Our PODS moving unit finally arrived on Tuesday, and we had it emptied by Friday. Most of the boxes are unpacked, excepting Everett’s book collection, and we’re working on figuring out where everything “belongs.” Optimizing the space for our usage is both fun and frustrating; I like trying to impose order, but making the space usable requires time and some money. We have been spending most of our time on moving in and home improvement, so we still haven’t seen much of Syracuse.
The home improvement projects are coming along fairly well. Our “whole-house electrical upgrade” took a day and a half; we replaced 4 original outlets with modern ones, added 3 GCFI’s, and converted/added 8 grounded outlets. We can now run our electronics without fear of meltdown and when the fridge kicks on, the lights no longer flicker. It is good.
I have finished repainting the stairway in a fresh turquoise color, and I’m extremely pleased with the results. The very washable semi-gloss paint reflects more light so it’s quite literally lighter and brighter. It’s also the first real color in the house, the balance of which was decorated in dark wood siding, washed-out neutrals in flat paint, floral wallpaper, faded gray Formica, and of course, the overwhelming pink-ness of the bathroom.
The breakfast nook, on the other hand, feels like something of an albatross. After priming, texturing, and putting a layer of Killz on the walls, we decided that we just had to start over. The paint was moistening the underlayer of stinky black linoleum glue and the visual appearance of the glue texture on two-thirds of each wall was unmitigated by efforts to mask it.
So while the Killz was still setting, we scraped it all down, and removed a ton of the yucky glue in one relatively quick session. Last night we spent several hours with a spray bottle of water and paper towels, and I’m guessing it will take another couple evenings like that to get the walls clean of the linoleum glue. It turned out that there was simply nothing we could do except either entirely cover it, or entirely remove it. We’ve opted for removal, which takes us back down to original wall surfaces; the breakfast nook was mint green, to begin with, and I still have visions of a light, sunny yellow. I think it will take the rest of this week and weekend just to finish that one tiny room. So much for low-hanging fruit!