Home Improvement

It was one of my favorite shows growing up. Watching Tim Taylor screw up his projects brought joy to my afternoons…and ingrained in me the need for constant “Home Improvement.”
Evan and I are close to celebrating the one year anniversary of closing on our house and we have finally finished project number one. You might think, oh, they must have painted, or put down tile, or hardwood, or any number of those normal improvements that people make. But in fact, our first project was what we call scraping off the popcorn. You know that pesky, 1990’s looking, acoustical popcorn stuff that is sprayed on ceilings. We spent the weekend scraping it off. We begin with taping plastic up all over the house, over every window, carpet and floor. To scrape the stuff off, you first spray water on it, then start scraping. By midnight our house was covered in a wet, post-popcorn paste. Things were looking up as we gathered up all the plastic on Saturday afternoon to begin painting. After 5 more hours and weak arms, backs and legs, we only had one coat of paint left to finish on Sunday afternoon. After three hours, two broken paint handles and one broken painting pole on Sunday we were done and ready to move the furniture back in. We vowed from now on only to buy houses with smooth ceilings…and to not lift a finger for the whole upcoming weekend.