icarusancalion

Calling all home repair people, full alert.

Remember that wallpaper job?

Yes, it's still going on.

Since S.'s grandmother came home unexpectedly, I couldn't spend the night there anymore. We were reduced to working on it when our schedules overlapped: he works 10-6ish, I work 3-9:30ish, so project work time shrank to 10pm-midnight.

My fall-bounce-bomp down the stairs delayed it further. Then I got a cold.

The ugly wallpaper came down over Christmas, revealing those horrifying Pepto-Bismol pink walls. It took two coats of primer (high quality Zinsser) to cover that pink. The walls had both coats of primer and were painted January 10th, done ...

... except for the crack down the wall we'd discovered behind the wall paper and the closet doors. That corner I mudded (I'm no expert at mudding), sanded, and primed.

Annnnd the primer cracked like lizard skin along the vertical part of the crack.

Huh.

I assumed I must not have let the mud dry (but 24 hours should have been enough...), talked to the guys at Home Depot, who'd never seen anything like it but thought my explanation was plausible. They told me I'd have to scrape it out and re-mud. I said, "Oh, god, I hope not."

I scraped and sanded the cracked primer and mud. With a sanding block it was total gorilla work.

Sanding hard, I leaned on the wall -- and broke the mud. After all that sanding, I was going to have to redo it.

Got sick, got injured, painted the closet doors to keep the project moving while I couldn't sand. Got snowed in.

Finally bought a palm sander and set to work on it this weekend. I stopped trying to have the work be perfect and asked S. (home renovator-in-training) to do the mudding of the part that broke. He put on waaaay too much, but hell, he sanded it.

Then he did the same thing. He leaned too hard on the wall on the upper portion, breaking the mud there. So that had to be remudded as well.

Sunday it was done. Sanded smooth. Ready to paint.

I primed it.

And the damned primer cracked like lizard skin again. The seam underneath it is smooth. It's just the primer cracked on top of it.

Pissed, I laid on coat after coat of primer (yes, I waited an hour between coats, no, I didn't sand between coats, not with that lizard skin problem). It cracked less. But it still cracked.

Home owners and painters ... any ideas? We're stumped. S.'s forums are stumped. The Home Depot guys are stumped.

Merry Christmas!

Happily ensconced at S.'s place. Stayed up waaaaay too late working on a latchhook rug when I realized how long it was going to take. You see, my logic circuits decided that this meant I should work on the rug AsFastAsPossible and try to FinishItAllTonight. Absurd, but no one said my logic circuits were logical.

S. has utterly spoiled me over the last few months. I've told you guys about the resort stay on my birthday, the dinners out every week, and the two of us hanging out every Wednesday and Saturday, right?

No?

There's been a resort stay, dinners out, shopping, and hanging out every week. Plus lots of other great stuff. I mean, really, really great. (I'll you NC-17 fic writers fill in the blanks.) Mostly at my place for a variety of reasons involving his townhouse and family, though the decor at his pad would be a good reason if we needed one:


Approximation of S.'s bedroom walls. Someone thought this eye-popping graph pattern, in bold navy blue vertical and red horizontal stripes, would make great wallpaper.

Now that S.'s Chinese grandmother is out of the way (that sounds like we offed her -- no, no, she's just away for Christmas, I swear) his ugly wallpaper is coming down, ha-ha-ha!

Er. Except... it turns out that underneath that ugly wallpaper is horrifying Pepto-Bismol pink paint. It's neutron pink. Can't look at it without getting double vision pink. It's the kind of color a taste-free six-year-old would pick out for her bedroom because "It looks like candy!"

I think I heard a "meep" sound from S. when he saw it. Not an actual sound, perhaps, but a silence that quietly wished that wallpaper back on the wall.

Anyway, I wish you and yours a Merry, merry Christmas. I'm lurking in fandom, reading fic here and there during this busy, busy time. Wrote my sga_santa fic shortly after the deadline. I'm filling out my grad school apps which are all due around January 1st, working till 10pm most nights, and all day Saturdays (more about my boss who thinks lunch breaks are optional in an 8-hour day), decorating S.'s place and mine ... and spending time with long-lost family. Which we all should do if given half a chance.

Merry Christmas, all.


ETA: Cracked wall update.
Primer problem.