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6/1/2004       With the kitchen almost finished we've started a little work in the dining room area.  This room should be child's play compared to the kitchen with a much lower budget.  We've decided to go with a Tuscany vineyard theme so here's all we have to do:
     Clear the room.
     Strip the old wallpaper off.
     Repair four area of drywall, one of which is where a window is being removed.
     Paint a mural on the ceiling.
     Install the new silver chandelier.
     Install all of the dental crown moldings, baseboard moldings, wainscoting, chair rails, and corner beading.
    Rework any necessary electric lines.
    Apply a knock-down finish to the walls and paint them purple.
    Clean and Polyurethane the floors.
    And that's it!  That's all we have to do and then we'll have a beautiful dining room we can be proud of.  Remember I said those words:  That's all we have to do.
    Kid's stuff.  Child's play.
6/2/2004     While I am wrapping up the kitchen, Beth has been taking care of prepping the dining room by removing the wallpaper.  This was supposed to be a fairly simple plan but she discovered that the ceiling was also papered with a light, gauzy covering that easily steamed away in long, flowing strips with almost no effort.  Beneath that was another layer that must have been applied with barnacle glue.
     She also unearthed a new type of wallpaper that we hadn't yet encountered, a simple and somewhat tasteful pinstripe pattern that was probably used for a short time and then covered over simply because it was simple and tasteful.
6/18/2004      The walls are all stripped as is the ceiling.  Beth discovered that there were two layers of wallpaper up there, a faux texture layer probably put on to mask the imperfections time was causing as well as a glittered layer. Removing them has made it apparent that the ceiling has settled from sheer weight leaving the ceiling somewhat wavy, high at the joints where it is screwed in and sagging in the middle.  I've begun filling it the depressions with joint compound and when this is finished Beth will prime it so that she can take a shot at airbrushing in a sky mural.
6/25/2004     The kitchen is still being fine tuned but the good news is that dining room ceiling is almost like new and, better news, the official web domain we bought for this project is almost up and running.  
     As far as actual work goes for today?  Beth and I celebrated our 4th anniversary yesterday and we're just too tired to do anything.  We had absolutely the worst meal at Ruby Tuesday in Charlestown, West Virginia and then hit the casino until midnight.  We lost more than we won so all in all it was a tragic day other than the fact that our marriage is as great as ever.
7/11/2004      The dining room is underway.  Beth is learning to use the airbrush and is painting the sky mural.  The molding and wainscoting installation is beginning.  So far the artwork makes the room look even larger.  We are looking forward to completing this room by the end of this month (July '04). 
7/15/2004      I was surfing the Internet looking for other sites like our own and stumbled across a site that made me ill.  It was created by a woman who was ever so impressed with the Victorian she and her hubby had purchased and were now renovating.  The house was spectacular and needed a little paint here and there but that was about it.
     As I perused her website I began feeling more and more irritated at her flagrant use of the word 'renovated'.  Her before-and-after shots looked almost identical other than wall colors.  There was no mention of so much as filling a nail hole with painter's putty and I got the distinct feeling that she was one of those mindless morons that would no doubt refer to herself as a Renovation Diva if given the opportunity.
     I just wanted to punch her lights out.
7/19/2004     If we'll ever get our replacement chandelier and finish up the French doorway the dining room will be 100% finished.  I've been going nuts working on the latter.  It seems the edge of the French doors landed right on the air vent so I had to move that up the wall and then insert a floor plank where there was nothing when the doorway was cut through.  That's all finished so the next step is to build the framing and then hang the doors.  They won't fit and I refused to cut away anymore support beams (smart, huh?) so we have to trim the doors down and inch or so each.
7/24/2004     10:25 AM..... Fleas.
     We have discovered that we are infested with fleas.  They haven't been bothering Beth or me and since Christina is in Florida she hasn't even been here to notice but it's in her room.  The animals have been acting strangely and avoiding that area of the house.  I went in there this morning to remove her bedding and was literally swarmed by the little monsters.  This means I have to do a fast porch screening job so that we can toss the cats out there and then bomb the house for 4 hours.  All of that will be followed up with flea baths for each critter.
     So much for getting the French doors up today.
     2:30....Okay, this is what happened....
    I built a temporary screening for the mud room so that we could store the cats outside while we bombed the house.  I then gave each of the cats a flea bath and put them out in the newly screened-in mud room.
     Nash, the brat of the two, made a mad dash into the house.  We looked everywhere and finally, with the use of a compact mirror and a flashlight, we found him under the floorboards hiding.  I beat the floor with hammers to scare him out but he just ran off in the skeleton of Our Victorian (Grrr!) and our plans are now temporarily interrupted.
     6:30PM....Nash is still MIA so we're calling the bombing off and letting our very confused other animals back inside.
7/25/2004      12:30PM.....We have trapped Nash and Keokie and they have been bathed and stored in the mudroom.  We are about to set off 15 bombs in 3,300 square feet of space, perhaps three times what D-CON calls for but that's okay.  We are setting off 5 of them in the basement alone because I saw a spider down there.
     5:30PM....We're back and have opened the windows to air the place out.  We killed 4 hours in some Leesburg, Virginia antique shops.  Cool little town and we highly recommend it.  I have to go noww.  The're ar still fumes in heer and I feel funy.
    10:30PM....Got home, let the cats in, bathed the dog.  What a pathetic waste of a weekend as far as renovating goes. 
     Still, some of this house's virtues are its neighboring areas.  I have to admit it was a blast taking our time and hitting those shops.  We ate dinner at a killer rib joint and while the house aired out we also rolled through the casino and we won $300.
     And now we live in a bug-free home.  I guess the weekend went okay after all.
11/16/2005      Almost a year and a half later, I'm now repainting the dining room a nice eggplant color.  It looks better but it's a lot of work and is only being done for aesthetic reasons.  We have to be careful about backtracking.  It wastes a lot of time even if the results do look terrific.