Friday, October 12, 2007

home repair woes

John and I have been working on getting all of the little odds and ends in our house fixed up. We have been doing it ourselves A) because we can and B) because we don't want to pay someone else to do it for us. However, if we had unlimited funds there are 5 things that I would pay to have someone else do for us regardless of how silly it may seem.

5) Plumbing for the bathroom. John did a good job with the plumbing in the downstairs bathroom but I can't even begin to tell you how many headaches he had along the way - everything from soldering the pipes that refused to be soldered to breaking the shower floor... twice.

4) Removing wallpaper. When we moved into our house we did not have wallpaper all over the walls and ceilings like my friend Kim did in her house. We were lucky. We only had wallpaper in our closets - about 5 layers of old, nasty, stubborn wallpaper. Oh yeah, there was also some hideous wallpaper in our kitchen; only one layer, but it was glued directly onto the drywall. Ugh!

3) Sanding...anything and everything. I HATE SANDING!!!!!!! We had to spackle and sand the walls in the kitchen 3 times to fix deep gouges in the walls left over from removing wallpaper (see above). We have also done a ton of sanding in our attempt to finish the basement. (See #1.) I have a power sander, but for most of the work you really need to do it by hand. The result is a dead arm and a kink in your shoulder that lasts for weeks!

2) Painting trim. Our house was built in the early 1900's so it has this gorgeous 3" trim around every doorway and window (and trust me, we have a lot of them!). It is beautiful to look at but THE BIGGEST PAIN to paint!!! I have been working on the trim in our tiny kitchen for about 3 weeks because I keep finding reasons to procrastinate. Can you blame me?!

1) Finishing the basement. John and I started earnestly working to finish the basement February or March of last year...we're still not done. Here is what the job entails: deconstructing the mess the previous owners had tried to build, searching out and destroying the armies of spiders who had taken residence there, scraping and recementing the walls, painting on 2 coats of drylock on all the walls to waterproof, 2 coats of paint over the drylock on walls that would not be covered by drywall, running new electrical wires so we could have power down there, framing, putting up insulation and drywall, taping and spackling the drywall and... that is as far as we have gotten. Man, just typing it out makes me tired. We are trying to get it to a point that someone will look at our house with the not quite finished basement and still want to buy it. If I had known what a pain finishing the basement was going to be I would have never let John start, I certainly wouldn't have encouraged him by helping!

If you are planning on undertaking any of these projects I suggest you think twice, have a friend smack you upside the head, then hire someone to do it for you! You will be grateful you did!!

5 comments:

Jared said...

...oh. I thought you were offering to do those services. I was just about to hire you.

Ah well.

Can you 1) re-tile roofs, 2) fix rotting floor joists, 3) re-side our house, 3) frame and drywall our closet?

Sometimes Chrissa and I wish we were still living in an apartment. Sometimes.

International Tease said...

Note to self: rent, not buy.

Although, my dishwasher just broke, and because my landlord lives in Afghanistan, I have to find myself a repair person and wait at home for him to come and fix my dishwasher. In the middle of the busiest season of the year at my new job.

Rent in a building. With an on-site resident manager.

yamsey said...

In our first apartment I used to be able to get my super to come and kill the huge eastie beasties and other scary bugs for me. Now I have to kill them myself. Maybe renting is better.
Too bad John is concerned about the whole equity thing...

Jared said...

Apparently, I count like this: 1, 2, 3, 3, 4...

I never realized that.

yamsey said...

I didn't even notice until you said something. I must count the same way.