Enjoying the little things

It's said that absence makes the heart grow fonder. It's also said that it's the little things in life that matter the most. I can honestly say that the last few days have truly taught me what a load of crap those two statements are.

Let me explain.

I've been updating about our house remodel (pictures coming soon, promise). This past week I got the dining room completely and totally emptied. We packed up some, got rid of a lot, and put the dining room table into the freshly painted boys' room (need to get used to calling it J&N's room soon). That's when the fun really started.

I packed up as much of our bedroom as possible and then we moved the dresser, bookcase, and my desk (not packed nicely, more like just shoveled off into a box *sigh*) into the dining room. The problem is that we ran out of time (throwing my back out might have something to do with that) and so instead of having things nicely set-up in the dining room, everything got stacked all over my desk and the baskets of clean laundry are stacked between the desk and the dresser. Yeah, it's kind of a mess.

This also means that since we have two bedrooms emptied so we can be patching and painting those because they are supposed to be getting new carpet this morning (which has now turned into early afternoon but whatever). In addition to all this, our storage locker is basically filled because it has our bed plus the new beds for the boys' rooms and the new flooring for the living room & dining room in it plus the stove that we still need to sell (which we have yet to even put on Craigslist which may be why it hasn't sold yet LOL).

What does that mean?

It means that we are currently have 6 people living in 3 rooms and one of those is the kitchen. 4 boys are sleeping in one small bedroom which until today we had managed to keep fairly clean (it now has my dining set in it) and the adults are sharing the living room with a ton of boxes. What makes this more fun is that our living room is also our dining room and our bed the only place to sit. I just love having to brush all the crumbs off my bed before going to sleep.

In the time-honored tradition of all remodels, we are having our fair share of issues. The biggest one has been the paint that we went with. A friend who works with another friend who is a painter by profession told us that they swear by Mythic which is an eco-friendly, voc free, paint. We wanted to do something along those lines so we said, great, let's do that. We talked to the woman at the store and she raved about it, told us how it covers really thick in just one coat, blah blah blah.

Yeah, um, except it doesn't.

In our experience with three rooms so far, it's extremely touchy about how the surfaces have to be prepped or it runs. Even with good prep, primer, and the right paint gun, it still has coverage issues and it's not just a "little" touch-up needed afterwards. It's more like "put a second coat on in most places". Needless to say, the 5gal I bought and was told should easily do my whole house has not even fully done 3 bedrooms. I'm picking up another 5gal today and then we'll see how much more we need. I still like the idea of this kind of paint and once it dries and the room aired a bit, the smell goes away quickly but I won't paint with it again. Maybe if a professional was doing it they would have better results but considering that we had none of these difficulties when we painted our house before using the same gun and the same person doing it with Behr paint, I would be much more tempted to go with their low or voc-free paints than this brand again. Unfortunately, now that we've started we are stuck with using it for project but at least we can live and learn.

So that is where things are right now. No, I'm not enjoying our smaller living quarters but I will say that I'm missing my extra space right now and all the stuff we have in storage. Having the walls so bare is depressing and I know we aren't done yet emptying the place. Really hoping that this is all worth it and we are able to sell quickly and for a good price. Mark's dream may be a new place before Christmas but I would love to move over the summer. Trying to do this all again during the school year is not something I'm looking forward to. My only consolation in that is that if it happens (likely I know) we move into a bigger, clean slate to start with rather than trying to cram ourselves into such a small space with absolutely all of our stuff that we can't fit anywhere else.