Summer probably wasn’t the best time to tackle a project like this, but even so, it’s going much faster than I thought it would. Not an incredible lot has happened since my last post, but I’m at the painting stage, so at least it won’t look as disastrous by the end of the week.
The corner patches needed second coats, but I had to do one side at a time and I glopped it on there pretty thick so it took a couple days to dry. Dust. Dust everywhere. For a few days there was a permanent haze in the room. I’ve been living out of a laundry basket in the bedroom because I didn’t want to deal with going in there and opening the closet and stirring up more dust than necessary while we were still sanding.
Eventually I finished the corners, but not after sanding off the pads of my thumbs while cleaning the sanding sponges. I didn’t notice it happened at first. I cleaned them in the morning, and that evening the turned bright red and started burning like they’d been… well, burned. At first I assumed it happened when I took meatloaf out of the oven, but I thought it was strange because 1) I probably would have noticed when it happened; and 2) it didn’t make sense that’d I’d burn my thumb pads and nothing else. It dawned on me sometime the next day.
It was ridiculously painful. I couldn’t touch anything. That set me back for the rest of the week. That weekend I was out of town for 4 days, and when I got back I lost all motivation for another week.
Nick did a good job at patching the holes near the floor, though there is a piece of carpet fiber embedded in the mud that looks like a fuzzy caterpillar. I found a giant crack that had to be patched while taping the windows, and another small hole when I was sanding it. But I think everything’s as good as it’s going to get at this point.
On Sunday I bought paint! I primed and painted one wall to make sure the color would be even. It looks pretty good!
My plan is to finish painting the room tonight. Then all that’s left is ceiling repair, light fixture installation, new carpet, baseboards, light switches, and a trip to Ikea! And then a day’s worth of work to assemble everything. But after that I’ll be good to go!