This past weekend and week have been all about repairing damaged plaster, which I was pleased to learn is as easy as frosting a cake. And then sanding it. And re-frosting it. And sanding it. Then vacuuming.
I started with a couple of walls in the office and part of the ceiling that looked like this:
(Look closely at the left picture on the upper part of the column for the bulging paint. It looks more dramatic post-scraping.)
I was very pleased and surprised to discover that there isn't horrible water damage behind the flaking paint - just a concrete wall that at some point in the past clearly had some water behind it. Jeff believes that one of the leaks was repaired during a different home repair, and the other was (hopefully) fixed when we changed out and insulated the exhaust fan/outlet. Since we couldn't find any current problems or moisture in the walls, we figured we'd just repair the wall, cross our fingers, and see what the future holds.
And you here have it - a completely smooth wall (and ceiling - can you even see the repair?) that is just crying for a little primer and paint. Well...it's not completely smooth. My technique could definitely use some work. Thankfully these are old walls with many, many bumps and bruises, and we'll actually have to add some texture in the paint to make the patches blend with the rest of the walls. Despite the bumps, I'm really proud of these here walls. I made those walls. Ok, I realize that I didn't...but they were broken and I fixed them. Not some random construction dude who has repaired a million walls...me. The speech therapist.
This led me to the realization that I'm really starting to get excited about everything that we're doing here and what the Villa is finally starting to become. I've been spending quite a bit of time here after work in the evenings, and it's given me plenty of quiet time to do some thinking. (Because, yes, country stations really do play the same song a million times, and I'm too lazy to attempt to find a new station on the 80's era boom box that otherwise keeps me company. How did we change channels before digital? Crazy.) I'll be very honest here - I was initially not excited to be leaving the Beach House, my first house, the house where I figured out how to be a self-sufficient adult. But all this time and energy and love that I get to put into the Villa has started to turn it into my new house. Our new house. And in the silence that's filled only by 220 grit sandpaper smoothing out my new wall, I've started to daydream a little bit about all that these walls might see in the next several years. We're totally bonding. I like it.
Don't get me wrong. I'll still bawl like a baby on the day the U-Haul takes my belongings away from the Beach House - amid promises to Jeff that "no, really...I'm excited..." - but each little bit of work that I'm doing makes the excitement for *our* house grow bigger and bigger. Here's to the next few months of crazy work on Our Villa.
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