Cup O’ Joe: Home remodeling hassles are worth it

When it comes to home improvement projects, why is it the list never seems to get shorter no matter how many tasks you complete?
Like many folks, my wife and I came up with a list of all the things we would like to do with our home when we moved in. But somehow that list never seems to get shorter. Each time I knock off one of tasks, two or three more get added.
    This past weekend, while the wife and kids were downstate visiting her family, I decided to tackle painting the dining room. About a week or so ago, I came home from work to find my wife had started ripping decades old wallpaper off the walls in the dining room. To accomplish this task, most of the furniture had to be moved into the center of the room, in order to gain access to the walls.
Imagine volumes of books, art supplies and other odds and ends piled onto the dining room table, making sit-down dinners next to impossible and that’s a pretty good description of what our room looked like. This transition period lasted for about a week when I came to the conclusion that enough was enough. A co-worker once told me that I was fastidious. While it wasn’t intended, I took it as a compliment.
Before the family headed downstate, my wife informed me that I didn’t “have” to paint the dining room while she was gone and that I could wait for her help to do it some other weekend. What that really meant was “I expect this room finished by the time I get back.”
So with the house to myself, I tackled the task of bringing the dining room to the modern era with a fresh coat of dark red paint. Anyone that has applied a bold, dark color over a bright white wall can attest to the fact that the first coat really doesn’t do the job justice. With white streaks peeking through the swatches of red, I knew I had a long day ahead of me.
I spent the bulk of Saturday applying coats of paint, being ever so careful not to get any on the trim. As the day wore on, my nitpicky demeanor gave way to my desire just to get the job done. On more than one occasion, my brush or roller put a big streak of red on the nice white trim, followed by a few choice words out of my mouth. It was probably a good thing the kids were not home.
Personally, I enjoy painting, but only when it’s painting a room a new color. There is nothing better than stepping back and seeing your efforts pay off. Who wants to paint a white wall white again? Not me.
Last month, we knocked off one of the bigger items on our list – refinishing the kitchen floor. For some strange reason, the previous homeowner had installed carpet in the kitchen. So every time we spilled some coffee or dropped an egg, there was a lovely stain on the floor to remember it by.
There was actually carpet in every room, except the two bathrooms. Picture gold shag rugs circa 1970 and that’s what we were dealing with. The first thing that I did after signing the bank loan was to spend an evening tearing up carpet that seemed to disintegrate in your hands. Much to my delight, there were beautiful red oak hardwood floors underneath the rotting carpets and with a little TLC, they were soon shining like the day they were installed.
The kitchen carpet was another matter as it had been glued to the floor. After first considering the notion of doing the floors myself, I decided it was in my better judgment to call in a professional. I give Paul Prosser a call and he came over on a Friday, gave me a quick estimate and started work that very next morning.
The kitchen project turned the house upside down for about a week, as we had to unhook the stove and move the refrigerator into separate rooms. I compare the experience to camping; only indoors. We spent a week eating food cooked in the microwave and washed the bowls out in our bathroom, but the finished product was well worth the hassle. We know have a beautifully restored kitchen floor that makes the rest of the floors look crummy in comparison, which in turn added another project to the list.
Getting back to the dining room, were my efforts appreciated?
“The room looks great,” my wife said. “So when can we do the living room?”
Joseph Cyr is a staff writer for the Houlton Pioneer Times. He can be reached at pioneertimes@nepublish.com or 532-2281.