I’m sure you figured by my absence that I did go back and work. I actually managed a part time schedule – and that advice was just what I needed. I worked a couple days a week and worked in the house the other days. It allowed me to feel like I actually was being responsible and not being ungrateful that I have a decent job, while still being able to start shoveling my way out of the mire of home improvement projects. So thanks a million Snoskrad. I was really at a loss there for awhile. We now have one room in the house that is done enough to actually live in. I still have to paint the woodwork, but we were at least able to pull the paper off the floor and remove the tarps from the furniture.
In our front room we have ceilings that go up to 17 ft high, and those go up stairs too short in depth to hold anything other than a stepladder, and we cannot get our hands on a stepladder tall enough. So I’ve had to swallow my pride and hire painters. Who have failed to show up the past two weeks. It’s somebody who’s doing us a favor, so we can’t really complain. A real professional painter wouldn’t want to bother with us because all we want painted is a ceiling and two walls. So us beggars can’t be choosy and we have to wait for when they can get around to us.
It is however, a major knock on my pride. What would MacGyver say to this? Little Miss “I Can Make That Friday” hiring somebody else to do her work? Gasp! For shame!
We’re kind of being held hostage by the painters. Since they’re painting the ceiling and everything high up, we can’t really paint anything else on the main floor until they’re done. We’ve primed everything and done what we can, but now we’re just waiting for someone who can squeeze us in.
In the meantime, this is how we’ve been living:
Here’s a better view of all the plaster dust and wallpaper scraps covering the floor:
I’ve actually tried both sweeping and vacuuming on top of the construction paper, and it doesn’t work. Sweeping just pushes everything under the paper, which kind of defeats the whole purpose of the paper in the first place, and vacuuming just pulls the paper off the floor. Our feet are constantly coated in a layer of sand, kitty litter, plaster dust, and assorted paper remnants. I’m tempted to put a doormat at the foot of the bed.
Have you ever seen those episodes of Oprah when she has the “savers” on? They’re people who literally cannot throw away anything. I saw one lady whose garage was stuffed floor to ceiling with old newspapers and baby clothes and discarded rags, and when the professional organizer asked her to throw them away she had a nervous breakdown. It turns out that the savers have a serious mental illness which is a form of OCD. The expert psychologist was explaining if someone with OCD loses control of their environment, then they will become paralyzed and the pendulum of their psychosis will swing the other way.
That’s how I feel right now. The chaos in my house has been so bad for so long, that I can’t seem to get the energy up to change it. I broke myself with my own mess.