This post is rather delayed in terms of the actual events taking place. But the experience has been so traumatic that blocking it out has been the best possible method.
I was born and raised in a split family. My grandfather – a Wolverine. My great uncle – a Spartan. As you can imagine, family feuds were common. I was a forced U of M fan from the start. And growing up, I was truly indifferent – you mean you want me to watch sports and cheer for someone?
I was born and raised in a split family. My grandfather – a Wolverine. My great uncle – a Spartan. As you can imagine, family feuds were common. I was a forced U of M fan from the start. And growing up, I was truly indifferent – you mean you want me to watch sports and cheer for someone?
Now I love football. And my husband has somehow converted me to be an Iowa Hawkeyes fan. Hey – they've been getting REAL lucky this year. The majority of my close girlfriends are all State fans so they’ve been teaching Lily a thing or two about the Sparty life. She’s gotten really good at cheering for them and she loves to sit and watch football with Daddy.
When we bought the new house, we thought it was hilarious that the main bathroom was floor to ceiling decked out in Spartan green and white. It was even more comical once we learned from the neighbors that the bathroom was decorated by the original owners – the family we purchased the home from had left it that way for nearly eight years! Our short-term plan for this bathroom was to leave it untouched, long-term taking out a hall closet to add a full bath tub. We could certainly live with the wallpaper and Lily seemed to love Sparty.
Then the second day we inhabited our house, we discovered the toilet was leaking water into the basement and the water shutoff valve was busted. So Mike found himself with a small project. Once he was finally able to shut the water off, we were left with one toilet on our main floor and what seemed to be huge inconvenience running Lily into our room in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. My mom graciously volunteered to take Lily so Mike and I could spend Saturday finishing up some projects. Our plan was to rip out the toilet, take down the wallpaper, paint the small space, replace the toilet, and PRESTO! New bathroom!
 |
| I mean - who doesn't need a sawzall to remove their toilet? This should have been sign one this bathroom was cursed. |
Funny. We are so funny. Here we are three weeks later throwing in the towel and calling a drywall guy to come replace all of the walls. We really should have known the project was going down hill from the time we brought home the first new toilet. Upon opening the box, we discovered the bowl was broken. So we loaded the box back up and waited in line at Home Depot to exchange it. When we got out to the parking lot, I suggested we double check the toilet and couldn't stop giggling when we discovered another shattered toilet bowl. We turned around and headed back inside to find four more broken toilets on the shelf. And of course I couldn't just pick another brand, it had to be THAT toilet. So two very nice Home Depot employees went in search of a forklift since the toilet I wanted was three shelves up on a pallet. Once every patron in the two neighboring aisles and cleared out - on their own - 40 minutes later - we had a new toilet. At that point, our DIY Saturday just kept going further downhill.
 |
| Trip 1 |
 |
| Trip 2 |
 |
| There she is! |
After two hours of scraping wallpaper adhesive off the bathrooms walls, I only had a 12x12 square to show for it. I'd tried DIF, hot water and fabric softener, hot water and vinegar, not even my salty tears would get it to come loose. So Mike unplugged my only source of light and I turned back to Google and read that you could use an oil based primer over wallpaper adhesive as long as there was no actual glue exposed. It just so happened that we had a can of Kilz in our basement so I went to town priming over the paper. There were no immediate signs of bubbling (per Google this was good) so I went to bed a happy camper. Later in the week when I had a chance to really check out the bathroom again, I discovered the Google article was full of crap and my walls were peeling off almost better than they had with hot water. I started peeling off large strip after large strip and then the drywall behind it started crumbling. I backed out of the bathroom, slammed the door, called Mike at work and told him to get us on someone's drywall schedule because I quit.
So long story short, I'm disappointed to say I am yet to be able to post an after picture of Lily's bathroom. Sparty wasn't so bad after all.
No comments:
Post a Comment