A Never Ending Project: The Sky is Falling

Installing lights is not a difficult task for an electrician who has been in the field for over 20 years. I needed one light to be hardwired and installed over my bed to give me some light for reading. Finding a free Saturday for my father to install said lamp was a far more difficult task than I originally thought it would be. Weeks passed, and the halogen light remained in its box in the storage section of the attic. Finally there was a free weekend, and the two Lawson men ascended the attic stairs in the early afternoon hours to brighten the room a little bit.

I was anticipating about an hour or two would be spent installing the light. Little did I know how wrong I was. My dad cut the hole in the wall and used a snake to run the wire up into the ceiling. His original thought was to go behind the wall, but the slope of the roof made that difficult to achieve. Plan B was to go up and over the entire room. This seemed simpler, but meant that he would have to go up and help feed the wire from point A to point B. He climbed into the crawl space, while I wiggled the snake on the other end to make it clear exactly where the wire was.

As I pulled the long piece of metal I heard a "POOF." I turned my head slightly to see a chunk of my freshly painted ceiling on the floor with a blizzard of blow-in insulation fluttering down on top of it. My dad uttered some words from above. It was evident that he had slipped while crawling on the beams and some of his limbs had pushed their way through the ceiling. The room which I had just vacuumed was a mess, there was a massive hole in the ceiling and our simple afternoon project had just gotten so much more difficult.

I cleaned up the installation as my dad tried his best to repair the ceiling. Hours later the tiles were back in their place with some support from screws. A coat of plaster was applied to patch the holes. All that did was give me something to repaint later on. After a little more time with the light we had it working. My room had never been so bright. While everything ended up OK, it still amazes me how fast a simple job can turn into a massive project. The next weekend I went around with the paint to touch up the windowsills and walls. I repainted the ceiling and stored the paint cans under the workbench in the basement. My room was nearly finished. The work was done, now all I needed was a bed and a dresser. I guess that I will have to keep checking Craigslist.

The Hole in My Ceiling

Dad Looking Up at the Mess He Created

A Never Ending Project: IKEA or Bust

The new carpet smell was still lingering in the air of my bedroom when I returned from my second trip to Brazil. My parents had done a decent job of putting my room back together the way I had left it. I spent a little time going around and rearranging some things, but all in all things were in order for the most part. What I needed was furniture. I really wanted a new dresser and needed a bed frame. In my opinion, IKEA has some of the most stylish furniture at a reasonable price. As far as a bed was concerned, I had been looking on Craigslist since I really didn't want to shell out over $200 for a bed frame. However, a dresser was looking to be a possibility.

I found a free weekend a week after I got home. I needed two things, a person to drive down to Stoughton with and a truck to haul everything home in. Greg was my first thought for a companion, but he was busy that Saturday moving new furniture for his dad. My mom then mentioned to me that Shelley was looking to go to IKEA at some point, so I dialed her next. She wasn't available Saturday, but Sunday afternoon was an option. We planned on leaving after morning meeting. I thought that it would take a few hours to head down there, shop and get home.

After morning meeting we changed and then jumped in her truck for the drive to Stoughton. I became the sixth driver of her auto, which she made sure I was well aware of. It only took us 30 minutes to get there. Since I had been expecting closer to an hour, I was now thinking that I could be home before 4:00. The parking lot reminded me a lot like an amusement park. People had their carts lined up and they had smiles in their faces as they entered the gigantic building. Huge poles displaying yellow and blue flags towered around the perimeter. We entered the building and obtained a map to help us find our way around. We started on the second floor showroom following the multitudes before us. We found the items we were looking for, and frantically wrote down the locations of where to pick them up in the first floor marketplace. With the hoards of people that were at IKEA that Sunday afternoon, our progress was slowed in the lower level. After what seemed like an eternity, we finished getting the smaller items and made our way to the warehouse section to find the big pieces of furniture.

As my luck would have it, the dresser that I had planned to purchase to get was not in stock. Shelley found her bed, and we laboriously pushed the full carts across the concrete floor to the checkout counters. The lines were longer than you would find to get on Superman at Six Flaggs. Forty minutes passed before we pushed our carts out the door and loaded the boxes into her truck. After a lunch stop at Wendy's we made it back to my house, where I unloaded the boxes and carted them upstairs. The process of putting everything together took longer than I expected, but I managed to get most of it done. After I had hung my mirror, assembled my desk chair, put up my new clock, set up the storage boxes and hung the curtains I settled into bed.

I had been at IKEA for almost four hours. Add that to the hour and 20 minute round trip drive, and it had been a long and full afternoon. I was pretty tired, especially since it had taken me so long to put everything together. The only thing I had left to do was hang the lights, but I would need my dad's help for that one...

A Never Ending Project: Primary Colors

Oil-based primer is awful. It's thick, heavy, smelly and plain ol' messy. The good news was that I didn't have to worry too much about tarps. I had somehow managed convincing my parents into re-carpeting the third floor. I could get the dingy old carpet covered in paint and it wouldn't matter one bit. I spent a good three days alone with the two cans of primer. I have a big room (around 14 feet by 21 feet not putting into account the flight of stairs). I was working alone and the thick paint couldn't be applied with a roller. This meant painting hundreds of vertical square feet with a hand brush. I was up till about three every night until my room looked a ghostly shade of white. The only positive thing about the color was that it really brightened up the place!
On Wednesday evening and Thursday afternoon Josh Valvano assisted with the paint. He became the expert of blue while I handled the oatish color. After hours of work, the room was coming along quite nicely. A lot of time had been spent on the details. The flat walls were all blue, while the upper slants were the lighter of the two shades. The baseboards and door frames were also the beige color. Because of the detail that was going into it, the hours seemed to crawl by. Our discussions were good, which probably added time to the project. Because of the children's meetings every single night, I hadn't been able to get started painting until almost 9 every evening. I had also taken a few afternoons off of work to continue painting.

Some of my friends went to see The Bourne Supremacy, which I really wanted to see, but I needed to finish my room. Due to the paint fumes that lingered in my room, I had been sleeping in the television room. This change in resting locations was fine seeing that I was enjoying spending the late nights with the new puppy. I took Friday off of painting to attend the Brad Paisley concert with my sister. This break was very welcome, but I was still stressed about the amount of work that needed to be completed. Saturday was the Sunday School Picnic, and after getting home that evening I continued on my never ending project. The paint was almost finished. That same night I bought the ticket for my second trip to Brazil. I was leaving in a week, which meant it was really crunch time up in the attic. It didn't help the stress factor that my sister’s wedding was also one week away.

By Tuesday the painting was completed. Now the room had to be put back together. I moved my furniture around to make the setup much different than it had been before. I wanted to actually utilize my desk and my couch, both of which had been just taking up space before. I spent a great deal of time moving stuff around until I had it looking a certain way. I took the opportunity to get rid of a ton of junk that I had been saving for no apparent reason. Two days, three garbage bags and a strained back later my room was finally organized. I didn't want to get too anal about it seeing that the new carpet would be arriving in a few weeks. That Friday was the rehearsal dinner and Saturday was the wedding. I used my time on Sunday to relax and get my hair buzzed. Monday afternoon I was on my way to the airport for my second trip to Brazil. My parents would have to keep things going in my room for the next three weeks or so...

The Walls Are Patched and Ready to Paint

All My Stuff in the Center of the Room

Say Goodbye to Stained Walls and Ratty Blue Carpet

A Never Ending Project: The Beginning

The thought first entered my mind when I got home from Brazil the first time. As I climbed the stairs to my third floor bedroom that day in early July, my eyes fixed on the new mattress that my parents had purchased for me. My older cousin Aaron had been staying in my room for a few nights before he moved to Kentucky, and they had opted to finally purchase the mattress rather than have him sleep in the half empty water bed. As I collapsed on top of the firm mattress I thought that this simple mattress could possibly be the first step of a long process of change.

During the remaining days that week, my initial thoughts were to just move the furniture around. When my friend Ashley visited that weekend we brainstormed about exactly what could go where, look good and still be functional. I had some ideas, but the concept of a complete renovation hadn't begun to set in. The next weekend was Mike's wedding in California, so time for this planning to come to fruition was very limited. While in California, I decided to paint the walls, despite my mothers rising opposition that had started to seem like a strengthening army of ancient Rome.

When I returned from the west cost I reasoned with my parents. During a family meeting at the kitchen table one evening, I used my supposed knowledge of real estate to tell them that my room was the one room of the house that would deter future buyers from making a purchase. Since they were losing my sister to marriage and the state of Iowa within the next month they had began to think a little bit about downsizing. Of course any downsize would leave me homeless, so I wanted to make the home in which they resided seem a little more appealing. Using the "sale argument" I was able to get them to take the bait. Project: Room Renovation was in the planning stages.

Unfortunately I wasn't home much during the next week. I was house sitting for Mark and Trudy as they continued their left coast family vacation. Shelley came over one evening and I showed her some color swatches to try and find the perfect shades for my room with one window. We agreed upon a medium shade of blue and a oatish color. It was around this same time that our family got a new member. A small puppy named Fenway entered our lives, and in the excitement of having an active pup in the house soon took precedence over any painting.

That Sunday me, my mom and Fenway paid a visit to the Home Depot and picked out the paint for my room, and for Jill's room (which would also be renovated as soon as she was gone).
The painting materials were unloaded and I was ready to go. The next week was children's meetings at the hall, but thanks to the insomnia I was dealing with I would be able to paint into the wee hours of the morning. It was time to get priming...