Frustration Mounts

Things are not going according to my grand master plan at the house. It turns out old houses are a lot more work than anything else, especially when they have been shoddily maintained and any repair work has been done very poorly. Our plaster walls mean we have a lifetime of crack chasing ahead. The sloppy work of the previous owners means we have three weeks (at least) of ripping out badly repaired cracks and re-plastering. Corey has learned to wield drywall joint tape and a spackle knife with ease.

He sits in a bag chair against the walls like Bob Ross, putting cute little trees here and there along the seascapes of plaster patch on the six-inch metal tool on his lap. Mostly I am miserable.

My hands ache from scraping off poorly applied paint, my shoulders scream at me from scrubbing the floors by hand. The previous owners' last name has become the ultimate blaspheme in our house and the question of the month is: if you are going to do something so poorly, why do it at all?

Really, why repair a crack in the wall if you are going to then not scrape smooth the plaster. The lumpy mess of stalactites they left all over the walls surely look worse than a little hairline crack might have done.

At any rate, we are just about to a place where I can prime the bedroom before we move on to the other rooms. One step at a time and we should be able to live there in about three weeks. Corey's contractor friend has convinced us to do something which makes us feel excited:

We are going to save up lots of money and then, in about five years, we are going to rip all the plaster off all the walls and put up insulation and drywall. We'll have smooth walls with no cracks and a lower energy bill. Until then, crack master Corey will spackle and I will use the power sander. Every day of our lives.