Living Room Renovation – 95% Complete

So now the living room is just about completely done. After once again multiple strippings of painted over wallpaper and filling many holes, the paint is done. I had my first home renovation mishap/disaster in the living room.

See, the last person to own this house cut all the cables into the house and left them there. As I was sitting down getting ready to plaster some holes I felt cold air coming in. There were 3 holes near the baseboard on that wall. One above the other. The middle hole had a cut cable still. I laid down and looked out the hole I felt air coming in. Sure enough, the hole went all the way through the house to the outside. Not good. Can’t just plaster that over. I go outside and decide since I am out there I might as well pull the cable through – I did. Now I have 2 holes all the way through the house. The top 3rd hole someone had placed silicon in. Horray. Now I get excited. "Yahoo" I think to myself, "I finally get to feed my weird addiction and attraction to spray foam." I come back inside and ask Chris to go outside. My thoughts are "this shit expands so I do NOT want to spray it into the holes from the outside in and risk the potential of ruining the floors and whatnot " He goes outside and I now have spray foam in hand. He says, "Now remember, only spray once because it expands" to which I reply, "I know!" with glee in my voice, "tell me when it hits the outside!" I spray, he says its coming. Yay! Well, no. Because now it’s expanding on the inside too. So what do I do? Well I, of course, use my hands to wipe it…as I am doing so, making a weird spray foam snowball I guess, I say, "Uhm is it okay…" he yells at the same time "WOMAN do not touch that shit!" To which I gleefully stand up and show him the spray foam snowball I am attempting to make. I start howling with laughter at the look of sheer horror on his face as he says, "OMG RUN to the kitchen and start washing NOW with soap and really hot water." I do. What does that do? Absolutely NOTHING. Nothing. My fingers are glued to each other in a weird claw-like manner and I am laughing so hard at myself I am practically peeing my pants on the kitchen floor. I manage to get just enough of it off to separate my hands. He’s inside now. I say, "Go get the can and see if there’s anything on there that says what to do if you get this on your skin." He does…nothing is written on the can except the large bold words "WEAR GLOVES DO NOT GET ON SKIN". Oh well.

The following is a list of things I tried using to get this horrid stuff off my hands:

Denaturized alcohol – no difference.
Gasoline – no difference
Dawn dishwashing detergent (hey it removes oil from animals) – no difference
Paint thinner – no difference.
Acetone – no difference
Nail polish remover – no difference

I get just enough of it off my fingertips that I now feel confident google will guide me. I get my iPad and google, knowing somewhere out there someone has been just as dumb as me and gotten themselves stuck together with this shit. Well, yeah, there are others out there like me. However? There is no solution to getting it off. You just have to pick it off bit by sticking bit once it dries. Over a week later and I am still picking it off. Yay, well? Moral of the story here? Please read instructions on all things before using them. Also, my spray foam attraction is now over. Now I realize why when the dudes on Mike Holmes are using this stuff they are in complete hazmat gear.

With that, I leave you with pictures of my new living room. All I have left to do is get curtains, install the new wall scones and install the crown molding.

To refresh, this is was before:

This is now.

It’s not showing so well here for some reason, but the actual room color is this:

Called Soft Chamois although it did come out a little darker on the walls, it isn’t as dark as it looks in these pictures.

Also, the living room furniture is brand new, just delivered on the date on these pictures and the color of the sofa and loveseat are olive green.

Notice in the corner my "Charlie Brown Christmas Tree". My good friend Lisa gave this to as a surprise one night when we went out to dinner together knowing what a rough time I am going through with Chris and with my health. She said it was to symbolize that "from anything ugly great beauty can come". I am tearing up now remembering. Now every time I look at that tree I am reminded of her words.

Dixie in her pink bed and Daisy in the corner bed.

So there we go. I forgot to take pictures of the kitchen, again. But will do that this weekend. Happy holidays everyone!