Taking a Break

Susan and I took a break from working on the house last weekend and went camping. We made it a looooong weekend, leaving on Friday and staying away from work until Tuesday. The pleasantly unexpected result was that we get three 4 day work weeks in a row. (I would explain the reasoning behind that statement, but who really cares?!)

Our camping trip took us to Upper Priest Lake in Idaho. We had to boat our way in to our campsite as there are no roads to Upper Priest. That also meant that we had a very rustic campsite...no bathrooms. We had a great and restful time, consuming copious quantities of food and drink, but determined that we are now too old for that much rusticity in our camping experience. It's just too much work.

The highlight of camping was getting to watch a Fire Department Helicopter dip a large bucket into the lake and then dump the water on a fire burning on the ridge above the lake. The fire was quite a sight to watch at night. We had to decide between competing natural marvels. Watching the fire or looking at all the stars. Did I mention that we drank a lot too?!

We came home a day early which left us Monday to work on the house. The project we are working on now is the Second Floor Landing and Master Bedroom.

We have drywalled over the old plaster walls and ceilings. We have attempted to skim coat the stairway wall going up the stairs. I have run into a little problem with the wall because of cracks in my plastering.

Our present objective is to get all our mudding and sanding complete by this weekend (Labor Day) so we can get up a coat of Primer on all the walls and ceiling.

I don't think we are going to make it. We still have a great deal of finish work to do on the walls. Here is my first important mentoring advice for beginning do it yourselfers.

Quit NOW Dumb Ass!

No, that's not it. It is important to do all this prep work properly so that when we do get to the painting, it will all go smoothly. We don't want to have to go back and re-sand some area that we missed. If you have to go back and re-sand, refer to the paragraph above.