Three Signs That It's Quitting Time

B and I have been feverishly removing wallpaper in our downstairs and master bathrooms. We need to get the walls textured before we paint because all of the other walls are textured and it just makes sense to do it right now than to have to do it last minute if we decide to sell the house at some point. We took our time removing the downstairs paper. It's a small space, but it has a lot of annoying angles and hard to reach places.

Once we finished the small bathroom, we seriously considered just bagging the master bathroom project. But that wallpaper is so ugly that I couldn't bring myself to give up. Then we asked the handyman what the price would be to texture both bathrooms at two separate times and it was going to be much more expensive, so we bit the bullet and got started again.

Feathernester and L are coming to visit on Wed, so it has been an absolute that everything needs to be done and cleaned up before they get here. We don't need a ten month old walker getting into things like steamers and picking up little pieces of wallpaper glue and such. I've spent every free moment working on this bathroom and while it hasn't been hard, it hasn't been easy. This bathroom is literally the size of a bedroom. I have no idea what they were thinking when they designed it; it's like they forgot the master plan so they said, "Oh well, let's just put in a tiny toilet space and give them lots of room to dance in the middle." The ceilings are as high as the bedroom so I need to use an 8 foot ladder to reach the top. So you can picture the safe maneuvering I've been doing all week with a steamer in one hand, a scorer in the other, and a scraper usually in my mouth.

Great progress was made up until today when it was time to take down the very large vanity mirror. House was built in 1990 so it's the classic, one large piece of six foot mirror with dressing room type lightbulbs above it. I knew right away that taking down this mirror was not a job for me, so I suggested that B ask our friend C to help him today when he came over for dinner. C gladly said he would help in exchange for a beer. Little did he know that he would be earning his dinner and thensome!

B and C went upstairs with a screwdriver and I stayed downstairs with the boys as they played. And then I heard the crash. I immediately knew what happened, so I ran upstairs to see if everyone was okay. C was holding the mirror up as best he could while B was rinsing off his bloody hand (everyone knows that his livelihood is in his hands, right?) A large chunk of mirror collapsed from the weight of the rest of the mirror or something. Now the guys were left with what exactly to do with the mirror that would no longer be saved. (it could be amusing to note here that I had been pulling to not put the mirror up again anyway and to get two smaller mirrors over each sink. this idea was shot down by B. anyway...)

After some minor bandaging (blood always looks worse than it is) the guys were able to safely take down the mirror. They decided the best thing to do next was to break the mirror into smaller pieces so that it could be brought outside without a chance of it shattering all over the place. So we heard tons of banging for about 5 minutes, which the little ones thought was hysterical. They had no idea what their dads were doing upstairs!

This was so not the way we had planned to spend our late afternoon, but we had a nice dinner once everything was cleaned up. B decided to continue removing the last bit of wallpaper after J went to bed. I heard some yelling after a few minutes. Then he came downstairs and said, "Have you ever had a light bulb explode in your face?" Even though the electricity was turned off at the breaker, the steam apparently made the light bulbs hot and as B was removing them, one of them exploded in his hands. He said that had he not been wearing glasses, it surely would have been in his eyes. I told B that I thought it was time he packed up for the night.

This was a pic I took before we moved in. Wouldn't you lose the paper too? And here's the mirror. Buh bye mirror.

He didn't listen. He said he only had a little bit left. And as he swiped on last piece of wallpaper near an outlet-- an outlet that he forgot to switch off-- he electrocuted himself. That's my husband. The handyman. The electrician. The endodontist whom is lucky to have his eyes and his fingers all in one place tonight.

Don't worry, feathernester. Everything will be finished and cleaned up by tomorrow! And we won't let B anywhere near L with any type of power tool! And by the way, J is not so sure about sharing his crib with L even though he is no longer using it. But tonight he decided that as long as she wasn't going to sleep with his chicken, she could sleep with his little lovey, which he doesn't sleep with anymore. He showed me how she should sleep with it and then put it in the crib for her. But then he said, "I want it back when she is done." Sharing can be so conflicting sometimes!