It looks like I forgot to mention in part one that I opted to wait to claim my back-in-good-repair sewing machine from the shop until well after Christmas, as the four hundred and twenty dollars required to get it out of hock was needed to buy Christmas gifts for the family. Especially since I would (again) be sewing no gifts for anyone. In fact, we decided that instead of exchanging gifts with each other, Jim and I would make a short get-away down the coast in mid-January. I did force myself to take down all the Christmas decorations and put back up most of our non-holiday items before we left for our coastal escape.
Using my Groupon and Living Social accounts, I had gotten great deals on a night on the water in both Morro Bay and Monterey, with neither hotel room even costing a hundred dollars per night. Score! And they were nice places! In Morro Bay, our room had beautiful wood shutters that afforded both privacy and light. Actually, I thought these would be perfect for our bedroom window at home, as Butterfly McQueen could not sneak up into them to use as a scratching post or repository for coughed up fur-balls. Plus, the shutters could be considered a practical update for our quaint, totally out of style bedroom.
Now I may do nothing of note for weeks, months, years, even decades, but once I make up my mind to do something, I throw caution to the wind and charge ahead with unbridled swiftness. I zipped off to Home Depot and began checking out blinds and shutters. I broached the subject with Jim, who agreed this would be a good project. We ordered the blinds a couple of weeks later, as there was a great sale at that time. The sale was so good, that I decided we should order blinds for the living room as well, so the next day we returned to the store and ordered them. Our house has over-sized windows. Lovely for letting in light. A pain for ordering curtains, drapes, or blinds. We had measured very carefully--twice-- just to make sure. As soon as we returned home from ordering the second set, I realized we had measured incorrectly, so I raced back to Home Depot with the new measurements. Formerly eager salespeople appeared distressed to see me barreling back to the window covering department for the fifth time in two days with my little notebook and measuring tape in hand. But I thought I'd finally gotten it right, and hey! I'm always a polite and self-effacing customer.
Of course, now that I had ordered shutters for the living room as well, we could not hold off til spring to paint the walls in the living room. And while we were at it, we'd better do the dining room, hallway, and family room. I could see Jim getting a bit panicked at the thought of throwing the whole house into upheaval, so we agreed to start with just the two main walls in the living room, so we'd be ready for the shutters installation. But, planning ahead, I began to systematically take everything down from the walls in the living room, hallway, and dining room, including all the books and brick-a-brack on the floor to ceiling bookshelves.
Enter our daughter Melanie. "Mom, if you're going to re-paint the whole front part of the house, you've GOT to get rid of these hideous popcorn ceilings!" Melanie is nothing if not direct, but she also has boundless energy and is always more than willing to lend her help to any projects we undertake. "I did it at the house in L.A. It's easy to do, a bit messy, but easy to do." I thought back to that house she'd lived in fifteen years ago. "Was there any furniture in the house when you did this?" Of course not--the house was completely empty at the time of the ceiling work as no one was yet living in the abode.
Truth be told, I'd long been sick of the popcorn ceilings, with their grimy look and constant cobweb sprawl. I had wanted them removed for quite some time It seemed that if we were doing all this work, why not get rid of the popcorn ceilings as well? We contacted a friend who'd done a nice job re-doing our front bathroom the year before, and he said it was something he and Jim could complete in just a couple or three days. Poor Jim. I see now that his hair had started going white long before we started scraping the ceilings! Naturally, I wanted to get all this done before the shutters were installed. We scoped out Home Depot for the necessary supplies, and lined up a time to get started on the popcorn project. Joe, our friend who would be helping us, suggested we look at some YouTube videos before we got started. All internet videos and articles on popcorn ceiling removal had one thing in common:
MAKE SURE THERE IS NO ASBESTOS IN YOUR POPCORN CEILINGS
before you do anything else! Failure to do so can result in DEATH! WHAT???
This cheery news caused us to stop in our tracks. Our house had been built during the transition year between when asbestos was not banned and when it was.When faced with any kind of dilemma, this is what I do. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. For days or weeks. Eventually I come up with a plan, but not after quite some time of staring vacantly into space, coming up with contingency after contingency, and casting off each one in turn. The wheels spin, but I go nowhere. I take to the couch. And I'm depressed.
Choices From The Couch:
1. Do nothing. Keep the house exactly as it is
2. Paint, and just re-paint the ceilings. Asbestos is not a danger unless it is released into the air--like when taking down acoustic ceilings.
3. Do nothing. Eat ice cream
4. Hire a contractor and a HazMat team to deal with it all.
5. Do nothing. Take another trip to the coast.
6. Do an asbestos test and take it from there.
Eventually I recovered my equilibrium, called up a lab in Sacramento, and we did an asbestos test, which showed no asbestos in the house. Hooray! Now we could proceed.
In the interim, when I was couch-bound, Jim had decided to go ahead and paint the family room, an addition to the home that already had nicely finished ceilings. Away with all the memorabilia in the family room! Off it went to the apartment, which, at one point had been perfectly organized with all the front-of-the-house crap. Now it looked like several small explosives had gone off in there. But the family room was now ready to receive the furniture from the living room and dining room. Rendering it the complex maze of chairs, sofas, end tables and lamps, that greeted my guest and me for our mid-morning tea.
Which, I believe, brings me full circle to the beginning of this all-too-lengthy, but still condensed version of home repairs a la Souza. The tea turned out just fine, and the pastries were delicious. The popcorn was removed from the ceilings in what had to be the messiest project we had ever undertaken. We have decided that the popcorn ceilings can remain in the three bedrooms, and can be painted if we ever feel like it, which we probably won't. I do worry that if something were to happen to Jim, I'd be forced to sell a house that is dated and in need of repairs. Jim, on the other hand, has informed me that I worry too much, and if I should kick the bucket first, he'll just load a few things into his little racing camper, and take off to parts unknown! He would most likely abandon the cat. I should prepare the kids for those eventualities, I guess.
In a final note of irony, once all the popcorn had been removed from the dining room ceiling, I was on the phone, looked up, and spotted a tenacious little creature. Sure, let us try to de-popcorn his habitat! You can take the popcorn out of the ceilings, but you can't take it out of a Daddy-Long-Leg's web!
Final Note: It is now July 11. We have decided to re-texture the ceilings. Not with acoustic popcorn, but with a hand troweled effect. So, nothing has been finished, walls are still largely empty, ceiling vents are still missing, and ceiling lamps hang precariously by wires. We survived a ridiculously stressful window blinds installation imbroglio---perhaps a future blog post, but it's too exhausting to recount now. The Daddy-Long-Legs have vacated the front part of the house, and are apparently ensconced in the front bedroom, which they are happily and copiously decorating with their webs. And hopefully, I will be able to put up Christmas decorations before New Years!
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