Some muddy soup

Before the carpet was installed and before we officially moved our stuff in, John and I decided to have some messy fun.  (Get your head out of the gutter, Grandma).
Anyway, you might remember the walls were... odd.  Textured letters under royal blue paint, half-ripped off wallpaper, leftover wallpaper glue under coats of dark pink-mixed-with-brown paint, and the stickers.... little american flag stickers, large moose and cabin stickers (these were scenic stickers, you know, the kind where the full-grown pine tree stickers were smaller than the animals?), stickers with string on them, stickers with stickers on them and on and on.
So, to re-texture walls, you need a putty knife, ladder (we used a paint can first- the lid caved in when I stepped up on it wrong so we had to go buy a ladder 'cause ours was still buried in storage), a measuring cup, some texture mud stuff, some water, a bucket, a big stick (for stirring the mud stuff) and rent a texture hopper thing.

We decided to save money and not rent a drill to stir the mud stuff (our drill was buried in storage).
Mistake.
Cost to rent a drill:  $9.00.  Cost of pain and suffering knocking down all the dry mud clumps stuck to the wall with my 3-inch-wide putty knife- mud clumps the big stick didn't smooth out during stirring:  way more than $9.00!

We decided to do what is called an "orange peel" texture.  The main reason we chose this particular style was because the guy on YouTube showing us how to texture our walls kept screwing up the other style we could have done called "knock down".  Hey, if he can't do it and he's an expert!.... doesn't take a rock scientist =P  or a rocket scientist!

Our boys played with the big stick and bucket while John read the directions out loud.

"It says here to mix water and mud stuff until you get a thick soup consistency."

Hmmm.

Soup.

So.... clam chowder?  chili?  or was it more like Campbells Chunky Beef?  By the way, all I soup I have ever eaten has lumps of something (beans, clams) in it so.... I'm just getting that out there...

John didn't want to mix the mud without his powerful drill (he wanted to rent one, I was the tight wad) so I did.  With the big stick.  It took FOREVER!  It never really got thick so I kept adding more and more dirt stuff to the watery mixture.  We had rented the hopper for five hours- I figured that was plenty of time to texture three bedrooms, a hallway and large front room.  No problem.  Except the soup was so soupy for so long and then it was very very chunky and REALLY hard to stir with my stick!
Uuugh.

It took about 3 1/2 hours to get the soup right and another 30 minutes to figure out how to run the machine.  It took about 5 seconds to call the rental place to reserve the hopper for the rest of the day and part of the next.

The rest was FUN!  John let me do the spraying since I'm the artist (truthfully, I know it is because he wanted me to be the one to screw up so he'd have someone besides himself to blame =P).  John's job was to protect the ceilings by holding a piece of cardboard up as I came up the wall with the spray.
He was so quiet during the whole thing.  Never a peep.  And I was in my zone!  I loved this sport!  I went up the wall and down the wall in quick even sweeps.  Never looking anywhere but the wall art I was creating.  Then I ran out of mud and had to turn the hopper off to reload.  That is when I finally looked at my partner... completely covered on his left side from toe to now solid white (on the left side only) spectacles with thick soupy mud.  At first I gasped, "Oh my!  I'm so...so-r-...ppppppth"  I had tears.  I could not stop laughing.  What a site!  And he just stared at me through his one-eyed glasses and nodded his head, threw his hands out and took a bow.  My man =)

Now... in the other corner, while all this was happening I hear the stirring of a stick, a slurp and and exclamation, "Mmmmmmm!  Soup!"
CHAAAARRRRLIEEE!

Ok, so that last part didn't really happen.  But wouldn't that have been funny if it did =)

Moving in

People in Montana just do things differently- that's the only explanation I have.

We were supposed to close on the house on a Wednesday, early in the morning.  I got the call from my realtor Tuesday night telling me there would be no closing on said Wednesday because "um, Mrs Bruce, the wife refused to sign over the Title."  Hmmf.   (We ended up closing one month later after further negotiations and, I'm guessing,"the wife" finally got what she wanted.  Oh, and that closing got postponed until later in the afternoon- it was supposed to be on a Wednesday-early-in-the-morning- because- does this really happen?- the computers were down at the bank).

We were supposed to have new carpet put in on a Wednesday, early in the morning.  I got the call from Home Depot tuesday night telling me "um, Mrs. Bruce, there is going to be a delay," and "could we reschedule for two weeks out?".  Hmmf.  Apparently our "large order" (large because we had to rip out the whole frigging house of fuzz-filled-dog-pee-saturated-deep hills and bunkers carpet) wasn't quite ready yet- "so sorry, Mrs Bruce"

We were supposed to have some movers help us move our heavy furniture at 8am, on a Wednesday... early in the morning.  I got a text on Wednesday at 7:55am..."um, lady?  I can't make it this morning.  something has come up.  sorry to disappoint."  Hmmf and F$%#!!!!!  'Sorry to disappoint'?  Are you fu@&ing serious?!  Now what?  The U-Haul is parked out front and ready to go.  The boys are in school.  John is working.  F$%#!  I panicked.  Wouldn't you?  I got on the phone to everyone I knew in town (two whole people) and no one had any advise or burly friends to help me out of this dilemma.  So I called bonehead mover (he didn't answer) "blah dee dah, I'm a bonehead so leave a message!"....so I said, "Listen here, Bozo,"  I was trying to sound professional and calm, "I have an empty U-Haul and we had an agreement!  You have five minutes to come up with a plan that is going to make me happy!"....well, it went something like that.  Anyway, two minutes later "Bob" called, "Um, Mrs. Bruce?...".  I and two old guys who, instead of showing me their moving badges showed me their licenses to legally smoke marajuana "stricktly for medicinal purposes, of course.  What did I care?  I was moving in.  On a Wednesday.  Not so early in the morning.

We were supposed to have our apartment carpets professionally cleaned on a..... Thursday  (ha!  fooled ya!),  early in the morning.  They were supposed to show at 8am.  Got the call at 8:01am.  "Um... Mrs. Bruce?"  I don't believe this!  So, I told him, "I don't believe this!  You're joking!  Who put you up to this!"  stay calm.  poised.  I sucked in air as he proceeded to tell me he drove by my apartment and when he realized where I lived (I gave him my damn address a week ago!) he simply would not clean my carpet.  Why?  Get this, FIVE YEARS ago he was setting up to clean an apartment down the hall when the owner of the building walked by and told the tenant he could find someone cheaper.  Ok.  I admit this would piss me off too, but who is the real customer here?  I am the one with the damn lease contract that says my carpets must be professionally cleaned and this guy was listed as the person to call!

After this I left town for a while.  Is it Montana?  Or just Wednesdays... early in the morning?  =)

More to come, just you wait!

Never done this before.

I've never blogged before- not great with computers (not to mention I have poor grammar and now all of you will know about it =p).  There's a first time for everything, I guess.  

I decided to give this blogging thing a try since it seemed I was telling the same stories over and over again to my friends and relatives every time something came up with our "new" house/fixer-upper.  So.... here goes

We moved to Montana from Idaho in August, 2010.  Since home prices were so much higher here than in Boise, we decided to purchase a home that (we thought) needed some minor cosmetic repairs but had the square footage we needed and "good bones" as we like to call them.  Not to mention, we got a great deal on the price.  

As far as cosmetic blemishes go, we had never seen anything quite like it.  The selling realtor's facial expressions spoke volumes when she tried to explain some of the "problems."  Her mouth twitched a bit and one eyebrow occasionally rose into her hairline as she stuttered out the words, "a-a-annnd, y-y-ou might have n-n-oticed there are no baseboards."  I hadn’t noticed. “Oh, and d-d-don’t w-w-o-o-rry, he is g-g-oing to r-r-eplace the r-r-oof”.  And then she tilted her head and smiled.

I should mention this selling agent put me off on even seeing the place at least two or three times because the house needed to be "cleaned up a bit" and "furniture needed to be moved out" and I think the word, "de-cluttered" was used about twelve times, not to mention she had to "hire professional cleaners" more than once.  But I was intrigued.  Her description of the place on realtor.com was quite captivating:  'VIEWS VIEWS VIEWS!' and something about a large deck off of the open kitchen and living area.  Plus, I had already looked at 60+ homes I didn't like and this one was in our price range.

So, the baseboards... We were told this house was in the middle of a nasty divorce.  Poor house.  All the selling realtor said to us (under her breath, face twitching) was "divorce situation,"  "wife took the baseboards and did some ‘painting’,"  "husband got the house."  Ouch.  I didn't know whether to laugh at the wife's clever revenge tactics or to feel sorry for the poor guy stuck with trying to sell a house that now looked quite beaten and messed with.  

I took lots of pictures.  Mostly because my husband was still living in Boise while I house-searched and I wanted him to see what we might be getting ourselves into.  Later that night, I emailed him pictures of the missing baseboards; giant shredded hole (are those teeth marks?) in a wall in the basement- hamster gone crazy? giant mouse? small horse?; dark paint splattered on the ceiling, carpet, wood cabinets, base-heaters, light fixtures, light switches, toilet lids, windows, linoleum, vents, etc.; missing closet doors (well... she (was it her?) left the ugly ones- half of them); missing closet rods, shelves, etc; and (my personal favorite) a row of lightbulbs above the basement bathroom vanity where someone (more revenge?) cleverly placed one giant lightbulb the size of a basketball at the end because they were too lazy to go to the store to find the proper-sized-bulb or for some more clever "staging" of a house  they didn't get in the divorce... hmmmm.  mystery, but funny =).   The walls had some bizarre texturing because someone had removed wallpaper and not cleaned the glue off before painting the walls a new lovely pink/dark brown/puke-green/orange- oh the colors were lovely! One of the rooms had been textured extra-special because behind the royal blue paint I could barely make out raised letters for the words "m-o-m" and, I think either a mixed-up alphabet or irish/welsh profanities of some sort- hard to tell-  why welsh?  someone had plastered permanent stickers that read "Pog mo thoin" to the mirror in the bathroom. The vanities had been replaced in the two upstair bathrooms with tall skinny ones leaving no counter space and the toilets had been replaced with midget seats that, to my three-year-old-son's delight, were just his size!  The kitchen cabinets were interesting- 3/4's of them didn't open and the other 1/4 opened 3/4's of the time (they were the kind you have to push in to pop out except they didn't pop out and the faces of all the doors/drawers are flat so there's no way to open them without using a creative prying tool of some sort).  The light fixture hung in the entryway was so low it skimmed the top of my head (and hit my husband’s face when he finally came to see this treasure weeks later).  The carpet was the perfect setting for my boys to play war on with their miniature GI Joe’s because of all the rolling “hills” and bunkers- did this happen because of the missing baseboards?  And on and on...  and this was just my first visit =)  All these flaws and I still left the house smiling.  After days and days of searching, I had finally found our home.  Now, I just had to convince John (my husband) to come and see it.

To be continued.....