Minor Meltdown and Staple Purgatory

 Becky here, with a confession.

Tears have been shed.  The first meltdown has occurred, and I was the one to break. A couple of nights ago I woke up to SSSsssSSSsssssssss and a deflated air mattress.

Simple Things

Just a little bit of a brain dump...

Honey, I think I blew up the Dining Room!

Wallpaper

It seems like such a great design decision at the time. Then you paint over it.. Or maybe paper over it.. Then you sell the house to some guy named Emilio and laugh as you drive away.  

I like wallpaper, I really do.  I just don't like tar covered 1930s wallpaper that was painted over.  Or horrible plate rails that aren't really plate rails (they have grooves...for you know...plates) but actually two pieces of base moulding that were tacked together and slapped up onto the wall of my dining room right at eye level such that it makes the room feel shorter than it is and makes the giant dining room windows look funny.  

So I did what anyone else would do.   I TORE IT ALL OUT IN A FIT OF RAGE!!!  Well.. what really happened was that Becky and I went to the Serv-U Locksmiths over in Springfield to get some copies of the skeleton keys we have (the only keys we have for the house) made.  While there we met their "wallpaper guy" who upon learning of our desire to remove wallpaper from plaster walls informed us to go against all commonly given advice and not use wallpaper remover or water or anything like that but to instead dry scrape it with a wall stripper he had, basically a 4in razorblade on a handle).  

We got home new toys in hand and this happened... 

10 things I can't wait to do in the house!

Becky here, just checking in.

My enthusiasm for the house is growing as we peel back the "layers of bad decisions" (as Emilio describes them) but here is what I am really waiting for:

10. Cook a meal.***DONE!***
9. See what those floors look like when refinished! They are going to be gorgeous.
8. Plant flowers :)
7. Finish pulling staples and tack strips! 13,900,875 down and 5,000 left to go.  ***DONE!***
6. Open up the front porch. Wave at a neighbor!
5. Get Internet!
4. Curl up with my wonderful guy and relax for a whole weekend- no house work allowed!
3. Have friends over for BBQ and beers. Well, maybe BBQ, beers, and painting.
2. Become fabulously wealthy from blogging and book rights.
1. Move in day. I can't wait :)

Carpet.. Carpet... Oh god the carpet! Oh yeah... and a bathroom.

I hate carpet.  I could just leave it at that but I really think you should understand why I hate carpet.  I hate carpet because I have horrible allergies.  Steam heat was a definite "want" when searching for homes.  Forced hot air is awesome... if you want to blow dirt around your house like a weirdo.  That said I was torn between being absolutely disgusted by the carpet we removed from the house and being elated by the fact that I was looking at wood floors.  

It wasn't as quick of a process as we expected though.  In the last blog I showed the process for removing the carpet from the stairs and the living room.  That took us most of a weekend.  The rest of what I'm documenting here took another week from start to finish, finish being getting the rolls of carpet and padding into the garage.  During this time we also made the bathroom usable as we started camping out at the house during the week/weekend.  

It's mine! Let's tear it apart!

I don't know what it is about going into 30 years of debt but it seems to drive people to do strange things.... Like tear apart the house they just bought.

  

First things first though... lets get rid of that stupid sign out front!

It's what's inside that counts!

The inside of the house is chock full of original trim goodness as well as horrible renovation decisions which I'm sure seemed like great ideas at the time.  

From the back door we enter into the kitchen which is as Becky claimed when we first viewed the house, "The worst room" 

 

It may be a disaster but it's my disaster!

So I bought a house in a small college town in Western Mass.  I just had to have a project house and after 6 months of searching and dragging my oh so patient girlfriend all across the Pioneer Valley we found this place.  It was listed as a "charming arts and crafts bungalow" which is a nice way of saying an old bungalow with very little updating since it was built.  Since this is our first post I'll do a bit of a house tour...