You know that feeling you get when you start something on your to-do list that has been on it forever? And you think you’re going to finally be able to finish it? That’s how I was feeling Saturday afternoon. Several months ago, I salvaged a little sewing table from the community centre dumpster (it was actually beside the dumpster, so it wasn’t gross). The table was in great condition but had a horrible botched paint job and was missing the sewing machine. I felt like I could easily repaint the table and I wasn’t broken up about the missing machine. I shoved the table in to the corner of my living room with the intention of getting to it in a few weeks. A few weeks turned into a few months and then on Friday I finally declared that I would start and finish the table this weekend. I know this was pretty ambitious as I’d been battling a migraine all week but dammit, that table was getting done! And at the same time, I also declared I would have the powder room drywall primed by the end of the weekend (this also included time for finishing sanding the drywall). Ambitious? Yes I am.

Photo of the dumpster table before I started stripping the paint – it doesn’t look too bad but up close it was a total mess. Cat snuck in the photo as well.

I should have known looking back on the week’s events that I was being delusional. A week ago Sunday our dishwasher decided to stop draining and has been out of commission ever since. Then with the migraine. But no, I chose to ignore all of the signs that I should not attempt projects and went and got ahead of myself. Things started out pretty well – on Saturday I woke up early and was feeling pretty good, so I ran some errands, went out for an early lunch to the ramen noodle place, then came home and got started on stripping the paint from the table. It was much more labor intensive than I expected (I’ll post a full before & after eventually), but I finished the stripping and figured I would finish the table on Sunday. In between that, I also had an opportunity to do some work on the drywall and would be finished that on Sunday too. That is, unless of course something horrible were to happen in the meantime. And it did.

I was sitting down on Saturday night after spending all afternoon scraping and sanding to watch some Gilmore Girls (entire series just added to Netflix Canada!) and do some knitting (I have to finish those Christmas gifts!). My husband went in to the basement to do some organizing – he runs a business selling vintage men’s clothing outside of his day job so we have a lot of inventory in our basement. Shortly after he entered the basement, he reemerged saying something like “I found something disgusting that I think is ______ and I need to remove all of the carpet”. I will not get in to details because you do not need to know. I will say that it was not a pest infestation of any kind but may have been a result of one feline with severe separation anxiety. Enough said. It was disgusting and thank goodness our basement is unfinished (with the exception of one room which had a large piece of carpet and some lovely 70’s faux wood wall paneling). Also, thank goodness none of the inventory was affected. So our Saturday night turned in to moving everything out of the room and ripping out the carpet. Sunday turned in to scrubbing the entire room (walls and floor) several times over. Any chance I had of finishing the table and drywall was out of the question.

So what now? I’ve got several things planned:

– Organize the basement. Currently it looks like a tornado went through. But this week everything will be going into plastic containers and we’re going to be buying some free-standing Ikea wardrobes for additional storage. The good thing about the whole ordeal is that I can finally get things organized and clean down there. The bad news is that I have to clean down there.
– Give the sewing table a sanding and then begin the painting process
– Give the powder room drywall the last sanding and then prime it
– Clean and organize the rest of the house. Because we dedicated all of Saturday night and the whole day Sunday to sanitizing the basement, we had to move a lot of things upstairs in to the kitchen. Then with the dishwasher out of order, several cupboards had to be emptied in order to access the plumbing lines (a dishwasher was a later additional to the house so things are a bit weird), so the insides of those cupboards are on the floor. To sum it all up, the house is a complete disaster and I’m not sure how long I can live with it before I go insane.

Am I getting ahead of myself again? Probably. But I’m hoping that I’ll be able to dedicate a few hours every evening to accomplishing these things. It just means I won’t have any time to dedicate to finishing up the garden to-do list I posted about last week.

Unfortunately this horrible discovery amounted to a few things financially as we’ve had to plan to purchase quite a bit of additional storage including large plastic storage containers, shelving and some big wardrobes. It also means that the money we were planning to spend on other things has needed to be reallocated. First, we had wanted to purchase a new fridge to replace the one that died a couple of months ago (the mini fridge has been fine and will continue to be fine, but we have to do several small grocery runs weekly and can’t buy anything in a larger size in fear that it will not fit in the fridge. I’ve become a master at making things fit in the mini fridge!). Second, if the part we ordered for our dishwasher does not end up working, we will not be able to buy a new dishwasher for several months, which means washing dishes by hand. Not a huge deal as a dishwasher is a luxury but one I have become accustomed to.

I’m hoping that our terrible house luck has come to an end now. I think we’ve had our fair share of mishaps. I am also considering us fairly lucky – for all of the terrible things to happen, at least these are ones with fairly simple solutions. See, I’m being positive about something!

Next time I’ll have a much happier post with pretty pictures to look at! I guess this is a blog about my life so it would make sense to talk about the not-so-fun parts of it as well – not everything can be pretty gardens and delicious recipes all the time.