This D*mn House

It’s amazing how accustomed you become to things when you live in a work in progress.

For instance, we stopped putting toilet paper on the holder not long after Toby arrived in 2006. (He liked to shred the rolls.) We eventually graduated to setting the roll on top of the holder as he grew and his interest in TP did not. In May 2009, when I began tearing wallpaper off the bathroom walls and prepping the ceiling for the original Michaelangelo project the holder came down all together so that the beadboard could be repainted.

The holder went back up yesterday. More than once, I found myself turning this way or that to find the TP – instead of looking on the wall directly in front of me. (The mother did it, too, and it was a great source of comedy throughout the day.) But the holder is back up. New switchplates and the new chair rail are also in place. A pimped out plain old cabinet (sans doors) is back up and the mirror that covers the in-the-wall medicine cabinet over the sink is up again, too.

Even so, I didn’t get as far as I’d liked over the weekend thanks to both the mother and Mother Nature. As she usually does when a project is edging closer to the finish, the mother found yet a new project to tack onto the to-do’s. After being devastated that a pretty new cabinet just would NOT fit behind the toilet on a wall that runs between the shower and the sink, she thought of a way to jazz up the existing cabinet. “Could we put some beadboard panels along the sides?” she asked me on Friday. (We means me, of course.) Fortunately, I had a piece of scrap birch beadboard to accommodate the request. On Saturday, I fought the wind (gusting to 30 mph) to cut those panels. The mother than wanted to put some of the thin wood egg and dart molding (purchased for the bathroom but now designated for other projects since we bought the matching molding for that ceiling) along the new beadboard edges.

Even if we could spare it, it’s too thick, I said. Then, I remembered the NEW thin wood strip – still unpainted – that I had bought for the bathroom. It’s one of two I’d bought. The other, already painted black, is going to help me cover some bare spots in the ceiling in front of the gingerbread fretwork. When I brought the piece up and laid it onto the side of the cabinet, the mother was sold. She promptly painted it black. So cutting, sanding and installing beadboard panels and cutting and installing trim on the medicine cabinet was the bulk of Saturday.

While I had the saw set up once again yesterday to cut the chair rail, I had planned to also cut the quarter-round. I would just wait to install it until I finished the floor. That was the plan. But while I was testing the chair rail and making some final cuts, the sky began to blacken. And the wind, which was already pretty powerful, began throwing things from my temporary work station. Rather than rush through a mitering job, I began cleaning and picking things up. Meanwhile, the stormy activity continued.

It would be almost three hours before it actually rained. I could have gotten my boards cut.

Oh well. I guess it just wasn't meant. But, with a little more patience and a bit of luck maybe, just maybe, this thing can get done this weekend. THAT would be spectacular!