Reno Redux - or - Welcome to my Nightmare.
Pardon my mood. I am not a very happy camper right now and not fit for human company. I have one lonely and frayed nerve left. Please don't step on it if you want to live.

I am shell-shocked and feeling rather violated after three days of demolition and reconstruction in my house. There are clouds of dust and a mud trail from the front door up the carpeted stairs to the bathroom and back, accompanied by a continual sound-track of loud banging, crashing ceramics and screeching power tools. They’ve been ripping out my kitchen ceiling and my shower tiles (the bathroom is above the kitchen), repairing the ceiling and walls and retiling the shower.

The whole tiled shower wall was crumbling and the kitchen ceiling was caving in below it. There was horrendous water damage because there was no water barrier behind the tiles, just regular drywall, so the three walls around the tub and shower were completely rotten - like compost - disgusting.

The kitchen walls and ceiling have been peeling for years and we haven't done much about them because the bathroom had to be fixed first and then the kitchen ceiling and walls, or we'd just have to do it all again as water damage from upstairs trickled down. Blogger is not permitting me to load the pictures, so you'll just have to take my word for it.


Basically, it means we have no shower for the week and during the day we have very little access to the one and only toilet in the house. Since we both are home during the day, this is not the best scenario. We are using my very gracious neighbour’s bathroom occasionally (often) this week, but it's still been a pain in the - well, you know. The house is filthy and covered in dust and grit and, despite some daily attempts to clean up, it really isn't going to get better until after the work is completed.

DH does not handle these things well - he hates having his personal space invaded and he hates to be left alone with workers in the house. I’m not particularly enjoying the process either, but it’s necessary and I am definitely looking forward to the results. Because then we can (finally) continue with scraping off the rest of the peeling paint in the house and refinishing the walls and painting the kitchen, and building a pantry and organizing the cupboards, etc., etc... and ultimately reclaiming the various spaces in our house that have become permanent staging areas for the interim storage of our stuff (gradually over the next many months – give us a break! We’ll need to recover from this part first).

This renovation is NOT about aesthetics, but I am allowing myself to ponder the colour scheme. The new shower area will be white tile (instead of the 80's "dusty rose"). I'll probably do more white and maybe a medium french blue in the kitchen, to go with the blue-&-white mottled Italian floor tiles (we did the floor in 2000, then stopped).
The good news is I am falling in love with my cute little house all over again. It may lack some space, but the individual rooms are a good size for this sort of house and with some TLC it will be quite charming... eventually.

Oh, yeah... I have been knitting. The condition of my home (and my nerves) are not conducive to any project work, so I've been scheming about some new design ideas and knitting swatches. Lots and lots of swatches. But there's nothing to show and tell yet.