BREAKTHROUGH!!

I don't know what's happened to me this week. All of a sudden I feel more energy than I can remember feeling for years. Maybe it's because I have (hopefully) this brief Japan trip to look forward to. Maybe because after two years of health problems including anemia for the past year I am finally getting back to myself. I'm really just kind of amazing myself so far this week.

It started Monday. I came home and worked in the backyard, beginning the process of clearing overgrown ivy and hauling trash and brush to the street for pick up. Then I did it again yesterday and by the time I stopped I could actually see progress! Today I did even more and I'm beginning to get excited about it.

And I've even had a breakthrough on the house. I went yesterday and got some paint chips trying to decide on how I will paint my bedroom. I have decided to start with the bedroom because it will be the easiest (she says). It's going to be very simple - I want white walls and trim and a s-l-i-g-h-t-l-y blue ceiling. Today I went and got a sample of the ceiling color and over the weekend I will test a patch. Forward motion.

My mudroom and kitchen are another matter altogether. Funny how one little thing can stall any progress at all. The contractor who owned this house before me did this "texture" onthe ceilings of both these rooms. It's that texture like he dabbed drywall mud on with a sponge and the result was this spikey texture that does nothing but collect dust, dirt, cobwebs and kitchen grease. And there's no cleaning it. So I want to get rid of it. I started my experimentation a couple of years ago in the mudroom. First I tried wiping it with a wet cloth. Bad idea - didn't do the job and took forever to do a tiny patch. Then I closed myself in the room and sealed the doors and tried my random orbital sander. 4 hours later I had accomplished hardly anything except covering the entire house in a thin layer of fine white dust. Then back in January of this year I tried using a scraper. OK, so it kind of took the worst of the texture off, but it was messy and very difficult. Monday I was talking to a coworker about this and she mentioned she saw something on TV where they were taking off a popcorn ceiling texture and they sprayed it well with water and used a putty knife to scrape it off. Tonight I tried a test patch using this method and it was like scraping butter. So easy.
Of course I will have to be very careful not to gouge the sheetrock but after all these years I know I can easily do both the mudroom and the kitchen, and this si positively going to jump start both of those projects! WOOOHOOO!