Upstairs: The Next Frontier

I know it's been almost a week since my last post. We were gone for the weekend, and then I didn't really feel like writing. We have been covering a lot of ground, though. Here's the list.

1. Pool. 18 3/4-quart jugs of bleach last week plus 24 the other day have been dumped in. It's looking ever so slightly less green, and all kinds of good stuff, including algae-covered leaves and a dead caterpillar, has been floating up. Bimart still can't figure out why bleach sales are up 400%.

2. Yard. Yesterday we ripped out a few more dead camellia bushes, raked more leaves, and generally did more picking up. The back yard still looks like a warzone, but we can only do one thing at a time.

3. Lately, that one thing has been the upstairs. We put oil-based primer over the wallpaper of the landing a few weekends ago, and finished off the primer in the big bedroom upstairs yesterday. Today, we put the paint up. White suits this room very nicely, at least for the time being. The paint might not be the most dramatic difference for the room, though.



As you can see from the video, we ripped back some of that nasty old carpet to discover distinctly vomit-colored padding, beneath which lay beautiful red fir floors!!! (Sorry if the sound is weird on the video; I can barely hear it on my computer.)

So we went to town, ripping up that carpet and yanking staples out of the floor. Then I stuffed all the carpet and padding out the bathroom window upstairs, which was basically the icing on the cake. Please, have a look.

Somehow, our house manages to photograph exceptionally well. I can't figure it out. The floors do not actually look as nice as they seem to in the pics. But if they were refinished, they could be as drool-worthy as the floors in the office, which would be a lot more tempting except that I remember what a royal pain it was to deal with the downstairs, and I didn't even do most of the work. Plus I have no idea how you get a 400-pound sander up the stairs.

I digress. For now, we are going to get a rug to put up there, so it's a bit cozier, and a bed and some nightstands and a dresser. It will make a very nice guest room until we enter Phase II of renovation, which involves ripping out all the walls (which are fiberboard, which is composed of sawdust and glue and a lot of pressure to meld it together) and actually insulating the house. We do not have insulation currently. It's handy, if you like to freeze. Or have exorbitant heating bills. I don't really recommend either option.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a before picture. This (farther down) is from last April, when we first looked at the house. (It's not really that unfortunate, now that I look at the picture. What's unfortunate was that wallpaper. And the carpet. Ick.)

P.S. If you're wondering why Todd's home in the middle of the day, it's because lost his job. He's working from home now, which is rather convenient.