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Thirty Days of Thankfulness, Day 13

Last Sunday I told you about how we don't make plans on Sundays and that we just take the day as it comes, right? Well, when I woke up this morning at 6:30 for no particular reason, I had no idea that today would turn out the way it did.

I stumbled to the kitchen just as the sun was coming up, and poured myself a cup of coffee. Jason joined me shortly on the couch and before my cup was empty I had rattled off a very long list of things I wanted to get done, or at least started on today.

While I ran a few errands, Jason made pancakes and sausage and by the time I got home, the kitchen was clean and he was outside working on his latest project.  Much to Greyson's delight, the project included a shed he had been wanting to build for a long time.  So those two worked all day outside, putting the metal roof on the lean-to for the old tractor, cutting out old floorboards that needed replacing, and installing a new floor in Grey's shed.  If you want to see a happy nine year old, let him use a Sawzall and a nail gun!  (With supervision, of course.)

Somehow in my travels, I decided today would be a great day to start renovating Owen's bedroom.  The bedrooms upstairs have some huge cracks that need attention.  When we bought this house, we knew it had a slight lean.  What we didn't know was that the house had no foundation and was basically sitting on a rock wall border with footings at just the corners.  Over the years those rocks settled, causing the house to sink on one side four inches.  Four inches may not sound like too much in the grand scheme of things, but the water in our glasses and the soup in our bowls told a different story.  And don't get me started on what happens if you drop a bag of marbles on the floor!  When we were having the addition put on the house, we also decided to have steel beams put under the house to support and level it.  Those four inches of sag that had occurred over 100 year's time caused some damage when the house was propped up properly.  All of the corners in all of the bedrooms cracked all the way through the plaster and tore the wallpaper.  We've been living with it for a few months, but enough is enough, right?  I had planned on repairing the cracks, sealing the old wallpaper, and then repainting. Welllllllllll...

Once I actually started the job, I realized that Owen's room needed more than just a face lift-it needed an overhaul.  Owen, Emerson, Alayna and Nash joined me and we spent a couple hours tearing through multiple decades of wallpaper to get down to the old plaster.

In the process, Alayna discovered a nice round hole leading to the attic.

We also discovered that the little attic access had once had a much bigger door!

And there was also a teaching moment when we discovered actual horse hair. Did you know that horsehair is often used in traditional plaster because it helps reinforce the plasterwork?  If not, you do now!

When we had removed as much wallpaper as we could, the kids helped clean up the mess.  The walls were horrible!

I still had a little time before calling it quits for the day, so I decided to tackle the worst wall.  An hour and a third of a bucket of mud later and the wall wasn't perfect, but I had brought it a long way.

Hopefully, by next weekend, this room will be completed and I can move on to the next room!  And then the next room, and the next room, and the next room...

Today, I am thankful for all of the help our kids gave us today.  The best part is, we didn't even have to ask them to help-they just jumped right in.  I know Jason appreciated another set of hands in his job, and having four kids help me strip wallpaper sure made the job go faster and we had tons of laughs along the way!