Two steps forward; One step back

Well, hell. A week gone by without blogging.

It's not coincidental that the last time I blogged was last Monday--that was the day before all hell broke loose. Last Monday, our family room project still looked like it was going to be complete by the weekend. Even after experiencing a setback, we were in good spirits because we had busted our asses all weekend, were back on track, and were moving forward.

Then, Tuesday night, things fell apart and I pretty much had a nervous breakdown.

Long, long story, but essentially, we got primer and both coats of paint on the new ceiling before we realized that things weren't looking quite right. Each joint (the seams) where the pieces of drywall came together was producing what appeared to be shadows when looking up at the ceiling. Needless to say, it kind of looked like shit. Imagine your nice, smooth ceiling (that you have worked SO HARD for), but with shadows criss-crossing their way over it, making each individual piece of drywall stick out like a sore thumb. It wasn't going to fly.

At first, I thought it was an issue with the primer that we used. I was so, so pissed, but thought that the problem could be fixed by starting over with the painting portion--a coat of different primer, plus another two coats of paint. But, after snapping some pics, sharing with our knowledgeable friends and my dad, we were told that it wasn't a primer issue--it was a drywall mud issue. In other words, we had messed up during the mudding/sanding stage.

And at that time, I just really wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Dramatic? Yes. But holy hell, to know that all of the blood, sweat, and tears that had already gone into that room were for nothing was just devastating.

Thankfully, we have great people in our lives, because our friend Pete came to the rescue, spending Thursday and Friday at our house fixing it for us. I am still too scared to proclaim it all a success, but I will say that we've put primer and one coat of paint on the ceiling so far, and things are looking much better. We are working hard to try to get the room painted and ready for the carpet guy to FINALLY come to install the new carpet on Friday so that we might POSSIBLY have a real live FAMILY ROOM this weekend. You know, with a couch to sit on. And carpet for the baby to play on. And a TV with a DVR (hooray!). I don't even remember what it's like to be able to relax on a couch with a glass of wine. I have big plans for reacquainting myself with that, though.

Still, I'm so traumatized by all of the setbacks we've experienced that I'm afraid to get my hopes up. BUT we'll see. If there's anything we've learned been reminded of so far, it's that things just NEVER go as planned. Why is that? It is just so defeating. It makes me never want to take on any home improvement project ever again, which is a shame since we have a houseful of them. Maybe it's kind of like childbirth--I just need some time and distance to "forget" what a pain in the ass it all is before taking on something else. Which is hard when you have a half-finished kitchen project staring you in the face every day.

Baby steps. I'm trying to take baby steps.