Wednesday, December 9, 2009

My Name is Mud.

I've used 12lbs of drywall mud in the kitchen. I'm done. Whatever it looks like when I sand it is what it will be. The more I do, the worse it looks. The final coat went on this morning. The biggest repair job is a contest between the new archway I built when I remodeled the dining room and the new archway I built from the hallway nearly two years ago. Both are equally bad, in my humble opinion.

I've got to get creative when it comes time to replace the moulding at the base of the dining room arch. I should have set the largest cabinet further away from the wall, but I wasn't thinking about the baseboards when I did it. That'll learn me. I have an idea. Nothing will be done until the mud dries. There's still some paint to remove from the existing wood trim and lots of sanding to finish.



The archway from the hall. The green paint on the basement door must have been on sale at some point in this house's history. The front door, the railings I've removed from the front steps, the garage doors, the basement doors, some of the interior doors, the largest bedroom, a portion of the floor in the garage, and the stairs in the basement were all painted this horrible green. Only the exterior kitchen door was white. Way to be consistent, folks.



Maybe I should take that into consideration and paint using a dark color instead of the bright spring green I've had sitting in the basement for weeks. I'll need to take it back to the store and have it shaken before I can paint later this week. Oh yes, I'm painting this weekend. Hail or high water, possibly snow.

Speaking of water, we got more than 1.5" of rain last night. At times it was beating on the windows so hard it woke me up. The cat wasn't too happy about it either. This morning I found her litter box in the basement was surrounded by water. She was sitting crosslegged on the edge of the bed when I woke up. Having done her business, she's back in bed now. It doesn't sound like a bad idea.

What will I do today? I'm not sure yet. The ground is too soggy to do much digging for planting bulbs. I may choose some high spots in the yard and work on those. I'm thinking of covering the raised bed hoophouse "floor" with cardboard to invite earthworms in. There's a 6" layer of leaves that need to be broken down before spring arrives. Covering it will help, I think.

The wind is starting to pick up outside. We're under a wind advisory today with gusts expected in the 30-40mph range. The sun is beginning to force its way through the clouds. By late afternoon, the temperature should be in the upper 60s. I might open the windows to air out the house. Everything smells like burning wood. At least it'll be warm for a few hours.

But for now, coffee.

3 comments:

Randy Emmitt said...

Tom,
Mudding drywall is an art form, takes a lot of pratice. It looks like that corner needed corner bead before you started it makes a nice edge and protects the edge as well.

As to the mud I'm starting a huge deck and porch for a customer tomorrow and we have 7 footers to dig. I removed a Sweet Betsy bush there two days ago and the mud stuck to everything. Now where to plant that bush in our garden, covered in mulch currently.

Tom - 7th Street Cottage said...

Randy, I used corner bead on the one in the hallway. I just got in a hurry here and didn't use it on the dining room arch. Some day I may go back and redo it. Oh, who am I kidding? LOL!

Good luck with the deck project. The ground here is soaked. At least the high winds will help dry it out.

Wendy said...

I think the archway looks great (and actually like the green too!). How wonderful that you have taken these projects on! I would really like to create an archway to to break up the area between the foyer and living room. It's a very large expanse of ceiling and is also cracked - supposedly every house on my street has the same crack - and every house is covered by a lovely arch! I'll have the work up the confidence to tackle the project. Great inspiration.