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 =)