Goodbye

This requires a little background info. A few months ago, when our garage was getting downright dangerous to navigate in the dark, we decided to clean it out. We heaped all the trash into what we were then thinking of as a side driveway that was basically useless because you couldn't park a car there. This was March-ish. When it was cold, and we weren't thinking about being outside at all.

Fast-forward to July, and we have begun referring to the still trash-covered region as our "patio," because we have realized it is quite convenient to have our grill there, rather than next to the pool, which is not near the kitchen. I separated the trash into categories: recycling, which was the bulk of it; trash, like styrofoam and old carpet and crap; and things we might use again, like wood and stuff. We started getting rid of things as we had space in our trash and recycling, and threw a tarp over the pile so we wouldn't have to look at it. This is what that looked like, minus the recycling, which we hauled out to the recycle place a few weeks ago.


Not really so bad, but it all still had to go, and it was too much/dirty to put in the back of my car. So we procured Todd's parents' truck for the excursion to the dump, and proceeded to fill it to the brim with a boatload of old carpet and whatnot.


For the small fee of $16.50, I had the privilege yesterday morning of unloading it at the dump. That was, umm, smelly. And industrial. I wore gloves and felt very tough. This is our pile.


They mist in the building to keep the dust down, which is why there are water droplets on my lens.

Anyway, so I keep talking about all this old carpet. You may remember that there was green carpet in our stairwell and upstairs landing, but I thought if I was going to bother making a trip to the dump, we might as well rip the remainder of it out and dispose of it. So here's what our upstairs looks like, sans green carpet and coordinating green pad. It still has the tan-colored pad that's irritatingly glued to the floor, but that is much more flexible and stuffable into a bag than carpet is, so we'll get to that when we have time.

We've also been puttering away on the little hallway area downstairs, in between the living room and bathroom/bedrooms. Joining the long list of Things We Just Don't Really Notice Anymore In Order To Maintain Sanity was the paint in this hallway. The walls were white at some point, I think, but they'd gotten all dingy and gray and just looked plain crappy. Here's an example. You can see where we painted, to the right, and what hasn't been painted yet. Ick.

On Saturday night (wild night, I know) we worked on painting trim and rolling the walls and ceiling. Funny thing about painting, there is almost no correlation between how long it takes to paint a room and that room's size. Or maybe there's in inverse correlation. Anyway, it's taking a while, so we just keep chipping away at it. The whole thing looks a lot lighter and cleaner now. I am going to be stenciling in there, so I'll post an "after" when it's done.