D-I-Y

Being a homeowner is wonderful... sometimes. Right now, I'm having a love-hate relationship with our house. I am incredibly grateful that we were able to purchase a beautiful home with lots of room for our family to grow in. But there are certain things about our house that I really dislike right now.

The first is the downstairs bathroom. Back in September I got this urge to tackle our first home project. The wedding was over and everything was unpacked - it was time to start making our house feel more like our home. The downstairs bathroom is a half-bath but it's pretty good sized. It was a cute little room with the exception of the wallpaper. It wasn't that ugly, 70's-style wallpaper that most houses have (probably because our house wasn't even built until the late 80's) but I am a firm believer that wallpaper has no place in the modern home. So with the advice of my parents (who have tackled countless walls of wallpaper removal) I set out to re-finish the half-bath. I figured it would be a weekend project. One day to remove the wallpaper and prime the walls and another day to paint and get everything back in there. Wellllll it's almost five months later and our half-bath is still not done. What was supposed to be a weekend D-I-Y project turned into a nightmare. As we began scraping the wallpaper off we noticed that the wall was starting to crumble... and that we were actually scraping layers of wallpaper, paint, and more wallpaper. Yes, the lovely previous owners of the home decided that removing the original wallpaper was too much work so they would simply paint over it. Then they must have decided to re-wallpaper and alas, one more layer for us to scrape! We striped the walls to the drywall only to find that the drywall couldn't be sanded smooth enough to re-paint. And that's where we left it. We shut the door and put up a lovely sign that reads "Under construction: please use upstairs bathroom". Out of sight, out of mind, right? Ehhh for a while. But now I'm sick of always having to run upstairs. I'm embarrassed to tell our guests that our bathroom is STILL not finished. So, my goal for this month is to finish the bathroom. We will demolish it and start from scratch - new drywall, new fixtures, new paint - new everything! I'm hoping I'll have a finished picture to share soon!

As for the other D-I-Y home projects on my list, the ugly red-walled guest bedroom is next followed by repainting the kitchen cabinets (my temporary fix until we can remodel). In the Spring we plan to do some new landscaping with the help of my green-thumbed parents. And then there's a house full of white woodwork that could use a fresh coat of paint - or at least a good cleaning! Oh the joys of home ownership! The list never ends!