Adventures In Remodeling: "Miss" Meadowlawn Dr.: A New Begining

(FINALLY! We are getting to the actual remodeling part! Yay!)

20 years of nicotine. Yuck.

I'm super tired, so I'll keep this short. Despite getting up pretty early today, we didn't make it to the house until around noon. We did a bunch of other stuff, yoga, had our first workouts at the new gym, etc.

Chore one was washing the nicotine stains off the walls. The story we got from the neighbor was that the woman who lived there was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer from a lifetime of heavy smoking, so she decided to redouble her efforts to smoke as much more as she could in the time she had left. I guess she had an alcoholic husband who chain smoked too.

The state of the house has the word “defeat” written all over it And maybe a little of the phrase “I don’t give a shit” too. It's giving up manifest in a house. It is obvious they stopped trying to do or take care of anything. I was thinking about that as Eduardo and I scrubbed and scrubbed the walls. And I felt like not only were we washing away grime, but also that depressing, helpless mentality. We are not just cleaning, we are wiping away the hopelessness from the walls and the house. I feel like we've adopted an abused animal and we are in the process of rehabilitating it. Well, at least that's what it felt like:) Maybe I'm being a little too philosophical.

Anyway, the walls are covered with yellow tar, and so we spent several hours washing them with marginal success only to realize half way through there was a better more thorough way to go about it. We have to re-do half of it tomorrow. But we are not deterred. In fact, I think we are both pretty pleased with the small amount of progress we made today. It was cold in the house, and my fingers were freezing even in my rubber gloves, but we took a pee break and went to get coffee at Panera and that rejuvenated me. We also found a pretty good radio station out of Canada, so we had tunes while we worked. It's weird, but fun to be at "work" with Eduardo. I almost feel surprised to see him there. It's pretty great though, and we both had a really great first day. We packed a picnic lunch of chef salads and had our first picnic in the new place. I was kind of afraid to sit down anywhere because it was so filthy, so we ended up each taking a stair.

It was snowy and then sleeting outside as we washed and scrubbed and listened to music! So even though it was super gross in the house, it was a pretty kinda-cozy first day of work.

We've been talking with dad about replacing the kitchen cabinets instead of trying to paint them, and we priced them out yesterday at Lowes for $1400, but then he found a better deal at a store called Menard's for $1000. So we have decided to do that instead of spending days sanding and painting the ones that are there. He also found really nice bedroom doors for $44 a piece. They were really sharp too! I'm excited. Can’t wait to go shopping!