If you are handed it, you can handle it.

Floors

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 10:15:49 -0400

I have more images and great tales to tell about the floor from this weekend but for now images will have to do:

The floor before:

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In the middle of this project:

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My floors now!!!!!!!!!!

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EVEN THE MUDROOM LOOKS AMAZING!!

I don't think I have a before :(

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This article is perfect for me

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:33:33 -0400

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/homestyle/06/30/o.where.i.live/index.html

I like this line best:

Casual observers would most likely point to the seeming deus ex machina blind date of July 2001, when I met an architect who's good with his hands. We fell in love, then married -- both of which took up time I could have spent stripping woodwork.

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Wasn't this Matt's stupid idea?

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:14:17 -0400

Those were the words our of my sisters Kim's mouth on Sunday morning while the 5 of us were busy scraping the floor and Matt was at breakfast with his friends... but let me back up a minute and get us to that point officially. When last I posted were ALMOST finished chipping up all the tile from the floor (and my hand was already hurting) - well that was Wednesday. Thursday night Matt came over and we tackled the last bit - and it seemed to be the hardest - so after another 3 hours of work we had the entire tile up and my hand was in a permanent hooked position. We went to bed realizing we had already spent 9 hours just getting the tile up. But my sister was coming over on Friday to help me, I had rented the wallpaper steamer on the way home Thursday night, and we were going to have the kitchen floor cleared of black stuff in one day! ONE DAY! After Erin's advice and all the reading I had done on the internet it seemed that hot water was the key so how could we go wrong with the wallpaper steamer!

For perspective, here was the floor Friday morning when Kim arrived

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That black stuff is NASTY! It had turned my entire kitchen into a giant pool of fly paper - every time you walked across it you stuck to it, and the dog was licking it and it was a MESS!!! And because its a petroleum based product the entire kitchen smelled like an oil spill

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and once you got to this stage you couldn't really quit and come back to it because of the sticky factor - it was just everywhere and making the kitchen impossible to live in. Unless of course you are the dog - then you standing sentry in the middle of the fly paper waiting to see what the hell is going to go on next.

See my beautiful cabinets in the back - I had forgotten how nice my kitchen can be *sigh*

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OK so Kim comes over and we start with the steamer. And let me tell you it is NOT ANYWHERE NEAR AS EASY AS THEY SAID. It was the messiest, most disgusting, dirtiest home renovation job I have done - and I have done them all. I have worked in plumbing and sewer drains, I have renovated baths and kitchens, I have laid insulation in attics on hot summer days, I have cleaned rats out of walls, i have done most everything and this job goes down in history as being the WORST JOB EVER. Not 10 minutes into the job Kim and I are in full gear - respirator masks because of the possible asbestos, gloves, eye masks, clothes we are willing to throw away - here is Kim and our wallpaper steamer. See the word hope above Kim’s head? We had none by the end of the day.

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The steamer seems to work but only on the top most layers, so what you have to do is sit the steamer there for several minutes and then move it to another spot while you scrap away that spot and them move back and forth between the two spots until you can get down to the floor. It takes good 4 or 5 rounds in each spot to get down to the floor. Now let me tell you it wasn't coming up like "chocolate pudding" as some of the people on the internet say. It was only coming up if you scraped hard with the chisel and put your weight behind it. So let me paint a better picture. You are down on your hands and knees, wearing a mask so you can't breathe; you are surrounded by steam because you are that close to the wallpaper steamer and you are gripping the chisel for all your life so you can scrap away the black stuff. After ten minutes your hand is clenched so tight you can't get it off the chisel and you are completely wet from the knees down since you are kneeling in pools of water and your head is a cloud of steam.

The problem of only one steamer immediately arose. Since you had to work two patches at once it was impossible for us to work together. So I went off trying other things. I boiled up big pots of water and covered my floors (and also all my clean clothes in the basement when it dripped down) thinking if I got the floor wet before Kim got to it then it would be easier - that didn't work. I used a squirt bottle of hot water, that didn't work. I used hot towels, that didn't work. NOTHING WORKED except picking it way piece by piece with the chisel. By 11:30 we weren't sure how we were going to make it. Sure it was incredibly hard work and while we were complaining about that we were also concerned about how actually this was going to get finished. We were not making quick work of this and now the place is a real mess and I only have Kim til 1:30 or so because well she has kids and a life. So we took a quick break for lunch and then went back at it realizing the only way to tackle this was piece by piece. I was a mess. Dad was in the living room happily joint compounding, sometimes shouting in words of encouragement and the favorite phrase of the day "Its going to look great when its done" - If I never hear that again it is OK with me! Seriously at that point I wasn't sure I cared if it was going to look great when it was done. I wasn't sure it was ever going to get done and all I could think in my head is "When am I going to get a chance to work on this again?" You see, I had a wedding to photography on Saturday and then would likely be too tired to work on Sunday after being on our feet all day Saturday. I determined at that point I was going to have to quit my job, or at least tell my boss I couldn't come back until it was done - but when would that be?

Kim left at 1:30 and I slugged through another 2 hours. I was DEAD at that point, and filthy and the house was worse than every because now all the black stuff had been wet at least a little bit so it was stickier than ever! I only quit working at 3:30 because I was worried about the wedding the next day. My had was already bruised and cramping from holding the chisel for 6 hours - what if I couldn't get my fingers to work the next day! So I had to stop. I cleaned up the best I could, then went to my room and packed my stuff up for the wedding. When Matt got home I was in a bad spot - my body hurt and I was worried and dog tired!

He took me to dinner (thank you!) and we discussed our plan. Obviously I was going to have to work on the floor on Sunday - we couldn't leave it in that state! He wanted to get the fence up around the garden because we were getting to the point where the animals might think it’s pretty tasty. Kim had agreed to come back on Sunday and help me and to bring Brian along to help Matt with the fence - so at least we were going to have a team there.

Saturday morning I jump out of bed and realized I am seriously running on adrenaline and fear right now. My hands hurt but what could I do about it! I bring the dog over to my mothers so she can watch her for the day and that is when I tell my parents something they NEVER want to hear from us "I think I am in over my head with this project". I barley get the words out of my mouth when they both say "NO YOUR NOT!" and proceed to tell me what they think I should do - all good ideas. I think what I meant by over my head was not in terms of the work itself (sure it was hard but I could do it) or understanding the technical pieces (again I knew how to get the paper off the floor) I just meant in terms of too many projects at once.

This project requires some serious time and I didn't have it - I have a day job, I have a photography business and a wedding to shoot, we have the garden fence and the dog and just general life necessities like groceries and clean bathrooms. I felt I was in over my head in terms of too many projects at once. I left there not feeling any better - what I wanted was my parents to tell me it was all going to be ok, but they just told me I would be fine. I went home to pack the car and dad showed up a while later. He wanted to try and sand the black stuff and see if it would help. Sure the sanding worked, but it was clogging up the pads and it wasn't working well enough. I told him that my plan was to go on Sunday morning and rent another wallpaper steamer and Kim and I could work in tandem to finish it on Sunday - I didn't know how else to do it because it had to get done.

So Matt and I went and shot the wedding. It was a LONG day and we didn't get home til 11:30PM and by the time I had the images backed up it was 12:30AM before we went to bed. There were some new buckets and stuff in the house when we got home so I figured my dad had tried some other things.

I was up at 6:30 dressed and ready to work. I don't know how I got up - I figure it was the fear of not getting it done, or the adrenaline or something. I called my parents to see if they had discovered anything that would keep me from renting a steamer that day and my mother said "Yes, we are going to use heat guns. When your father came home yesterday he said that we were going to have to get into now to help you out” THANK YOU! Clearly they now felt I was in over my head! So they told me what kinds of chisels to buy and I went off to Home Depot. They told me I didn't need another heat gun but I bought one anyway - if that was going to work then I was going to make sure there were enough on hand for all of us to have one.

Matt went to have breakfast with his friends - seriously I told him to - he would be back by 9:30 and there would still be work to do!

I got home with food for the Walls family and when I got home my parents were already there, Kim and Brian and the girls followed shortly afterwards and by 8:30AM we were all back on our hands and knees working - ALL OF US - well not the girls they were having bagels in the makeshift living room:)

By this point my body wanted to give out - my hands had been in acramped position for days, when I knelt down on the floor and my knees hit the wood it felt like knives going through them and my back was hurting from days of being hunched over and then carrying an 8lbs camera at chest height all day Saturday. It was a disaster but there we all were. And that is when the infamous "Wasn't this Matt's stupid idea? Why isn't he here" came out of Kim's mouth. Well, this was Matt's idea - I wanted tile, which would have precluded all of this work, we would have sub floored over the black stuff and called it good, but Matt wanted hardwood and I wanted to compromise so we went this way. But he was at breakfast with his friends and I am not sure Kim found that funny because at that point she had put more time in on the black stuff then Matt had.

Matt arrived a short while later and then we all got to work. The heat guns seemed to be working, but it was going to be slow going because you had to work little bit by little bit. There were too many people in the house and not enough guns, but there was a propane torch that I was sure was going to light the place on fire, so I went to help Matt with the fence and took the girls with me.

I needed something to keep the girls occupied, I tried to teach them to pick peas but they were too rough and Matt wasn't happy. Then they just ran around for a while and Matt and I worked on the fence. But the fence wasn't my thing, I couldn't figure out how to bend the wire and my mind was on the house. When I had my 4th piece or so up and Matt came over and said "Do you mind if I redo this" I knew I needed to go back inside. I was already maxed out for stress and when I am stressed it makes Matt stressed so for the first time ever I heard him raise his voice and tell someone to shut the door. Going inside was going to be the best for all of us. So I went in and switched with Brian and they had the fence done lickety split. There isn't much to say about the next several hours. Mom took the girls and went back to her house, where they wouldn't be in the way. Dad cleaned up the wallpaper steamer for me so Home Depot wouldn't charge me for the mess we had made. It down poured for a few minutes but then the sun came out. Dad also tried some more sanding to see how it would go. After the fence we sent Matt to Home Depot to return the steamer and to get some more sanding pads. Dad left around noon, Pizza was delivered and we ate in shift but above all we all kept working on our hands and knees scraping the tar paper away.

Somewhere around 1PM I felt there was enough of a clear patch that someone could try sanding with the pads Matt had brought back. You see Dad had sanded a bit of a patch clear enough so I could see what it might become, and it gave me a glimmer of hope. I thought that if we sanded a bigger patch I might be able to look at that and keep going because at this point we were all tired. So fired up the sander and Brian went to work. While he was going that Matt and I kept going with the heat guns and Kim cleaned my bathroom because she told me the health department would shut me down if they saw it. We worked in little patches all around the room - first the gun and then the sander and wouldn't you know it we had the damn thing done by 2:30. Almost all of it done!

There was a moment when Matt was working with the heat gum and Brian had 1/2 of the floor sanded that I had to get up and hug Kim and thank her for coming to help me, and I started to cry. She of course told Brian I was getting emotional, which I was, and I think Matt had to hold himself back from getting up to hug me because I was crying. IN that moment I was so overcome with thankfulness because I could see that by the end of the day the floor would be done - the sticky would be gone and we would be able to put this behind us. When I woke up Sunday morning I was filled with despair, not sure how I was honestly going to take care of this - I was already planning on taking another personal day for Monday. And now it was behind me and I couldn't be happier.

Here is what it looked like!

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This did not come without a price. All of us are still sore. Matt and I are going for massages tonight and Brian goes on Thursday. Kim says she is fine but she will exact her price later.

My dad showed up at 7AM yesterday so he could see the floor - he says it looks 3000 times better.

For my part I will never do another floor or I will hire people. I think I could buy a house that has carpet over hardwood but I won't do linoleum or tile over hardwood. This job just sucked to much and I am not sure my sanity is worth it.

Next up is finishing the kitchen mudroom floors. We are going to go in shifts and with any luck we will be ready to go and refinish this floor this weekend! You won't see another post from me on that until then - so check back next week!

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Renovation through the eye of a fish!

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:00:52 -0400

I have been away from posting for over a week - its just been too busy and my hand had hurt too much and stuff. But here is where we are.

The sheetrock is on the walls in the living room and my dad came over this morning to start doing the taping. These images were taken with the fisheye at 2.8 - LOOK AT HOW MUCH LIGHT THERE IS! And that room is dark during the day in the summer.

Here is a shot from one back corner:

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and then from the other

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and then a view from the kitchen looking in:

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if there wasn't so much dust you could almost site on the couch and enjoy yourself...HA!

As for the kitchen floor well that is turning into a true labor of love. My hand aches today from holding a hammer for two nights in a row and a downward 45 degree angle while using a chisel to get the old tile up bit by bit. Tuesday night Matt and I worked together and got a ton done, and last night I worked alone and got a fair bit done. This is all we have left

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and another shot

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we need to finish it up tonight ( not sure how much help I will be) because I took the day off of work tomorrow so my sister and I can get the black stuff up. I was going to wait and take Monday off to do it but I will feel better once its done! I have a wedding to shoot on Saturday and I don't want to come back from that and have to worry about working on the floor - if we can finish it tomorrow then I won't have to worry about anything til July 4th when we play to free the floor from years of misuse - its own Independance day (CORNY!)

This is the transition from the kitchen to the living room:

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These floors are going to completely ROCK!

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i could just kiss you Erin!

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:50:53 -0400

(*note - all of my cameras are in the shop being cleaned in prep for next weeks wedding so this post is without pictures)

the light at the end of the renovation tunnel has been hard to see - and there is really one reason why - the kitchen floor! If it wasn't for that floor and having to pull up linoleum, tile and then black tar paper I would be doing a dance of joy! I mean, all of the sheet rock is up! Tying in the wiring takes just one day and the taping and sanding will be over before we know it and then paint! What more could there be - oh yeah that floor. I have shown you pictures of it and Matt my dad and I have been puzzling over what to do about that black tar paper b/c scraping it up in its current sticky format takes LOTS of elbow grease and time. Time is unfortunately what I don't have. I have a day job, a business to run, a boyfriend, family and friends (that I have been ignoring), a garden (that thankfully Matt handles) and some upcoming client needs - I really didn't have any time to add in a several day project of scraping all of that tar paper off.

Wednesday night I did a small 3x2 foot spot under the refrigerator and I didn't even get it all clean and it took me over 40 minutes to scrap! Doing the entire floor will take HOURS!

That is where ERIN comes in (did I mention that I wanted to kiss her?) Yesterday during a casual chat in her office I was sharing with her some of the burdens of the renovation and she saved my life! In telling her about the black tar paper and how I was going to have to find the time to do this she mentioned casually that she did that - and when she was 8 months pregnant with Child #3 no less! She told me that the way she did it was with water.

WATER??? WATER!!! The most plentiful substance on earth! That’s all it takes! I couldn't believe it - how could a substance that I can get so readily out of my tap help me solve the enormous problem I have ahead of me of scraping all of that black stuff off of my floors?? WATER!! She said she applied water and it came right up - come on now!

I even queried her further asking about chemicals she might have added to the water. She thought no because she was pregnant at the time she wouldn't have used chemicals. Erin mentioned her memory isn't always right but she thought she was sure. I told her I would try it and then come back to her today asking her to think harder about the chemical I was sure she put in there.

Well I went home, and I checked the internet and low and behold Erin was right! Some of the internet people said to use hot water so I started with that - and wouldn't you know it worked! I skipped around the kitchen at that point saying how much I loved Erin and her genius!

More research showed that that stuff is totally yucky, possibly containing asbestos - so Erin's idea of water is even better because water contains the particles from getting into the air and then into your lungs. And then once it is all scraped up you scrub the floor with a scotch brite pad and some water/vinegar mix and you are ready to sand! I am going to be prepped and ready to go this weekend!

I now see light at the end of this renovation tunnel. I am going to LOVE the hardwood floors even though when Matt first suggested it I tried to fight it off (no I want tile!) and Erin said I would like it too (I had it in my last house and I didn't like it I told her). Sometimes I need to listen to other people because they not only have good ideas but they have all the answers!

Thanks Erin!

PS. I didn't like the "hardwood" floors in my last house but they weren't real hardwood - they were a laminate floor - and they needed to be redone so they never looked good. These are going to ROCK!

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i can't even think of a title

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 13:11:16 -0400

I am starting this post without really having a title. It could be because I am tapped out, done, on empty. We are nearing the end of the renovation and while I know I said last night that it made me a little sad it also is making me a bit crazy. Today on the way to lunch Matt said something about needing to take care of his own life and I snapped yelling in the street that I couldn't wait til this renovation was f'ing over with. I snapped because he gets to take care of his own life and I have been working every day strait since May 3rd - for those counting at home that is 49 strait days without one entire day off and I need one. If I am not working here at my day job then I am working on the renovation on weekends and at lunch every day I work on my photography business. Today I took the day off from the photography thing at lunch to have lunch with my sweetie but I think I should have stuck to photography - I am just crabby!

This past weekend we hung sheetrock on the ceiling. My dad had run out of gas so I lifted an 8lb drill up above my head to screw in the sheetrock about 250 times. My arm was sore. This time though we had this nifty tool to life the sheetrock to the ceiling and hold it in place while we put the screws in:

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The sheetrock got in and on Monday we put up some of the walls.

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I guess when I say we I mean he :)

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Its starting to come together and I think when he takes some of his tools home I might be able to catch my breath.

But there is still the floor to contend with. All of the black stuff needs to come up. Matt and I worked on getting the linoleum up last night - and some of the tiles (thank you Matt!) but there is still 90% of it to do and I am tired.

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I am almost sad...

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 07:22:57 -0400

ALMOST! The insulation went up in the living room this week. We started on Sunday - it was hot and humid and we did the ceiling first and I spent the day dripping with sweat while fiberglass fell all over me. It wasn't that much fun but it did feel like we were getting somewhere and I kept reminding myself of how much warmer the house would be next winter and how much less it would cost me to heat.

Insulationready

When I got home the other night alot of the wall insulation had been put up and that is when I felt a little sad. We are really on the homestretch now. Two years of thinking and planning and waiting and then 11 or so months of living in renovation or transition stages is a long time - and now that is almost all over!!! What will I do when there is no more mess in my house constantly

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What will I do when I don't have to pour ever extra cent I have into the renovation and paying off the kitchen cabinets (but thats not for a few months yet:( )

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I will tell you what I am going to do - I am going to kick back and enjoy my house - just like the dog does everyday

Insulationready3

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news from the garden

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 19:51:06 -0400

its been a slow week in the homestead, my dad just came back to work today, not much he can do until we get the insulation this weekend. Don't worry I have still been CRAZY busy, just on the photography side :)

The good news is that it rained this past week so the garden has seen some growth - lets report on that.

My first order of business is the ant hills. I photographed these two unusually large and complex anthills - I wonder if they are going to be a problem.

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I seriously didn't think potatoes would grow - maybe that is because I had never grown them, maybe it was because to plan them you put whole potatoes with the eyes into the ground. But this week they did sprout up and I think the leaves are the most beautiful of all of the vegetables plants, they grow in a little bouquet.

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The beans are growing like crazy - they came up in 7 days - it was fast as lightening and soon the Japenese Beetles will be here - I gotta get Matt to figure out how we are going to get rid of those ecofriendlystyle

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Here is baby bean plant just about ready to stretch its body out of the ground, but for right now its still curled up snuggly in the dirt

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and I was surprised to see some of my tomotoe plants have flowers, but one of the guru's at work told me this was normal

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and because right now no post would be complete without something from the renovation here is a picture of the temporary lightswitch my dad put in for me today - now I have light going up my stairway. But as you notice the lighting of this picture is crazy! That is because that one hallway light UPSTAIRS is the only light i have to light the entire living room - i had to use a flash and it still wasn't enough.

August 1st people - eye on the prize!

Lightswitch

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possible kitchen floor

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 20:46:54 -0400

as promised here is the post about my kitchen floor.
This is a picture take of me, laying down on the living room floor, shooting into the kitchen in the spot where we have already started to take the floor up...
i have detailed for you what you can see. The subfloor that is fine. The hardwood floor, well that is what is laid all over the house and will be sanded down once we can get to it. It will be nice, don't get me wrong, there won't be any thresholds in the house and in a house this size it helps to gain space visually if you have all the same floor. You can also see the top layer of linoleum, laid over the middle layer of linoleum - both of those have to come up. What you don't see is the tile layer - its there in the darkness - between the hardwood floor and the middle layer of linoleum just waiting for get down our hands and knees and tear it up, piece by painful piece as we curse the people who lived there before us and wonder why in the name of molasses would they lay down tile and then TWO layers of linoleum.

Layers

My knees hurt already

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how are you holding it together?

nobody@vox.com(audralynn) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:20:59 -0400

that is the email I got back from my best friend when I sent her this picture - this is my house right now, this is what I am living in

Whereiam

its been worse, I shouldn't complain, but we are in a pretty rough spot right now. No electricity in some parts of the house, tools everywhere and no way to pack anything away because we are in the middle of the electrical part of the project. But once the insulation goes in this weekend we might be on a downhill slide - maybe.

the answer to my best friends question is Matty. Seriously, i am not sure what I did correct in this life but it must be something because he his my ROCK for this thing. not only does he take care of me but he pitches in. This weekend he ran the entire tag sale - toughed it out despite of the rain and got rid of EVERYTHING I wanted gone...This was our tag sale during a rainstorm on Saturday

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I would not hold it against him one bit if he kept his distance from this whole project. Renovations aren't for everyone, sometimes I wonder if they are for me. But he doesn't keep his distance, he is by my side every weekend helping out and he NEVER COMPLAINS which is what continues to amaze me and makes me want to be better because I complain alot and honestly I shouldn't if he doesn't. It is the ALL AUDRA SHOW ALL THE TIME right now. We went to dinner on Friday night to Arrow's in Ogunquit (pictures later tonight) but after that is was all my projects. Once this is over we are going to have a few weekens of the all Matty show - doing whatever he wants. I struggle with him being so helpful - I am just not used to someone helping me as much. I try very hard to adjust and this weekend I comprovised about the kitchen floors as a way to show how I appreciate all the work.
I want tile floors he wants to try the hardwood - so OK we will try the hardwood. I will post some picutres of what I am talking about tomorrow.

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So that is the answer - its Matty that is keeping me sane. Friday morning while pulling down some of the walls in the cellar hallway 3 dead mice carcasses came down on me. That was just about it for me, i can't handle dead animals. I pushed on and was rewarded in the living room when we pulled a large dead rat carcass out of the floor boards.

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The one thing I can say about this renovation is that I am working harder on this one than the ohters, getting dirtier, working harder and learning more than in the past.

Posts to come - the kitchen floor (the plan!) and our night at Arrows!

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