DIY

It’s Theme Thursday again and this week’s theme is DIY. And I have to admit, since moving to Oklahoma, I’ve actually done a lot of do-it-yourself projects.  You see, Opie lived in this house by himself for a long time before I moved in and it needed a little polish.

It started out simple, little things like getting rid of the trash can.

That's right, the trash can.

You see, this was the trash can in my darling's house:

Some of his buddies from work gave it to him as a joke after he dumped grill ashes in his old one--not realizing they were still hot-and set it in fire.

It's funny!" He insisted.

And it probably was...but it's just as funny in the garage.

My biggest challenge was changing out the paneling in the living room.  I actually wrote an article about it for Yahoo.

The worst part was not filling all the grooves with spackle—thought that did take freaking forever—the worst part was sanding down all the spackling to get it even with the wall. I tried doing it by hand but soon realized that hand sanding would take me approximately 13 years to finish. So we borrowed an electric sander and were told to remember protective gear so I wouldn’t breathe plaster dust and/or get it in my ears, nose, eyes etc.

It may surprise you to hear that I don’t have a lot of protective gear.

So, I improvised. 

 This is as I got started..by the time Opie got home from work, I had on the same outfit but was covered from head to foot in plaster dust.

I looked like I’d been dipped in flour.

Not exactly my hottest moment…But I finished and I love my living room now.

 

   So much so that I decided to go ahead and give the bedroom walls a similar treatment.

My problem was that I decided to do it as a surprise for Opie while he was out of town for a week.

Did I mention that I was also working 2 jobs at the time?

It didn’t exactly leave a lot of time for extensive remodeling.

And every time I tried I turned my back I had all this unsolicited help:

It's interesting to note that he didn't limit himself to climbing up when I was OFF the ladder.  He kept sneaking in while I was ON the ladder and popping up under my feet, in my face, or on my back at random times.  Usually when he wasn't busy seeing if he could get lid off the paint can and the paint in pretty splashes on his paws.

And, yes, of course I considered locking him out of the room while I worked.  But he just took that as a challenge...who would get tired of his crying first?

Bub was the dark horse favorite in that little game.

I shut them both out of the bedroom, Prince sat outside the door and cried at the top of his little lungs for 15 solid minutes.  And then Bubba decide that this was cause for alarm and began running up and down the stairs barking and howling. Then this half-crazy woman began screaming "Shut up!  For the love of heaven SHUT UP OR I WILL MURDER YOU TO DEATH!!!"

The rest of that night is a little bit of a blur but I have a sneaking suspicion that half-crazy woman was ME.

However, this is what I ended up with and I'm happy:

But I think I'm done with projects for awhile!


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