Nobody's Perfect (and Neither is Our Bedroom)

When last we left you, gentle readers, I'd spent an entire flipping afternoon doing more caulk around the back bedroom walls because priming had revealed cracks. Then I spent another hour or two climbing up and down the ladder to tape off the trim and ceiling for painting.

(Hey! Can you tell where the studs are in this wall?)

The plan was that Noel would come home from work and do some more priming, and when I got home from having ginger cosmos at a friend's house we would start painting.

Only public transit did one of those burps it sometimes does and instead of Noel getting home at a reasonable hour, he'd just gotten in and was making himself some dinner when I got home. So we had a little discussion about how much priming was necessary, and eh, just decided to put the first coat of paint up.

We had this theory that one coat might be enough, but in the light of day it was not quite, so we put on a second coat. Then we pulled off the masking tape, and began cleaning up to do the floor.

(I have some further thoughts on the Benjamin Moore Aura paint after a couple of years of use, but I'll put those in another post. My previous review of the paint continues to be one of the most popular posts on this site, as mind-boggling as that sounds.)

We picked up the trash and tools and then I rolled up the carpet. There is something truly unpleasant about old carpet. I am not a carpet fan at all, but the worst part is removing it and finding all that stuff underneath. Plus it's dusty; I'm still coughing from the experience.

I left Noel upstairs with a couple of sanders, and came back to find this:

The floor looks... well, it looks GREAT in the photo, but it's not so great in person. The real problem is that the wood is very splintery and brittle. Several sander plates got destroyed to get the floor that smooth.

Fortunately, most of the really bad spots will be under the bed, and the one that won't we can hide under a rug. But every time people tell me that the wood floors in this house are terrific and original and wonderful, I think of moments like this.

This stuff popped out of the gaps between the boards as we cleaned up. It's been in every room that has carpet. It's kind of crumbly and dirty.

I'd love it if this was not just a hardened chunk of 130-year-old dead skin, dirt, and animal fur. Somebody please tell me this is some kind of quaint Victorian gap filler made from horse hair and tar or something equally appalling. I know it sounds weird, but I'd find that a lot easier to stomach than that this is just filth that has been falling through the carpet and collecting between the floor boards.

Anyway, with the floor not in good condition and the deadline we set for stopping this project fast upon us, we'd decided that no matter what we would be moving the furniture back into this room today. We'll get to the trim pieces above the wainscoating soon enough, but we needed to stop working on this room for now.

Goldie and Dot approve.

And a note about the new room, which feels ridiculously spacious and airy. We also took out and gave away a large dresser and several CD shelves (legacy from before we had all our CDs ripped to our house media server). It's so nice to have decluttered as well as doing the cleanup and painting in this room.

posted by ayse on 09/16/10