Blood, Sweat & Tears

I am well aware that my attention span rivals that of a gnat. I've mentioned before that I usually have about 75 projects going on at once because I can never stay focused on one single thing. This is the story of my home office.

I've been in the process of revamping my home office for at least 3 months. It started a couple of years ago when my oldest kidlet lived in that room. She didn't like the wallpaper that was in there (none of us did) so she began peeling pieces of it off a little bit at a time. She decided one day that she wanted to move her bedroom to another room in the house so her old room became the office.

We lived with the office having torn wallpaper for almost 2 years before it started driving me crazy. One morning I woke up and decided that I couldn't live for another day with the horrible wallpaper so I marched in there and started ripping. I began by taking down the border at the top of the walls. It was slow going and I drug out the job for a month or so. When I got to the full wall that was papered the work went a lot faster.

I got all of the paper off within a week or so. The paper must have been up for a long time because the paper came off just fine but the glue was stuck for life. Since the wall had been papered, there was no texture on the sheetrock. Fine, I thought, I'll just texture it. it couldn't be that hard. I researched techniques and products and finally committed to getting the job done (after thinking about it for a week or three).

For this job, I made SURE to consult my wonderful Manchild because he used to be an auto body man so he's great at detail and he does thing right and I knew he'd make me do things properly. I showed him the sheetrock mud I had purchased and the texture brush I had on hand and was so dang proud of myself. Can you believe he had the audacity to suggest that we practice on a piece of cardboard first before we tackled the wall??? We practiced and I hate to admit that the brush I had was the wrong one. And I hate to admit that I couldn't just slap the mud on the wall and start smearing the stuff around and get the desired effect.
I forgot to mention that the only type of spreading device I had was a 1" putty knife and I was doing a wall that was 14' wide.

I made another trip to the hardware store (tail tucked between my legs) to get the proper spreading tool and the correct texture brush. At last, I was fired up and ready to texture! But no! Mr. Man noticed all of the flaws in the wall and suggested that I fix them before I textured so that the wall would actually look...good. He kept ever so gently reminding me that prep work was 90% of doing a good job.

Ok, he was probably right, prep was important so I got my (correct) tool and used some mud to repair the wounded spots on the wall. For your information, I am pretty good at spreading mud and feathering it out! But that wasn't what I really wanted to do which was texturing dad gummit. The mud dried and I was feeling pretty smug because I just knew that I was ready to get to the meat of the project but nooooo. Along came Mr. Man the flaw finder and he saw places I had missed like the big cracks in the corners of the walls. And he saw the ridge where the border used to meet the wall. Arrrrrgh!

Back on the ladder I went, sanding and cussing, cussing and sanding. I sanded until my back and arms were screaming in protest but I got that freakin' ridge smooth. Ok, I was ready to texture! But noooooo, Mr. Perfect pointed out that I had not addressed the cracks in the corners yet. He also gently reminded me that proper prep work was 90% of doing a good job. Dammit!

I went to work on the cracks in the corners, cussing and cleaning, cleaning and cussing and even crying a little bit. Dammit, I could see where he was right. I didn't want to admit it but he was right. There was a little bitty bit of loose paper so I pulled it off and ended up tearing off a 4' piece of textured wall! Dammit! Now there was another area I was going to have to fix!

I think that Mr. Man felt my pain because he started applying mud and basically finished out all of the flaws. I still have to sand everything down but he saved me hours of work. With any luck at all, once I get it sanded, I'll finally be ready to texture (cue the sounds of harps and angels singing).

Update: It's been over a week since I wrote the previous part of this post. I hate to admit that I haven't touched that damn wall. I've done everything BUT work on it. I hate it! Maybe I'll work on it this weekend. But I'll have to take a Valium first because I know that I'm going to want to get the sucker finished and I'll be doing it by myself and I'll have to do it correctly. And Mr. Man will probably hear me screaming even though I'll be up in the wicked city and he'll be in our little house in the woods over an hour away. I might as well order a straight jacket because I'll probably need it. Wish me luck yall.