Do It Yourself

As we've been working to get our new house painted over the past week, we've been getting an ever more clear picture of the former owner. He seems to have thought himself handy, but in truth was barely even proficient at what my father has seen and dubbed "redneck repairs."

For example, when the pull-down shades in the master bedroom were coming out of the wall brackets, did he reattach the brackets to angle upward? No, he got a pair of pliers and squeezed the openings shut.

When the mini-blinds weren't quite long enough to reach the far side of the window? Screw through the top of the window about three-quarters of the way across!

Every room he had painted has missed spots and roller streaks all over the walls... and in one sad case where he'd decided to give a room the "cube treatment," the ceiling too.

And he clearly didn't understand the concept of a basic wall screw mounting bracket. Curtain rods resting on half hammered-in nails, anyone?

Probably the best moment was discovering that when the deck had been built in the backyard, he built it right over the top of a functioning sprinkler head that he never bothered to disable. Whenever that zone of the sprinkler system runs, it sprays water all over the underside of the deck. We still haven't figured out an approach to that problem.

But there has been a lot of good with the bad, in the form of friends and family. So far, we've had two big "painting parties," with people coming over to help us paint more in the span of a few hours than we'd have ever thought possible. My parents and my brother even came over one afternoon (in the middle of the week) to get an early start. My boyfriend's mother has got our kitchen looking practically brand new over some marathon cleaning sessions, and has branched out into other areas of the house that needed it almost as badly. (If the former owner knew little about a toolbox, he seemed to know even less about basic cleaning.)

In fact, it's starting to look like maybe... dare I even hope it?... we'll be able to finish up the painting this weekend. Meanwhile, the materials for the new hardwood floors we're having installed are being delivered this very day.

It's all coming together!