Change Is In the Air

We started redoing our living room this weekend. Wow… this kind of thing is much easier in America. Our landlord gave us a budget of sorts since there’s a good amountof damage tot he walls we need to fix, and if we spend over that it’s on us. We’re over already. Eh, what can you do?

First, we had to strip wallpaper off the walls and ceilings that has been up for probably 20 years… it took 3 of us (me, Ieva & Andis 2 hours to get it off of one 5′x 8′ section. Then Sunday we all 4 worked on making concrete to fix the holes in the walls (all the walls are concrete). The we had to make plaster do cover all the walls. It took the 4 of us trading off about 8 hours. Thankfully this is Andis’ dad’s job & specialty and he’s worked with is dad a lot, so he knows what he’s doing & we were able to use his dad’s tools to do it all. Plus, since he’s 6’6″ (2 meters), he can do everything up to the ceilings without ladders and stuff. That helps.

Monday Andis plastered the ceiling while Chris and I sanded the walls. What a mess. I’m so stupid for not actually taking EVERYTHING out of the room before starting this process. We covered it all, but we now have fine plaster dust all over the house, even though doors were shut. I’m wondering if my carpet (yes, still in the room with dust and such all over it) will ever even be close to the same color again. Hmm…. We also started hanging wallpaper. (The wallpaper they have here that is made to paint over it. Since it’s hard to paint directly onto concrete. Plus is has a raised pattern of some sort on it so that any imperfections on the walls will be disguised.)

Yesterday (Tuesday) Chris sanded the ceiling, while I started painting doors. Then we painted the ceiling, of course ran out of paint, had to buy more and then I finished it while Chris went to band practice. Afterwards, Andis & Ieva came over and continued hanging wallpaper. He will finish it this evening.

Today (once I get going) we’ll put a second coat on the ceiling and I hope to get some of the walls painted… the ones that do have paper on them already. Possibly get some more trim done, too.

I’m pushing to get it done, pushing hard. I hate living like this. It doesn’t help that, to get to Chris’ office, you have to go through the mess of a living room. The cat is going nuts being confined to half the apartment and not being able to be with us while we work.

I’m tired and sore, but I’m SO anxious to get this done.