By July, Ted and I had all of our planned outdoor work contracted. It was time to get moving on the house interior update–things that can be done in bad weather. We kept putting this off mostly because neither of us is good at design or color selection. I mentioned this to Jeff and La and they suggested we do what they did: hire an interior designer. Good idea!
The interior designer (not decorator–there’s a difference) had some very good ideas, and she was honest and tactful enough to guide us without offending us when she pointed out problems and made suggestions. We had never even thought about some of her ideas, but we definitely wanted to include them in our update. What we appreciated most, however, were the dozen paint color samples she gave us. Ted and I hate picking out paint colors. More than once, we’ve painted, then re-painted, a room because the color we chose didn’t look as good as we’d imagined it would. Having to choose from only 12 of the 1,700 Sherwin-Williams interior paint colors (I checked) eliminated 99.3 percent of the possible color decisions just like that! (I did the math, too.)
Although the interior designer narrowed our paint color selections to a dozen light, neutral colors, Ted and I still had to choose which of those colors to use and in which rooms to use them. I’m sure there are people in the world who can make this kind of color decision in a snap, but Ted and I are not among them. I painted multiple color swatches in every room on multiple walls in each room to see how different lighting affected the colors. I labeled each swatch with a piece of blue masking tape so we could remember which color it was. It still wasn’t easy for us to choose our colors. Before the painters arrived, I peeled 117 pieces of blue masking tape off the walls. The photos below show how much lighter our newly painted walls will be. Best of all, even though it took 117 wall swatches, we like the paint colors we chose for every room–on the first try!
With the designer’s ideas in mind and the paint colors selected, we were ready to schedule contractors. On an August afternoon, I called an electrician, a painter, and the carpet company, one after another. Shockingly, all three were immediately available. We had walk-throughs and bids from all of them within three days of my call and the electrical team was scheduled to arrive six days after my call. It was time for Ted and me to get to work!
The three electricians needed three days to do their work for us. We moved things out of their way in the six rooms where they needed space for ladders and tools. They installed recessed halo lights in the master bedroom and bath, the kitchen, and the project room. They also installed a light wall of eyeball lights in the family room, and they wired a bar light over my sewing machine in the project room and two bed lamps in the master bedroom. In addition, they moved the ceiling fan from the family room (where we never used it) to the project room (where it always gets warm while I’m working in it) and–43+ years after we bought this house–centered the kitchen table light over the table.
We already had an 18-day cruise planned, starting three days after the electricians finished, so we scheduled the drywall repairman to arrive the day after we returned from the cruise.
The interior designer suggested that we remove the chair rail from the kitchen. We’re planning to replace the kitchen cabinets, so as long as I was removing the chair rail, I pulled off the backsplash above the kitchen countertops too. We might as well have all the drywall repaired and painted at the same time, right? With that mess and all the electrical cuts and holes, the drywall repairman had plenty to do. I think it took him six hours the first day to repair all the damage and to apply the first coat of mud. The following days were shorter–only mud, then sanding.
While Mark was repairing the drywall damage indoors, our exterior doors (ordered in April) were installed. The day after the door installations and the drywall work were finished, Jeff and La arrived for a visit and Kathy, Annette, and Kari’s family joined us for the weekend. The painters and carpet installers were scheduled to begin their work the following week, so as soon as the kids left, Ted and I started packing things up and moving furniture to clear work areas for the painters and the carpet installers.
The painter said he’d be happy to have the walls cleared and everything else in the center of the room, allowing sufficient access to paint the walls; the carpet installers needed the floors cleared; and Ted and I wanted to have the work done one room at a time so that we’d only have to move everything in and out once. To make all of us happy, Ted and I had to clear every wall, floor, and closet in every room on a rotating basis to keep ahead of the painters and the carpet installers. It was like moving, only worse–taking everything (shelves, clothing rods, drapery rods, electrical switch plates, etc.) out/off, packing everything up, and moving all of it out of the room before reversing the process and putting it all back into place. Emptying the closets was the worst. There is a finite number of pieces of furniture in a given room, but there is a seemingly infinite number of items in a single closet! Because our bedroom was also stripped bare, we moved into our basement “guest suite” for the duration of this process. (Now we know what it’s like for the kids when they visit and sleep down there–it’s pretty comfortable with lots of space and a full bathroom.)
I knew it would be a big job, so I started packing the books first. The five movable bookshelves in the library, plus a sixth one in the living room, needed to be emptied to move them for painting and carpeting. (Note: When Dylan was very young, he was impressed by all the books in a single room. He said the room looked like a library, and we’ve called it that ever since.) Thankfully, I only had to empty the bottom shelf of the built-in bookshelf in the library. I handled every book six times: shelf to floor to box to other room to library to floor to shelf again. Out of curiosity, I weighed one box of books: 50 lb. Multiply 50 lb. x 13 boxes in the library = 650 lb. x 6 moves = 3,900 lb. of books lifted. Nearly 2 tons! The several boxes of books from the sixth bookshelf put the weight total over 2 tons. During this process, I discarded/recycled 106 books that I knew I’d never read again, and Ted decided to get rid of his set of The Encyclopedia Britannica. Now we have more space on the bookshelves, so we can buy more books. 🙂
Ted and I, the painters, and the carpet installers worked well together in a kind of (strenuous, for us) choreographed dance. Before the workmen arrived, Ted and I emptied rooms and put everything into other rooms. Then the painters painted the empty rooms and moved on to an empty, uncarpeted space while the carpet installers worked in the still-empty, already-painted rooms. When the workmen left for the day, Ted and I refilled the newly painted and carpeted rooms, then moved things from unfinished rooms to the newly painted/carpeted rooms, until everything was painted and the carpeting was installed in the bedrooms, hallway, and stairway. The contractors worked from 7:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m., then Ted and I worked from 3:00 p.m.-11:00 p.m. and on weekends.
The painters came with a crew of three: one to paint the ceilings, one to do the cutting in, and one to roll paint on the walls. They averaged a completion rate of two rooms/day. When the painting was finished and we were putting things back into place, we discovered two closets that had not been painted. I contacted the painter on Friday (when we were refilling the closets) and he came back on Monday to paint them.
The workmen always arrived on schedule and Ted and I did a good (dare I say “great”?) job of having all the rooms empty and ready for them so they could come in and get to work immediately. Several pieces of furniture, however, were beyond my ability (i.e., strength) to move. I helped Ted move the 12- and 18-inch bookshelves (about 200-250 lb., respectively) out of the library, but we asked Dean and Dylan to help Ted with the 24-inch bookshelves. We guess-timated their weight at about 300-350 lb. each. The 36-inch and the corner bookshelves felt like 350-400 lb. each, so we left them in the room. The headboard for our bed has four connected pieces and is very difficult to get around corners (it was assembled in place), so we left that as well. By this time, we were getting tired of lifting heavy furniture and said, “Let the carpet installers move that stuff.” Well, surprise! They didn’t want to move it either–they just worked around those pieces in the library and in the master bedroom.
We had the hardwood stairs carpeted in a cap-and-band style. The photo on the right (below) shows one of the custom carpet art pieces we ordered. The carpet art was installed in the family room, living room, dining room, and foyer five weeks after the “plain” carpeting was installed. Those guys were great! They finished the family room carpet first and installed it on Dec.1 so that we could put up the Christmas tree before our kids arrived for a birthday/Christmas visit. The other three pieces of carpet art were delivered and installed a week later–just five days before the kids’ visit.
After the painters and the (plain) carpet installers finished their work, Dean and Dylan came to help put the heavy pieces of furniture back into place and to install some of our new lights. Dylan is learning to be an electrician, so installing our wired bed lamps, the bar light over my sewing machine, and a new ceiling light in the laundry room gave him an opportunity to practice some electrical skills. We thanked the family workers with a pizza dinner and we had a good time together–as usual.
After our Thanksgiving visit with Kathy and Annette, Ted and I combined update work with Christmas preparations and finished everything at 5:10 p.m. on December 12–less than 24 hours before Thom’s family arrived for our family birthday/Christmas celebration. That evening, Ted and I spent time in the hot tub, enjoyed a fire in the fireplace, and watched a movie on Netflix. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from our shoulders, and it was an especially wonderful feeling because it wasn’t a break; it was finished!
We finally moved from talk to action, and we’re feeling good about that. We knew we’d be working hard on a tight schedule, but we didn’t think we’d be working that hard. We had contractors in the house for 30 days between August 29 and October 24, plus 2 days in December for the carpet art, but Ted and I started the preparations for the contractors on August 22 and didn’t finish putting everything back in place until December 12–92 working days after we first started this update (time out for the cruise, Jeff and La’s visit, and Thanksgiving with Kathy and Annette). Most of our work days were 8-10 hours; too many were 12-14 hours. It was brutal. I don’t remember ever being that tired in my entire life! By the time the contractors finished their work for us and moved on to their next jobs, I felt like I’d used every ounce of energy my body had to give. A side benefit was that Ted lost three pounds and I lost four from all the work we did. The day after the last contracted work was finished, we slept 11 hours and then I crashed again and took a 90-minute nap in the afternoon.
The new lighting is much brighter than what we had, and the new paint and carpets make everything look fresh. Now we can add the finishing touches at our own pace, one thing at a time. Would we do it this way again? Absolutely! Having all the electrical updates, the painting, and the carpeting completed in just over three months was great. Are we glad it’s finished? Even more absolutely!