My hero, at work.
Do it yourself (DIY) projects are for people who don’t want weekends. The kind of twisted mofos who might also enjoy a nice evening of waterboarding.
Uh, okay. Hyperbole. But the dining room project is the last big DIY project that’s happening in the history of ever after at Casa de Kirby. Because..gah…never again. The interior work was completed (mostly) a few months ago; but it wasn’t officially done until this weekend.
Once upon a time, on a desert planet far, far away, the dining room was a garage. A small garage; so teeny, you couldn’t park a clown car in it without grease and a shoehorn. For a time, it functioned as an artist’s studio, where we wielded fiery tools and made the rest of the house nervous– “Sparks!”
All done! (A rare cloudy day.)
Then came the real workshop and so the micro-garage could now, like a caterpillar, metamorphose into a bee-you-ti-ful butterfly, uh, dining room. Only this metamorphosis took more than year. Because neither Kirby has ever found the corporate ladder, much less scaled it, we’re long on DIY ambition, but short on cash. Hiring a contractor to do the job, and finish it–quick like a bunny–wasn’t happening. Instead, we embarked on the long journey ourselves, doing nearly everything, including framing, drywall, electrical, cabinets, paint, etc.
Since a dining room without windows would be a garage with a really nice floor and a table and chairs, one step in the project involved busting holes in the wall and installing windows. House is stucco. Stucco gets busted; new windows go in; plaster is replaced; then color coat of stucco.
This being us, the color coat part of the program was delayed until now. For months the new windows have been lined with pale gray. The job quickly morphed beyond just fixing the bits around the window and involved fixing other cracks and stuccoing the entire wall. Plus, the new entry wall needed plaster and stucco–another undone project.
I’ve helped with stucco in the past, but since I was at work part of the time, I sat this one out. Not that I was exactly giddy to help. Stuccoing sucks.
It’s like trying to ice the sides of a really big cake. With a razor blade. For every swath you apply, another section gets scraped off, especially on corners and edges. Pretty soon, you’ve got a mountain range of icing on the plate, surrounding the cake.
Stuccoing is like that, but without sweet, tasty confection. I’m sure the pros have it down to a science, but our waste quota is rather high. Unlike icing, stucco is really heavy. Smearing glorified concrete all over your house is probably equal to several hours in the gym.
Me, I’d rather sit on my ass, eatin’ doughnuts, and killing green-blooded aliens on Xbox.
And yet…looming in the horizon is the bathroom remodel.
It’s a tiny bath. How hard can it be?
