Weekend # 14 actually commenced during the week of July 5th. I am so incredibly grateful for the people who have been a part of this journey with us and supported us along the way.
Mom, Dad and Robin have been instrumental in the completion of this project.
During the week, they completed the second coat of finish painting throughout the house. Mom and Robin did the second coat on the kitchen.
They also decided the old pantry - new laundry room needed to be painted, including the ceiling. They started with a coat of Kilz paint, because it was paneling and the ceiling had never been finished. When painting paneling, applying a primer paint first helps the finish paint to stick and gives it an even finish color. We did the same when we painted the paneling in the kitchen.
Below is the before picture of the pantry turned laundry room.
Drumroll please: Below are the progress and after pictures Mom sent.
They were absolutely right - it needed to be painted. It is so much brighter and looks bigger with the lighter walls. It also looks like it is part of the house now, rather than a tiny room tacked on as an afterthought.
They also finished the second coat in the kitchen and painted the corner trim. I had planned to paint the corner trim white, but Mom and Robin knew best. The blue trim kept the kitchen from being too choppy. I think it looks amazing.
Mom also worked on getting the bathroom trim cleaned. It had a mixture of paint types (latex and oil based) and it was quite dingy. Mom ended up scrubbing it with a wire brush, which worked wonders.
All the work they were able to complete really put us in a great position moving into Weekend #14. I don't know how I will ever repay them for all the help they've been during this project.
We arrived at the house on Saturday morning around 8am. Nan, Pap and Robin were headed to North Carolina for the day to visit my honorary Aunt and their honorary sister, Lynn.
I spent the morning trimming the hedges. It was a miserably hot job. Some of the hedge is home to poison ivy. I've already picked it up once this year so I wasn't about to start into this project without covering as much as I could. I had long sleeves, long pants and gloves. I was MELTING. But I got it done.
Before (left side of house)
After (left side of house)
Before (right side of house)
After (right side of house)
The hedge on the right side of the house goes all the way back to the alley, so it took twice as long. I also trimmed up the other bushes around the house. It was rough, but I got it done.
On the inside, Scott was working to get the kitchen sink installed and the countertops set.
Mid-day, our boys arrived to help! Michelle came too. Brayden brought his pressure washer and Myrtle got a bath! Brayden and Michelle also pressure washed the front walk.
Brody didn't wear workin' clothes, so he helped with odd jobs that wouldn't ruin his good clothes.
I am always shocked when I realize how tall he has gotten. It seems to be happening so fast these days.
I painted the ceiling in the backroom and the kitchen. It has been painted with flat white ceiling paint. Taking a picture of a painted ceiling is kinda silly, but I'm trying hard to keep everything documented. :)
Saturday was a twelve hour work day. It was a long day but we got a lot accomplished.
I'm going to be honest here. Sunday was a tough day. Scott was working on the plumbing for the sink. I started working on removing the paint off the trim in the kitchen. Truthfully, we've put off this part of the project too long. With a deadline looming for the family reunion, the kitchen trim now it feels heavy and burdensome.
If you remember weekend #12, you know we tried a couple of chemical removers without great results. We ended up using the heat gun. On Sunday, I set to work with the heat gun. It is such a tedious process. I was tired from Saturday and I felt frustrated and hot working with the heat gun. I started to feel defeated and I was fairly certain there was no way I could possibly complete this.
It was as though I had turned the heat gun on myself and I had a meltdown. It was the first time I've been near tears during this entire project. I just wanted to cry.
Unfortunately for me and my meltdown, Scott had also had a long day on Saturday and was deep into plumbing in the sink. He was also fresh off a balance sheet of the already-over budget for the Myrtle House renovations. He did try to be sympathetic to my meltdown, but it was clear we were at odds over this.
I wanted to explore the idea of replacing the trim. I'm sure it didn't come out quite that eloquently.
Scott did not want to explore this so much.
My Dad really just wanted to make both of us happy. Bless his heart, he kinda got caught up in the middle.
It was at this point, I considered getting in my car and driving back to Knoxville.
Instead, Scott walked away, put in his AirPods and started cutting in the ceiling paint.
I also walked away, got a roller, and started rolling the ceiling. By the end of the afternoon, I had rolled the ceiling in the entire house, bathroom and pantry included. It felt therapeutic to work through it room by room and accomplish something (anything) that felt like it was moving us toward completion. My neck hurt; I had a reoccurring shooting pain from my neck down my left arm to my pinky finger; and my arms were just plain sore. But I felt accomplished and that was what I needed coming off a meltdown of sorts.
We worked 8 hours on Sunday, so it was a long weekend. We made it though, and we chatted it out after we got home and came to a decision. It's fine. We are all fine.
All in all, it was an incredibly productive two days - we got the hedge trimmed, trimmed the trees in the front and back, pressure washed the house and the front walk, finished repairing the walls where the roof leaked, painted the repaired walls and finished out the second coat of finish paint on those walls, put in the texture ceiling in the bathroom and the laundry room, painted the ceilings throughout the house, installed the kitchen sink, plumbed the kitchen sink, and set the counter tops in the kitchen. I'm proud of this final push, even though it was tiring and tough.
Here are some pictures of the finished areas. You can see how the wall color changes, depending on the light in the room. In some lights, it looks more gray and in lower light it looks softer.
In all the busyness of the weekend, I failed to take a work crew picture while we were all at the house! I realized this when I went to pick up Brody on Sunday evening at Nan & Pap's. We snapped a partial work crew picture of me, Mom, Dad and Brody. This is only a tiny part of the work crew from the weekend. We are missing Scott, Michelle and Brayden. I was terribly disappointed when I realized I didn't get a picture of the whole group. This will have to do.
We are closing in on the completion. Every week, it seems like the 'To Do' list gets a little shorter. It is a mixture of emotions - gratitude, sadness, excitement, satisfaction. Stay tuned - the is definitely more to come. 💜
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