Dare I mention that I am excited? Usually when I'm excited about something and I mention it it turns out to be a bust or I don't follow through. I am hoping this is not the case this time.

About 2 weeks ago I was organizing my flash drive and came across a document I put together this time last year. It went room by room in my small house and step by step of what needed to be done. When I do something in the house I want it done right so I don't just go out and buy a gallon of paint and slap it up. I do all the prep work first, and in a 100+ year old house where 3 out of the 4 rooms have wooden tongue-in-groove walls AND ceilings this is no small feat.

So anyway I was looking over my grand plans and realized I accomplished exactly 1/20th of my list last year. I got pretty depressed with myself. Of course I did have big surgery last year and major yard work to deal with after my year in Japan. And of course I did go through every closet and drawer and de-cluttered and got rid of a lot of crap that was screwing with my chi. I did purchase a beautiful unfinished wood file cabinet and sanded and finished it. And then there was the kitchen table project. So it wasn't like I sat on my ass eating bon-bons and watching the soaps, but I really did nothing to improve the value of my home.

Within 4 days of finding my list I got online and was able to cross one item off when I found and ordered a great ceiling fan for my living room (the only room in the house that has been "done" even though there are still a few things to deal with). Of course it will ship mid-February and I will have to put it up but I've put up ceiling fans before and know this will be an hour of time.

There are two things in this house that just depress me beyond belief, and I put forth effort every day to ignore them and remain in a state of denial. The first is my extra bathroom. It is partially gutted, though the sink and toilet are functional and as long as I keep the shower curtain closed no one can tell.

The second is the damned textured ceiling treatments in my kitchen and mud room. I know I've talked about this before and I've even posted photos of my work on them. The ceilings were textured by someone using (and I'm guessing here) a natural sea sponge dipped in sheetrock mud. The result is this spikey pattern which I just have an aversion to. To add insult to injury they were never primed or painted, so it's just the mud. Especially in the kitchen these little spikes collect dust and cooking dirt and cobwebs and when I try to remove them with a broom or webster it does nothing but smear the dust and dirt and webs around. Forget washing the ceiling. So I've been on a mission to get rid of the texture. I started with a wet rag and elbow grease and soon decided it would take me 100 years and cripple me. Then I decided to bite the bullet and took my random orbital sander to them. I sealed off the area with plastic sheeting and duct tape but the dust still got everywhere - it was miserable. It also didn't work very well and was extremely slow going. Then I tried using a sprayer bottle of water, saturating a small area and scraping it off. Very slow and messy, and even taking great care I still made gouge marks in the sheetrock. All of this work happened in the small mudroom. I couldn't imagine trying to do the kitchen, which is much larger and has much higher ceilings. At one point I thought I would just go ahead and get a really fluffy roller and just paint over the dirt and dust and cobwebs with a high gloss paint. But of course my main thing here is it needs to be washable and that would not have helped in the least.

Last night I was lying in bed and all of this started going through my head when it occurred to me that it would be much faster and easier to rip out the old textured sheetrock and just start fresh. This afternoon I got on angieslist.com and found a sheetrock guy nearby with glowing recommendations. I printed out his info. Got stuck in traffic on the way home so pulled out the cell and called him. He's going to come over tomorrow afternoon to give me an estimate. I explained the problem and what I was thinking about pulling it all out and starting over so he would know what to expect. A few minutes after we hung up he called back and told me it would be much less expensive to simply apply new sheetrock on top of the existing ceiling! COOL! I already like this guy!

So I am excited beyond belief. If I can get this done it will be only a small drop in the bucket for what really needs to happen in the kitchen but it will be a huge start and will at least allow me to have a clean ceiling in there so maybe I will be inspired to continue. Of course the mudroom ceiling is already too low so that will indeed have to be ripped out or I will have to just decide to go ahead and scrape it or I can do the demolition myself and he can just walk in and do the new sheetrock. At any rate I am making progress!

Forward motion always feels good.

PS - spellcheck doesn't like the word sheetrock! HAHAHA!