Our house was built in the 30s and has stone walls. It's mostly indestructible.
Now, once upon a time, probably in the 70s when lots of bad choices were being made, someone enclosed the porch on our little house. So, we've got this cute 30s house with a rotten enclosed porch that brings a certain "Ozarkian Meth House" flair to our home.
My Guy and I are on a quest to open up the porch. We got a bid from a contractor.
That bid was $18,000. Ha! Hahahahaha! Also? Ha!
So, we're doing the work ourselves. This weekend, our initial foray into Project: No More Shitty Porch was sandblasting the interior walls of the still-enclosed porch.
See, in addition to the poor decisions about enclosing the porch, the former owners of our house also painted the stone walls enclosed by said porch. That paint needs to go so that when we take down the walls, our house isn't multicolored.
Powerwashing will not rid limestone of paint. No. You gotta rent a sandblaster for that business. The sandblasting bucket thing is only $50, but you also need 4 different kinds of hoses, protective gear, a respirator, and a giant generator that you pull behind your truck. Oh, and you have to drive across town to buy a very special kind of sand.
All told, it was about $500.
And it didn't work. And about 3 hours into messing with it, we figured out that My Guy had food poisoning.
Ha! Hahahahaha!
He sprawled across the couch, moaning and refusing to drink water. I put away all the hoses and tried to make peace with the fact that our house was covered in sand and tarps and looked even worse than usual. I'm still trying to figure out: Can I shopvac the sand out of our yard?
My Guy moaned some more. Finally, he crawled upstairs to our bedroom, where he was prepared to spend his end days.
I got him a cold washcloth for his face. We were able to laugh a little bit about the weird turn of our day - we were out $500, he might die, and, as he so eloquently stated, "No fart can be trusted."
We were trying to be positive about the whole situation. Really, we were.
And then? Then, Lil' Frankfurter peed on the bed.
It was on my side.
My Guy could not even begin to face getting off the bed. He asked me, "Can you just live with it?" He pleaded with his eyes - mostly because every other body part hurt.
No, no I could not live with it. But I could work magic, stripping and then remaking the bed with my husband still in it. Martha Stewart got nothin' on me.
Finally, after cleaning and fetching Pepto and washing some of the sand off my face, I fell into bed, only to be confronted by a husband in the middle of said bed, sweating and moaning.
At least it wasn't dog pee.
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6 comments:
Well, I am very lucky that I've never had quite that husband-dog combined experience. They both owe you.
However, we have a brick house. It was built in 1845, and it is strong and stable. Sometime in those same 70's-of-the-bad-decisions, some one decided to paint the nice brick house white. It's now peeling badly, but we CAN'T sandblast because the type of mortar that was used back then is too delicate, and would be blasted out, leaving the bricks to fall down. So, we've spent the last 12 years trying to figure out what to do. Perhaps if we just continue to wait, ALL the paint will chip off :-)
Call me an animal hater if you must, but I can't say I could continue to enjoy the nighttime companionship of a dog who repeatedly peed on my bed, even if he were suffering from unrequited doodle-love.
Would a heat-gun blister the paint off the stones? I don't know. Apparently I learned nothing truly useful in college. Please let us know how it ends.
Sounds like you had a fun weekend :) hope he feels better soon. I feel ya on the dog pee. My Shih Tzu wants to pee on anything you leave in the floor that isn't suppose to be there. I just love that.
"No fart can be trusted." True words.
How awful for your husband!
And the sand-blasting couldn't remove the paint? Now you must keep us informed of what eventually does...Limestone is porous, right? Are you screwed? Marinate the whole side of the house in mineral spirits? Subcontract out the works to someone specializing in burning paint off with acid? The mind reels...
"Ozarkian Meth House" ...
"No fart can be trusted."
Good gravy, woman! I don't know how you manage to stay so funny -- because you are tremendously funny -- in the midst of all that you had going on over the weekend.
No one will ever be able to explain to me where some of those choices came from when it comes from home remodels.
The bane of my house is contact paper and wallpaper. Why, Previous Homeowners, why??
And there must have been something in pull of the moon, because about that time you were getting peed on, my cat jumped on the bed and peed right on me. It was a first. And hopefully (for her sake and mine), it'll be the last.
We are special people, those of us who put up with that kinda behavior from our pets and continue to love 'em. I'm not sure if it's a good thing to be that special, or a curse.
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