ugh. and here i thought i'd left the arctic.
nevermind. that was yesterday morning. and pretty much every morning the past 2 weeks or so. today things have turned around, and it is a balmy -10. this however brings different challenges, namely getting out of my yard in the morning to go to work. the wind that blew in the warm weather last night also blew half of the total snowcover of the RM of dundurn onto my driveway. this has happened before, and i was prepared. with shovel in car i headed off, and began my semi-regular routine of shovel, drive 10 feet, shovel, drive 10 feet, and so on. right before the last time i was to repeat this sequence and hit the clear road to freedom (well, to work, so not exactly), i got cocky. needless to say, it is 1:00 p.m. and i still have not made it to work. i shovelled for an hour but the snow just kept blowing right back, so i figured it was wise to wait until the wind calms down. yes, it took me that long to discern what might be wise. shaddup.
anyhow, with my unscheduled (and unpaid, ugh) day off i figured it was time to catch up on all those important things, like my blog (haha). i have now been in my palace for just over a month, and i absolutely love it (apart from the driveway issue, but i get my quad next week)(for real). the renos have been going slow (my real job takes up a lot of time, go figure) but i am starting to see some progress and damn, am i proud of myself.
i have stripped most of the wallpaper from the stairwell and upstairs hall. i never thought i'd say this, but i LIKE stripping wallpaper. i wouldn't want to be condemned to doing it for eternity, and i am sure i will NOT like it before too long, but right now it gives me that same sense of satisfaction that you get when you pick a scab and it doesn't hurt. only it is a lot less gross, though it takes a lot longer. the walls have no less than 6 different layers of wallpaper, some with borders on top and some with plaster in between. apparently wallpaper is an excuse to do a piss-poor plaster repair job. i also found 3 tea towels in the wall, apparently holding the plaster together. the original layer of wallpaper was gorgeous, though yellowed with age (and when you wet it down to peel it off the ink runs and stains your hands for days...). underneath the paper the pencil lines drawn to guide it when it was hung in 1918 are still visible.
i am now alternating between getting the rest of the wallpaper off, and plastering. i like plastering too, though again i am skeptical that this love will endure. next will be to get that damn paint off my woodwork. the fun never ends! :)
i am also very proud of my brand new walk-in closet. the closet in my bedroom is too narrow to hang hangers, i.e. you have to turn them diagonally in order to close the door. apparently hangers were smaller in 1918, or people had narrower shoulders, or something. lucky for me i have a long, slightly wider closet-ish room in the hall that just needed a rod to become a bona fide closet. my first attempt was unsuccessful due to a slight flaw in my engineering, but i reviewed the design and have had a closet rod attached firmly to the wall for a whole month now. with clothes on it, even! i promised myself i would not bore people with my closet story but it looks like i just did. just to push it a little further, there are pictures in my webalbum.
don't worry, i still go out and have fun sometimes too. my new life isn't ALL closet rods and wallpaper.
just most of the time.
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