrical for the dryer. Much swearing ensued from this project.

However, we finished the laundry room in a few days, but the holes have been there since August. I decided to get this off my list. Hubs had already patched a few of the holes, but the one above and one by the light switched needed to be finished.

No problem. I patched those suckers right up.

For the record, I HATE patching drywall. It’s the root canal of home repairs, in my opinion. In retrospect of how the rest of my day weekend went, the drywall portion of the program was surprisingly pain-free.

I taped, mudded, sanded and then got ready to paint. Here’s where my weekend took a sharp turn into Ain’tNothingEasyVille. The paint. Paint has been my nemesis in this new home. Imagine me saying “Paint” in the same tone that Seinfeld reserves for “Newman.”

Yeah. The paint didn’t match. It was off just enough to be noticeable for touch ups, but was close enough that you wouldn’t notice the difference on adjoining walls. Which meant I had to paint the whole wall. Um…I may have cheated.

What? If my washing machine hadn’t decided to die, you’d never notice.

Well, I got the paint finished, but I needed to get the utility sink working in this laundry room. One of the “joys” of caring for my sister-in-law, Katie, is that she is not always capable of cleaning up after herself. I needed a working sink to soak clothes in.

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We needed a faucet and the drain pipe. I had a faucet, but I wanted to use that one in the kitchen. It has a single handle turn on, which is much easier for Katie to use. The current faucet is two-handled.

I replaced this faucet,

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with this one.

I just made that sound really easy, didn’t I? Don’t be fooled.

Remember where I took that left turn? Yeah…still there. What I’m not telling you about is the missing part that I KNEW I had put in the same box as the faucet, but didn’t show up until after I was on the phone with the hardware store for 15 minutes trying to explain the missing part to see if they carried it. I looked in that stupid box no fewer than five separate times, but it doesn’t show up until then? Nice.

Nor am I going to mention the, not one, not two, but three times I got a face full of water during the process. Nor am I going to tell you how the 45 minute job that took twice as long, or that I still have the handle part twisted wrong so when you turn the water on, it goes straight to hot.

I’m not talking about it.

With the old faucet off, it was time to install it in the utility sink.

Would it surprise you to know that this was the easiest part of my day? Once I got the right drill bits from the barn, that is. It only took four trips out there. Hubs says we have the fanciest utility sink he’s seen. We are a far cry from fancy. It’s a decent faucet and a sprayer and I need that with the things I need to clean up.

Hubs helped me install the shelf in the laundry room and I called it a day. I’ll show you more of the laundry room another day.

On Sunday, I decided to tackle Kiddo’s room. He had the room that needed the most attention. Sunshine yellow wasn’t really his color. And remember how I say “Paint?” This room was no exception. No one had ever bothered to do the cut work at the ceiling through four different paint jobs. I covered navy blue, gator orange, celery green and sunshine yellow.

I had to skim coat the wall under this bulletin board, because nothing could be easy this weekend.

Besides the millions of push pin holes, there was a bunch of foam squares that would not come off.

I also caulked all the baseboard, after I secured it tighter to the wall with some additional nails. I love having a nail gun!

I did all of this by myself because Hub’s weekend wasn’t any easier than mine. He helped someone move, which turned into a five-hour ordeal. Then he went to fix the muffler on the Suburban. He fixed the muffler, but then had to fix the brake line that got nicked while he was removing the muffler. The broken brake line kept us home from church, since it was in Columbus this weekend. Our car is too small for all of us and an hour drive.

Then, he and the boys finished the stairs they are building. I’ll do a separate post on the stairs. He’s amazing, that man. I’m so glad I have a guy that can fix/build/design/repair things. We still have some landscaping to do, but the stairs are done and it’s much easier for the boys to walk up the drive from the school bus.

So, remember how I told you I have a DIY hangover? Well, now you know why. Want to know how bad it is? When I got up from my nap at 11 a.m. I got ready for my day, or so I thought.

About 20 minutes after my shower, I went to shake out my hair, as per my usual, and felt something odd. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Yeah. I forgot to comb my hair. But, that’s not all. As I was walking back upstairs, I thought the girls were feeling a little free and loose. Um, I may have forgotten to put on a bra, too.

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D’oh! It’s been that kind of day.

Good thing I fixed both of those problems before the mailman showed up with another box for Hubs. I think I need to go back to bed and sleep this one off.

How was YOUR weekend?

Suesan

Thank you for reading Frou-FruGal. For more projects, please click to my site, http://froufrugal.blogspot.com