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Hi, my name is mamcu and I'm an lj addict...
So glad to see you all again. I don't post everyday but I do read, and wander around making random comments (very random in some cases). Glad to have my fix again.
Yesterday we started in on the living room.When we moved in 16 years ago, I thought, "That grasscloth has got to go." And after 16 years of cat-clawing, there's not one strip left intact (the dear departed Fernie used to climb it right up to the ceiling, and carefully worked the entire room at about 15 inches from the floor so that there's a ragged strip like a tiny chair rail. Now Orange is not so athletic but he has serious claws and lots of focus, so he has sat on the back of the couch and cleared a two-foot square aread down to the plaster. At Christmas I hung a picture over it, a very strange place for a picture.) Bill finally started just ripping it off, leaving the room a sort of patchwork of bare paper, plaster, cat work, and occasional pieces of original.
So I dutifully read up on grasscloth removal and trudged out to Lowe's, got scorers and scrapers and chemicals that would kill everyone in a five block radius. It turns out to be much easier: water and fabric softener, or maybe just water alone. At least, that gets the paper backing off--the grass layer comes off with nothing, as the cats have shown. We put all the living room furniture in the dining room, making two rooms that are complete unusable until we finish. And then we'll do the same in the dining room.
But paint's not all. I have to find someone to patch the plaster, get gas firelogs (the chimney's been declared unsafe for wood fires [sobs]), get a new front door, and get a new light fixture or ceiling fan. The expense of all those is why I'm doing the painting myself.
Hoping to be finished in this lifetime.
We went to see Vera Drake last night. An excellent movie: very sad, but not totally depressing. The unfairness of her situation, especially the class differences, is infuriating, but the very human reactions of police and family to her arrest was moving. The support from the men who'd been so psychologically damaged by the war was interesting.
So glad to see you all again. I don't post everyday but I do read, and wander around making random comments (very random in some cases). Glad to have my fix again.
Yesterday we started in on the living room.When we moved in 16 years ago, I thought, "That grasscloth has got to go." And after 16 years of cat-clawing, there's not one strip left intact (the dear departed Fernie used to climb it right up to the ceiling, and carefully worked the entire room at about 15 inches from the floor so that there's a ragged strip like a tiny chair rail. Now Orange is not so athletic but he has serious claws and lots of focus, so he has sat on the back of the couch and cleared a two-foot square aread down to the plaster. At Christmas I hung a picture over it, a very strange place for a picture.) Bill finally started just ripping it off, leaving the room a sort of patchwork of bare paper, plaster, cat work, and occasional pieces of original.
So I dutifully read up on grasscloth removal and trudged out to Lowe's, got scorers and scrapers and chemicals that would kill everyone in a five block radius. It turns out to be much easier: water and fabric softener, or maybe just water alone. At least, that gets the paper backing off--the grass layer comes off with nothing, as the cats have shown. We put all the living room furniture in the dining room, making two rooms that are complete unusable until we finish. And then we'll do the same in the dining room.
But paint's not all. I have to find someone to patch the plaster, get gas firelogs (the chimney's been declared unsafe for wood fires [sobs]), get a new front door, and get a new light fixture or ceiling fan. The expense of all those is why I'm doing the painting myself.
Hoping to be finished in this lifetime.
We went to see Vera Drake last night. An excellent movie: very sad, but not totally depressing. The unfairness of her situation, especially the class differences, is infuriating, but the very human reactions of police and family to her arrest was moving. The support from the men who'd been so psychologically damaged by the war was interesting.
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What colours are you painting your rooms? I always ask that in case somebody comes up with a colour scheme that makes me go "ooooo", so when we do our downstairs, I have ideas other than "not what's currantly on the walls".
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So OOO is not here!
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That could have been because the store had a huge box of toys, though. ;) (I even got distracted a couple times)
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And you have NO idea how much I LOVE your ICON (Squeee!) - so DO keep posting, and keep us posted on your progress!
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;o)
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Ann (still without lj)
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I think Vera was crushed because she really hadn't quite admitted to herself what she was doing, and because--as a domestic servant in a heavily class oriented society--she was always really a fairly submissive person (my husband disagrees with that!). I don't think she acted out of rebellion but out of charity. She was a person who wanted to be good, but found that society treated her as evil when she thought what she did was good. Yet the two other prisoners at the end, there for their second offenses, seemed like possible futures for Vera.
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http://www.djpatio.com/fabrics5/200-B.htm
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I did see a picture in Chicago, covering a big wall, that had been created by sowing grass and giving it different amounts of light as it grew. It was beautiful, but not what I had, unfortunately.