Living in filth

I know we aren't all perfect. Many of us have entered into our home renovation/restoration/building projects armed with only enthusiasm, a few how-to books, and a vision of what our homes could be. I definitely fall into this category. I've spent more than one sleepless night wondering why I thought I could help this poor old house. I really don't know what I am doing. But I am smart enough to figure out that a kitchen is a very poor place for carpet. The kitchen and bathroom are the two rooms most people would want to be easily cleaned and maintained. I understand this, and I don't even know what the hell I'm doing...!


I want so badly to rip out the carpet in the kitchen and laundry area. I know that those two rooms are subject to a lot of spills and messiness, especially since the laundry area is our entryway as well. Shayne won't let me tear up the house any more than it already is, so I settled for cleaning the carpet.


Here's what the rinsewater looked like:

That's not even the water from the first round. That's the water after the carpet had already been "cleaned" once, and I went over it again with just water to rinse. I even rinsed it again after taking this picture, hoping that by rinsing it I pulled up a lot of dirt. Sadly, the water was no cleaner. I'm wondering if I should keep rinsing it in hopes that all of the dirt will eventually get pulled out, or leave it alone because the dirt may be under the carpet and by rinsing I'm pulling it into the carpet. A disgusting dilemma...


Since it's finally cooled off, I've been catching up on other cleaning as well. I've vacuumed the entire house, and I don't mean I just vacuumed every room. I'm talking under beds, in closets, walls, window sills, everywhere. I really wish I could vacuum the cat. She threw up another hairball tonight, right in the middle of the bed. So now, at 10:00, I'm having to wash the bedspread and sheets. Why can't she ever throw up anywhere convenient? It's always on the little bit of carpet we have, on the new area rug, or the bed. Thanks Kitty.

Are we there yet?

With all the chaos in our lives right now, I'm amazed that we've been able to get anything done. Shayne's still plugging away on the garage project I haven't even mentioned yet, and I've been trying very hard to keep the house in some semblance of order. He's having much more success than I am.

The garage project is to create a workshop for Shayne out of the original garage. So far he's cleaned, sealed, and painted the floor, insulated, framed in a wall to divide the workshop from the "new" garage, added an air conditioner, and began putting up drywall. It's really going to be nice when he's done. Unfortunately, the rest of the garage is now an utter disaster. We barely have room to park the cars, and I occasionally bash into some stacked woodwork while trying to park.

With the hot weather I haven't made any progress on the sanding (surprise...). I did start working on the wallpaper stripping again, though. It's going so much faster upstairs than it seemed to downstairs. I got a 2.5' by 6' area done inside an hour yesterday. I've decided that I was being too careful before. There's no way I'm going to hurt the plaster with a plastic putty knife. Now that I'm not afraid to be a little more aggressive, it goes much faster. And the sooner I get the office done, the sooner I can have the ductowkr re-run, and the sooner we'll have a decent amount of air conditioning upstairs (yay!). It's probably 8 degrees hotter upstairs than downstairs, which isn't terrible, but it gets a little stuffy up here.

Today's chores include more wallpaper stripping and attempting to organize some of the garage.