You know someone's a great friend when not only do they bring you Chinese take-out when they find out you're overwhelmed ripping apart your living room for a remodel, but after you're done eating, she also grabs a crowbar and rips out your ceiling. There's not too many of those around and I'm incredibly thankful I've got one like her. My living room, on the other hand, I don't have any great affection for at the moment.
It started out simple enough, we were going to replace the patio door in the living room. Then we decided that there was enough room to cut out holes for 2 new additional windows on that wall. Since there wasn't much south wall left, we decided to just rip out the rest of the wall and re-drywall it. Then hubs said, let's rip off the paneling on the west wall as well and cover up that doorway. The west wall of our living room (formerly) had 2 doorways leading into the same long narrow room that hubs uses for an office. The one doorway we've always had blocked off because there just was no reason to have 2 ways to get into a small room, it's only about 6 feet wide and about 15 feet long. So we ripped off the paneling and discovered to our unending joy, lathe and plaster. YAY *not* We ripped all that off and took it all off on hubs office side as well since we had to drywall over the used-to-be doorway. Then I found out that you can live with someone in marital bliss for over 23 years and have no idea that they have in irrational hatred of painted paneling. This is a bad thing because all the walls in both hubs office and the living room are (were) painted paneling. Gone, it's all gone. All the walls in hubs office had lathe and plaster under the paneling as did 2 of the living room walls. Have you ever ripped out lathe and plaster? Don't. It's messy, dirty, heavy, dusty and a whole list of other adjectives that you don't want to know.
It was right in the middle of the destruction when my friend Connie called to see what we were up to. I told her and that's when she brought over the rescue Chinese food. Hubs decided that he also hated the ceiling in those two rooms. It's this weird cardboardy square panels that have a tongue and groove that fit together - then you staple them to the former ceiling. He wanted his out of his office. Since I didn't have the hate he did, I decided I was good with keeping the stuff up in the living room. Though it's not the most attractive stuff, I really didn't want to deal with taking it down and figured a good coat of paint would do wonders. Well, Connie & the crowbar went to work on the ceiling in hubs office. It came off rather easy, but you had to pull all the staples out when you were done, which was the difficult part.
So, between yesterday and today we got all that work done. Then, when I was sitting and chilling, I started thinking about that cardboard ceiling in the living room and I figured, you know, the house is already a disaster area, what's a little bit more mess? So I grabbed a crowbar and single handedly took out the whole living room ceiling, then pulled about a million staples out. My arms are KILLING ME. I got blisters in the weirdest places from working the pliers so long. But, it's done. Tonight, hubs & I went and picked up almost a whole ton of drywall to put up. We hired one of WE's friends to come over and help us unload it (boy, we're sure missing WE now!) The same boy is going to come over tomorrow and help hubs hang the drywall after hubs finishes doing some electrical work, there were only two outlets in our whole living room. Then there's the mudding to do, then the painting, I"m thinking lavender. I'm also going to repaint the living room floor since that's scuffed up beyond repair and was looking pretty rough before the construction even started. Eventually, we're going to put in carpet, but that's a project for another day when our bank account recovers from this latest adventure.
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