Never Say Done

A professor once told me, “A paper is never finished, it’s abandoned”. I’m beginning to think this is the same for home renovation projects. As we were prepping the wall behind the staircase and the walls in the entry way for a skim coat and then new paint, the project no longer seemed simple. We got a lot done today, but all day long I kept thinking of what else we could do or what we could do differently:

• instead of painting the trim around the window, we could strip it down to the wood (we’re saving this for a later date… maybe during retirement);
• the ceiling could use the same finishing touches as the walls (we’re going to do this),
• we could figure out how to get the ugly paint off of the wooden floors in the upstairs hallway (I haven’t even told Nick that this has crossed my mind!)
• we could tear out the front door and put a new one in. (this will happen, just not today).

I started to really look at the plaster & walls and soon I was dreaming of tearing everything down to the studs and starting fresh. Then I woke up and remembered how much I hate demo, and how awful it is to drywall. This makes me so happy that we’re only going to put a skim coat over the walls and that sanding will be miniscule compared to an entire drywall project. (Thank God for common sense and for a husband who would have convinced me that the staircase would truly “never be done” if we were to start tearing down walls!) Thanks Nick!

Today we scraped all raised bumps, cracks, etc… so the walls were smooth, then washed the walls with TSP. Next we applied “Gripper” that will allow us to put a skim coat of topping compound on the walls so they look like they were just plastered. It’s amazing how much better the walls look with just the gripper on them. I can’t wait to see how they look after the painting.

So, we’ll keep working and finish the walls in the entryway and stairwell. We will be happy with the project, just as if we’d finished editing a paper and decided that it was time to abandon it and turn it in. We can always go back later and make it just a little bit better!