Home Sweet Home

Hello strangers. How’s it going? It’s been a while. Sorry about that. We’ve been a little busy. When we haven’t been busy, I have been too tired to stare at a computer and try to come up with something cute. I haven’t been in a cute mood. So as you regular readers know, based off of the time it's been since our last post, this will be a pretty long post. If you must, break it up and read it in parts. Drink some coffee. Take bathroom breaks. Save some for tomorrow. Just be happy it’s something.

The last time you heard from us, we were getting ready to move into our house. You Remember our June 4th post; “The people who are occupying our house are moving out this weekend so we are going to start painting and getting it ready to move. Hopefully within 2 weeks we will be sleeping in our own bed.” Well…optimism will only get you so far.

The day the previous owners walked out of the house, Saturday June 7th, Corey and I had a bounce in our step. We were gonna walk in, scrape some acoustic texture (popcorn) off the ceilings, remove some wallpaper, paint some rooms and move our stuff in. Two weeks. MAX. Thinking back on that day. It was the WORST day of our married lives. Literally. What was giddy excitement, soon turned to angry frustration. For starters, we could have earned platinum membership privileges with locks of love for dogs with all the dog hair we got off the floors. There was dog pee stained in the carpet, on the doors, on the floors, on cabinets and in places that dogs can’t even fit into. The house was disgustingly filthy. So we had to clean. No, we had to decontaminate our house before we could do anything. Needless to say, we were riding a wave of emotions with nothing more than a flat bottom paddleboat to take us through it!

So Corey started cleaning and I started trying to remove the wallpaper border in our room. Allow me to let you in on a little secret: there is not a product on the market that is worth a crap when it comes to removing wallpaper. If there is, they don’t sell it over the counter. After about 3 hours of scouring, squirting, scraping and peeling, I had 1/4th of our room free of the I Love the 80’s wallpaper border. At this rate, with all of the wallpaper in the house, we would have moved in about Spring Break. I was frustrated and if the guy from Lowe’s, the one who told me that bottle of wallpaper crap was the best thing since rice krispie treats, had been standing in my house, I would be awaiting trial for aggravated assault.

So, because I was fuming mad at Mr. Home Improvement expert, what did I do? What most red blooded males do, I took it out on my wife. Which turned out to be somewhat of a volatile situation because she couldn’t talk without crying or see straight because she was so mad. I don’t think I have to paint you a picture of why she was so mad. Just imagine being on your hands and knees scrubbing dog pee for about 4 hours. So instead of escalating an already explosive situation, I did what most red blooded males would have done. I left. I didn’t even know where I was going. I just left. I started at Lowe’s b/c I was going to give Mr. Home Improvement expert a small piece of my mind. Seriously. But he wasn’t working when I got there. He must have known I was coming! So I walked around looking for something to jump off the shelf and land in my arms screaming, “Hey, take me home. I can fix your problem. I can help you.” You know a good ole sign from God. Isn’t that how he works? Well God must have been busy with the starving pigmies in New Guinea at that moment because I left Lowe’s empty handed. So on to Sherwin Williams. When I got to the paint experts, I was a lost, beaten-down, wandering puppy dog. Luckily, God sent an angel to work that day. Her name was Lindsey. I told her my problem. I told her I didn’t know what to do. I told her I needed help. I told her if she didn’t help me, I was holding her personally accountable for wrecking my marriage. (Someone needed to be blamed) She had the answer to my problems and my prayers. The Wagner Power Tex. A do-it-yourself sized electric mud gun that sprays texture on your walls (covering wallpaper) and ceilings all wrapped up in a 12 inch by 12 inch box of marital bliss. After an hour of motivational prodding and a short tutorial, I was sold. She convinced me that I could master the art of mudding. I was willing to try anything. So I became the proud owner of a texture gun. I was a mud man. And, most importantly, still married.

Financial advisors suggest not making spur of the moment purchases. And usually when I make one of these purchases, I am a little apprehensive to tell Corey. This time, however, when I got out of the car with my Power Tex, I felt like Tim The Tool Man Taylor. I wanted to growl and grunt but I figured Corey wasn’t in the mood. Corey didn’t even complain. I think she was just glad I was trying something. So with a new power tool and a new attitude, we got to work…that next morning. At that point, I didn’t want anything to do with that marriage wrecking, money pit of a house for the rest of that day.

Well, three and a half weeks later, I had the experience necessary to be a certified professional mudder person. (That’s industry jargon) I scraped 2100 square feet of ceilings. (Note: You get a complimentary strain in your shoulders when you scrape acoustic off the ceilings, just as an added bonus). I sprayed and textured ceilings and walls. We painted EVERY square inch of walls in the house. With help from our Angelic Saleswoman at Sherwin Williams, we painted and faux finished our fireplace (it was already painted a dingy off-white). My dad and I knocked out a cabinet in our kitchen. We changed light fixtures. We painted our front door. We did about $15,000 dollars worth of work on our house ourselves. There is a show on DIY called Sweat Equity. Corey and I just laugh when it comes on; they ain’t got nothin on us! (Yes that’s correct English if you live in East Texas) So, if any of you need some work done around your house, call me. I’ll let you borrow my tools.

So we finally moved in on July 2nd. It’s not our dream house, but this house feels more like home than any of our other houses we have lived in. It’s got a lot of our elbow grease and sweat all over it and we are proud of it. That’s why we like to be here. Therefore, if you call and invite us over, we are likely to politely decline. We waited a long time to move in and put a lot of hard work into it. We like to hang out here. Plus, we spent all of our gas money on joint compound. So unless you are calling to cook us dinner…