Pain-t – new house reno

It’s moving week for us. We took possession of our new house on Wednesday the 6th of March. It felt more rushed than we wanted, I think. CF had a clinic day, which are normally jam-packed with patients. This meant I picked her up in her lunch half-hour, drove the two minutes to the estate agent’s offices, had a short conversation with him, and then headed the four minutes to our new house to inspect it.

After the world’s quickest inspection to check it was clean (it was), the power and gas worked (they did) and there were some spare keys (so many spare keys), I had to take CF back to the office. We didn’t even take the obligatory key picture, although we might do that when we move in on Friday.

Since last Thursday, it’s been nose to the grindstone getting the house ready to move in. First we had to get the plumber in to rip out and replace the Polybutylene piping he put in when the house was built 25 years ago. As it turns out, Poly B (as it’s known here) is notorious for developing small holes and jetting water into the walls. That’s obviously not ideal in any house, but in timber-and-drywall houses it’s considerably less than ideal. There was even an class action lawsuit against the manufacturer in the early 2000s over the defects in the material.

Either way, insurance companies refuse to take on the risk of having a house with Poly B in the walls. So if you want to own the home you have the choice of replacing the Poly B, or replacing the Poly B. We obviously want the home, so we arranged a rider on the insurance via our broker. So long as we have the tubing replaced within 60 days, we’ll be insured. This is best to do when you’re not living in the house, so the plan was to have the plumber in on Thursday, and then get on with part two of the move in. More specifically, painting the whole house top to bottom. Unfortunately, the best laid plans seldom work out that way, and the plumber couldn’t be on-site until Friday.

Instead we spent Thursday prepping what we could before painting – CF working on her day-off-but-not-day-off. We caulked all the seams in literally every baseboard, window casing, and door casing in the whole house. The previous owners had re-floored the house in a delightful (this is heavily sarcastic) linoleum and a significantly more delightful (this is not sarcastic) carpet. To do that, you have to remove the baseboards. Which they did, and subsequently never bothered to properly recaulk the seams. Or even secure the baseboards in some places. Fixing baseboards with more nails, removing all plug and socket plates and recaulking took the whole day. And we didn’t even finish recaulking.

Friday was more of the same – finish the caulking, but this time whilst working around the plumber. We called it quits earlier, especially since CF had a 24-hour shift at the hospital on Saturday. Saturday saw CF and I hard at work from 8am. For me, the day was about fixing the nail holes and various other imperfections in the drywall before painting. After all, what’s the point of getting nice paint and then wasting it on badly finished walls. I will say, I have never used drywall mud, so it was going to be a learning experience. After damaging the walls more – intentionally, to give the mud a bigger area to bind to – for every nail hole, it was time to mud. The picture below will give you some idea of how many holes, dings and other damage there was to the dining room wall. Most rooms were similar and the first round of mudding took me to lunch time.

Being new to mudding, one of the lessons I needed to learn was – less is more, and much rather apply more thin coats of mud. Unless, that is, you want to be sanding forever. And boy, did I sand forever. Friends, I have not had a workout like that in years. At one point, my watch told me I had overexerted myself and my recovery time would be extended (thanks, Garmin). It’s one thing to sand an object, it’s quite another to sand so many damaged areas in a house by hand whilst wearing a respirator (which you absolutely should wear. Either that or something like an N95). It felt like being part of a VO2 Max test in a lab.

That whole process of sanding took me nearly three hours. And then it was round two, to add the second coat that some of the larger damaged areas demanded. And then sand again. At least the drywall mud is quickset, and on the second go-around I’d learned my lesson. After that though, I was complete. I left the house in a complete shambles, drywall dust everywhere on the floor.

Sunday was a less productive day on the house itself. Instead, CF found a beautiful mid-century modern dining room table and chairs for sale in Grande Prairie for a great price. It’s one of the large pieces of furniture we’re missing, so we shot over to look at the set, loved it, and bought it. Of course, it’s a dining room table with six chairs, and we have a Mazda CX-5, so there was no way to finagle the whole set into the back. Thanks to some amazing friends (shout-out to Saurabh and Gabi <3), we left the chairs with them temporarily, before dismantling the table itself and fitting it into the car.

Then it was off to have some lunch to replenish our blood glucose, followed by getting a new shop vac and other odds and ends from Home Depot and Canadian Tire, and heading back to the house. Once there, after some unloading, we got to cleaning up the mess I’d made the day before. It took us a good hour or two to clean the mess. We were both honestly exhausted after that, so we called it a day.

Today we’ll finally get to painting – three days after starting the prep work. First it’ll be finishing the sanding of the actual walls – since I only sanded the drywall patches. Then, finally, it’ll be painting. First, cutting in the ceilings, then rolling them. I’ll have to remove various light fixtures from the ceiling so I can paint them properly too. Who knows how long the ceiling painting will take, since I’m the furthest thing from a professional painter. If I’m exceptionally lucky, I might get onto step two of the painting – window and door casings.

Since we’ve got to be out of the house we’re renting by Friday, that really only leaves us Tuesday and Wednesday to prime and paint the walls (sanding between coats), and paint the baseboards. Then we have Thursday to move the remaining boxes in the house (we’ve been moving boxes bit by bit on every trip to the house), and Friday to remove the large items that won’t fit in the car. Somewhere in that time, our Ikea furniture order will arrive and we have the adult Lego building to look forward to next week.

Typing it out like that makes it sound so simple. CF is still working this week though – someone has to to ensure we have food on the table to eat when we’re moved in – so I’ll probably be doing a lot of the painting work. And now that I think of it, we’re only half-way through the marathon sprint. I’m pretty glad I’m doing it with CF. I’ll chat to you all from the other side.