Fruit Loops and Floors

(Warning. Long, rambling personal post. Read at your own risk.)

Steve kissed me goodbye, which was the signal to get my lazy ass out of bed. 7:00 and the kids hadn't eaten yet. Well, no shower until the afternoon.

It took me a long time to get moving today. I'm all achy from home renovations projects of the past couple weeks. When we bought our old house last summer, we knew that it was going to require a lot of work. The previous owner had been embroiled in financial troubles and a messy divorce, so she hadn't maintained the place.

Everything requires work. Every window was dirty and every curtain and light fixture needs replacement. Every wall needs vacuuming and a coat of paint. It's mostly cosmetic work inside, but down the road we'll need to replace the drop ceilings and put in some overhead lights. Expensive work that will be shelved for future wealth.

We're planning on spending most money this year having the outside painted and rotting boards on the porch replaced.

We signed onto this project because we got a much bigger house this way, and we figured that we could do much of the work ourselves. At least the inside work. Hey, we watch Trading Spaces. We can do it. Uh, no.

Last week, we decided to give the kitchen a face life which was stuck in several time warps. The cabinets have scalloped edges (the 60s), the appliances are avocado green (the 70s), and the country wallpaper and linoleum was put up in the early 80s. We figured we could pull up the linoleum, scrape the wallpaper, and paint the cabinets. A new kitchen would again have to wait until future wealth, but we could at least improve things for a while.

And we expected that all that work could happen in a week. That's how it works on TLC. Mwaaaaah. Mwaaaah. (evil laugh)

It took two days just to rip up the layers of linoleum and plywood to reveal a rather beat up hardwood base. It was too knackered to properly sand and poly, so we painted it.

My parents are horrified, not only because it's white and will show the dirt, but because it looks like the side of a barn. Full of dings and patches. It still needs another coat of paint and half a bucket of wood putty, but it is starting to grow on me. It's a look. I'm calling it Urban Rustic.

The wallpaper has been pulled down, but it will probably take us another month to finish painting the walls. The cabinets? Forget about it.

I think this is our last home repair project. I'm going to call someone in to do the base molding, because with Steve's crazy work schedule and our inexperience, we just can't do it.

So, I'm slow and achy this morning from a week of fine tuning a floor, but the good news is that I bought Fruit Loops for breakfast. I'm fairly strict about eating nutritious meals and bedtimes and all, because that's what my mother did and I'm too unimaginative to branch out much. But, unlike my mom, I break the rules now and then. It makes the Fruit Loops all the more sweet.

The kids were totally psyched. 5 bowls for Jonah this morning, and 3 for Ian. Ian even made the "F" sound when he saw the box. The first time for an "F" sound. That was well worth the gallon of sugar they ingested this morning.

Ian's speech hasn't made great strides in the past year, though little triumphs like the "f" sound are beginning to happen. Does it bother me that Ian isn't like other kids? Sometimes, but not all that much.

I taught for two years in a special education school in the South Bronx. It was quite an experience and worth its own post sometime in the future. The kids at the school were severely disabled with at least two physical problems and a learning disability. Add on abuse and poverty. Most were so bad off that they had no hope of ever working in K-mart. One student of mine wore a crash helmet, because she had seizures every day. She never learned my name. Two others had MD and had only a few years left of life. I got the job through a connection and had no experience in special education, so I was quite shocked at first at the children in wheel chairs, with shunts, with elephantiasis, with feeding tubes. But after a surprising short period of time, it all became quite normal for me, and I truly adored my new friends.

Someone once told me that God never gives you something you can't handle. And after my experience in the Bronx, I knew that I could handle a lot and therefore always knew that I would get a child with more needs than others. It wasn't such a shock when we discovered that Ian had a speech delay. I knew that he was coming.

Comments

[Lisa SG]

I'm with you on the home repair projects. We bought an older (much older:1792) house 3 years ago, and I've been trying to redo it bit by little bit. Paint one room here, another one there. I like the paint before, at least in most rooms, but it needed repainting anyway. It was painted in a very historical fashion before; I find I'm going for much brighter, cooler colors.

We liked the way the kitchen looked when we moved here, too. The cabinets were quite old but were painted a soft blue, and nothing looked tacky. But it's falling apart. There's a metal bracket in the fridge that keeps falling off, one burner doesn't work on the stove, and the cabinets are mucky and falling apart. We inherited a small sum and are trying to redo the kitchen. It's not that easy (if anyone has advice, pass it along). We have less than the average money spent on a redo, and at the places I've visited on the Main Line in Philadelphia, they treat me like I'm crazy to think I can redo on a budget. Does everyone who remodels a kitchen have 50,000? I don't want to have to go to Home Depot because I don't know what I'm doing, and I want advice, and because I don't have the time to oversee all the details.

Maybe I'll just buy a new fridge and live with the rest. Home repair work (and even thinking about it) is exhausting.

[Amardeep]

It wasn't so long. Or rambly.

[femalephysicist]

Find a poor college student to help out with the home repairs. I was so poor one summer a few years ago that I helped someone with home repairs in exchange for meals. It was a rewarding experience for both of us.

[Lisa V]

Okay base boards on that hard. You can buy them at Home Depot and use a meiter box to cut them.
It took 6 months to pull the wall paper down in our bathroom, then over 2 months we painted, put in new tile. We haven't replaced the toilet paper holder yet - is it so bad to have to grab it off the back of the toilet? We haven't fixed the places we slopped paint. We haven't painted the trim. We'll get to it. Probably when we need to sell it.
My son is my youngest, I think he has some speech developmental delays-he is be being screened next week. He is more immature than his sisters were at his age. His older sisters all have had struggles in math and reading in first grade. They all catch up eventually, they are at grade level now.
I also work in a small junior high. I see kids with mostly intellectual delays. Some kids are in 7th grade and are doing academics on a 3rd grade level. Then there are kids who are brilliant and huge behavior problems, some of this from ADD like stuff and some from chaotic home lives.
I've thought about it and if my son is delayed in some way I can handle that. Behavior problems would be harder for me to deal with. I want him to treat people with respect and kindness and for him to be treated that way in return. There are worse things than not being in the top ten of his class. I never thought I would feel this way. I want each of my children to do the best at what they are capable of. I may have a magna cum laude. I also may have a high school graduate.

[Timothy Burke]

We were planning to put down new linoleum or tile in the kitchen eventually, after we got done with the more urgent repair work of various kinds.

And then my wife accidentally flooded the kitchen and we had to rip up the linoleum anyway. So time for the renovation after all. Holy crow, but home ownership has some significant hidden costs.

[Laura]

Hidden costs. Big time.

But it sure is fun, isn't it? Last time, we visited my in-laws, we brought recent pictures of the kids and the house. It's like our house is our new baby. We're the proud parents of decrepit house in New Jersey. Kinda silly.

Tim, I thought you were going to post something about your new home. Put up pictures, please.

[Another Damned Medievalist]

ADH is currently remodeling our bathroom. Really. Pulled everything out, down to the sheetrock. I'm a bit worried that he is not bringing in a plumber for some of the piping, but there you go. It will cost about $1000 (and no, you don't want to go there) for new bath, sink, floor, and sheetrock, plus pipes, new power point (we need one with a breaker on it, because for some reason that bathroom is on the same breaker as both offices, and so you can't dry your hair if both computers are running).

This is the third big project. Downstairs bathroom before, and floors downstairs (pets devastated the carpets) over the summer.

Here's what I've found: DIY shows and books really help. If you can be patient and careful, and if you have the proper tools, you can do almost anything. We did not have the tools for the floor, but we found a guy at the flooring place -- a liquidator -- who installed for $2.25 a square foot plus materials. Still, it was worth it. He installed bamboo flooring in 4 rooms downstairs in about 14 hours. We could never have got it done as well or as quickly. So sometimes, it's good to hire someone else. But usually, it's all down to whether you have the temperament to 'experiment' on your own house.

[David Salmanson]

Lisa SG, give me a call (i'm in the Philly phone book) and I can help you out some. We ended up having significant termite damage that doubled our kitchen redo costs. We had to completely rebuild "the shed" (an enclosed porch on the back of the house) plus an expensive plumbing bit when it turned out the bathroom in the shed was not hooked into the sewer but drained to the backyard. So we found some ways to cut corners, including a great flooring product. IKEA has much better kitchens than Home Depot. Jenkintown Electric for appliances is cheaper too. And yeah, Main Line people do spend 50K on a kitchen. We hired folks to do most of our work and it ended up costing 60K but more than half of that was due to the termite damage. And we had all new everything ceilings, walls, floors, counters, cabinets, laundry shed, bathroom etc. And none of our stuff came from IKEA.

[Clancy]

I'm really getting an education on home repair; thanks, everyone! Miss Zoot is providing some helpful and funny tips on house-hunting too, not that I, like, have enough money for a house or anything, but still.