A Couple of Steps Forward.

We are doing it!  Slowly but surely, this project of a house is coming together.  It's all very exciting...and very exhausting.  For me, the most exhausting thing is the looming cloud of an Assessor.  I don't think of myself as a perfectionist, but I really hate for someone to tell me, "It's not good enough".  Believe me when I tell you, a lot of prayer has gone into overcoming this.  But a prayer battle is still a battle, and battles are exhausting.

I'm at a pretty good place with it right now.  I love and live in this house.  I'm not going to let fear of failure darken the joy of the process.

With that in mind, there is a lot to show you...none of it "done", but a whole lot more livable.

First, a few pictures of a portion of the "mess":

But the mess is worth it, because it means that we are finally turning the porch room into my art room! We've revealed the bead board ceilings, and all of the cheap paneling has come down.  We discovered some art work from the previous owners on the single dry wall:

Kind of cool to know the date of it all

This particular drawing caused me a LOT of difficulty later on.  Be careful what kind of markers you let your kids draw with!

This is the picture we found in the wall!  Kind of a cool time capsule we discovered, don't you think?

So, after the tearing out, Andy put up dry wall on the remaining 3 walls, and Josh and I "mudded".

I worked mostly on the corners.

This was Josh's first attempt at mudding, and he was great.  Andy and I left for a party, and Josh STAYED and worked a little on the room.  Isn't that wonderful?!

After this day, Andy left for New Mexico for several days (conveniently missing our massive "Winter Weather Storm").  I had plenty of warning that the storm was coming, so I stocked up on what I would need to work more on the room.

Now, I have to tell you we are not professionals, and there are A LOT of flaws in this little room.  Even so, it took me 4 days of hard work to get to this point.  I sanded the mud, re-mudded, sanded, re-mudded...that's pretty much what I did for the first 2 days.  Finally, I could prime it.  Everything was fine until I primed the "Time Capsule Art Work".  This is after 2 coats:

After 3:

Alright.  So, the art work helped me decide on the color for the room.  This is after 2 coats of THAT paint:

After the 3rd coat of paint (with primer included), I was finally  rid of the cute grinning dog and bunny!  The color is Behr Ultra Glass Sapphire.  It definitely sets my art room apart from the main traffic areas of the house.  Andy says it turns my "spice palette" into more of a sunset.

I bet you're wondering why there is a big, blank spot on the wall...well, we forgot to cut the drywall for the electrical outlet that is hiding behind this wall.  In the words of Charlie Brown, "Good Grief!"

This outlet hole was obviously a little off.  More on that later.

I'm off to the grocery store and work.  More later!

KTV