bad news ben

Because Ben and I are currently living separately- he's in Saratoga starting our lives up there while I'm in New York City trying to clean up and pack up the lives we're leaving behind- our communication has turned to regular phone calls. Often times he starts the call with an update on his job, sometimes he talks about the weather and how unbelievably cold it got very quickly, then I start complaining about packing and suddenly he hits me with bombshell. Something has gone wrong on the house.. again! But there are times when he doesn't sugar coat the situation- he skips the weather and lays it on me.

The process goes something like this..
1. Ben updates me on the "crisis"
2. I make sure he's not kidding and then I have a minor panic attack because whatever the solution it's going to cost MORE money that we don't have
3. Ben says he has a solution
4. I veto the solution and give him a **better solution
5. We argue
6. I'm right

** I must point out that I added the asterisk because if he were writing this post his opinion would differ drastically. The reality is (and I'm not going to sugarcoat it for the readers) Ben and I are two very strong personalities- though, I think I give in a lot (whether my family believes it or not)! But when it comes down to it, Ben makes decisions to get things done where as I think them through, thoroughly. And while one is not necessarily better than the other, in our situation (due to our tight budget and wreck of a house), thinking these things through is so necessary.. hence me being right all the time.

A little peak inside our "renovating relationship" It's important to mention that our communication during this process is VERY different than how we normally behave- but that's to be expected due to the added stress.
On Monday night I announced to Ben that from now on every time one of us is right about something we get a notch on our belts. Ben made it a point to say the notches are not retroactive (which is unfortunate for me and very lucky for him). But even with that little clause in the agreement, I currently have four notches.. Ben has zero.

Back to the bad news..
Remember the original wallpaper issues I posted about here? Well they just don't seem to end.
On one particular afternoon a couple weeks ago Ben started plastering and sanding the walls in one of the bedrooms and I got a call. The plaster was pulling what appeared to be a wallpaper liner off the wall, revealing another layer of wallpaper underneath.
We had seen a hint of the paper pictured above when we were stripping the walls, but neither of us ever thought that this was something that had to be removed as well.

But not to worry, Ben decided there was no getting around the issue, so he acted quickly and bought a steamer at Home Depot. He called to let me know he was going to strip the liner and the layer of wallpaper and then all of our problems would be solved (in that room, of course). After a couple hours of him trying to steam and strip, he said the moisture from the steamer was collecting on the ceiling and drops of dirt were falling from overhead. Everything was wet and the wallpaper and the liner just weren't coming off as quickly as they were supposed to. When he got lucky he'd get a hold of a strip and pull, though often times he'd not only pull the liner and the wallpaper, but he'd get a chunk of plaster too.
Leaving us with far from perfect walls (remember we are no professional painters so our patching skills can't be trusted) and a steamer. Just perfect.

Once Ben started seeing the plaster pieces come loose my phone rang again. This time he said his solution wasn't working. So what's Plan B you may ask? Plan B in our renovation diaries seems to always be the same.. laminating the walls in 1/4" sheetrock... Remember when Ben called me lazy for throwing in the towel during my living room wallpaper removal adventures? You can read about that lovely argument here. And by the way, he still denys he ever said that.

1/4" sheetrock seems like a good solution- Ben swears he knows how to install it, it's going to cost more but once again the fact that our house is small is looking more and more beneficial everyday. While we're adding two new rooms to the "re-sheetrocking" list, (both the bedroom and office have the awful liner) the extra expense is almost worth it to know in the end we'll have clean walls and will hopefully have spared the headache or two that could have been caused by the patching and sanding.

Here's the catch..
While all of the professionals say when a situation like this arises to install 1/4" sheetrock as a lining. It's easy to use, not heavy and can be installed right over the imperfect walls. It masks all minor wall damage, just keep in mind it does not hide slopes in the walls unless you level them off beforehand. We have this slope on one of the bedroom walls that Ben would like to correct-
though it doesn't bother me for two reasons.. 1) it's an old house, therefore to be expected and 2) I pick my battles. I'm desperate for clean, painted walls.. clean, painted, sloped walls still sounds pretty good to me.

While the 1/4" sheetrock sounds like a wonderful solution here are some of the issues that we had to take into consideration:

- Delivery. Sheetrock comes in large sheets and cannot just be put into any vehicle. While delivery is always an option we have been trying to cut costs by forgoing any delivery fees and picking up items ourselves.

- Time. We're moving in two weeks, Ben's working full time and I'm not available to help which means there's no chance any of the installation will get done before our furniture arrives.

- Availability. 1/4" sheetrock is that it's considered a "specialty" item. Home Depot doesn't carry it, nor does Lowes. And because it's specialty means it's more expensive.

But with every issue we have come across in the last two months, we have come up with solutions for these as well..

- Delivery. I've never been so happy to have a very big, very real pick up truck (even if I still have a terrible time getting into it.. I pulled a muscle on my first try).

-Time. There was no avoiding the issue of time. The truth is, everything is taking longer than we first expected and nothing will be done before the move in date. Again, in order to practice patience I'm trying to let the time thing go. Ben did say he'd try to get the living room done first so we could live out of there while the other rooms are getting done- not to mention our bedroom is now serving as a closet..
and because I want to organize before we start just putting things away, I asked him to work on that room after I get in there and figure out where we should put everything (clothing storage is a little bit of an issue).

- Availability. We looked into ordering 1/4" at our local hardware store Allerdice, but it was about $2.00 more a sheet than the in stock options. Because we're trying to save our pennies Ben and I went from room to room with a piece that is 3/8" thick and stocked at all major stores (aka Home Depot).
As you can see above since our moldings are so thick, the 3/8" worked, but in considering all of the details of the room we came into another problem- the ugly crown molding that we desperately want to replace is only 1/4" thick.
You may not think that's an issue because we do want to replace it- you may even think we can use the money we saved on the sheetrock to buy new crown molding, but in reality molding is expensive, hard to install and very time consuming. New crown molding goes on the list with new ceilings and overhead lighting- all things we won't be able to begin discussing for a couple of years. So with that said I made an executive decision. In order to spare ourselves from living in a home (for an unspecified amount of time) with unfinished crown, I decided we should spring for the more expensive sheetrock- not to mention the 1/4" will be a little easier for Ben to install himself.

And we took a trip to the lumber yard..
Having a husband who works for a contractor has its benefits (and I'm not just talking about the truck). Yes the truck helped- how else would we have traveled to the lumber yard and actually fit in??.. but having a sales rep he deals with regularly and receiving pricing based on a contractors account is also very helpful. I must point out that a lot of what we have been able to do was made possible through our various vendor relations- we can't overlook that. So on Thursday night we hopped into the truck (again I had some difficulty) and drove down to Curtis Lumber in Ballston Spa. And that is exactly where I whipped out my camera to document our picking up close to 40 sheets of 1/4" sheetrock.

I must also point out that these pictures were not easy to get. Ben was complaining as I clicked away.. he even said he'd never be able to show his face there again. After that comment I felt compelled to inform the guy that helped us that this was for a blog.. not that he cared.

looking back at the sheetrock through the truck

Just fyi for all of you who were concerned.. Ben was able to show his face there again. In fact, the following morning he made another trip there for something work related.. and the same lucky guy helped him.