Working on the weekend

Today is Saturday, but there is no rest (or fun) this weekend! As I may have mentioned (one too many times!) the dining room ceiling is being fixed up and the walls will need painting once that is done. The ceiling is looking well, but unfortunately the work was not completed Friday as expected - it has been primed and looks good, but the final coat of paint is waiting until Monday when our plasterer returns. It seems there was a bit more plastering and smoothing out bumps than the he had expected, so Friday was spent sanding, priming, fixing lumps and priming again. 

So today, in preparation of painting the walls, which I should get to early next week, we did a bit of sanding and filling holes - there was plenty to be done! The walls were a bit of a mess, patches of sticky stuff (syrup?), the usual black dog hair painted into the walls and stuck pretty much everywhere and just all around lumpiness and dents. The baseboards - again, I think I have mentioned the terrible state they are in - came off in areas so we could clean behind them and smooth out the walls. Since some portions of baseboard trim are only being held in place by ONE nail, it was easy to get them down. The yuck that was revealed was terrifying! One corner of the dining room must have been home to a real Christmas tree for some time - there were dried pine needles pouring out from behind the baseboards!  Along with this:

There was also a fair amount of dog kibble stuck behind baseboards...if someone had just taken the time to smooth the walls a bit and use more than one bloody nail to hold the trim up, it may not have left a gap big enough for kibbles (and mice, of course) to get behind. Honestly, I try not to dwell, but who the hell lived in this house before us?!

Anyway, after all the sanding came the cleaning. My hands hurt (so dry) and I am pooped and tomorrow we are at it again. Since the dining room is smack in the middle of the house we can't take too long messing around getting it finished, so there is no rest. I hope this hard work pays off! After pictures to follow soon, but first, a few last shots of the mess we are dealing with (not that I want to remember this!):

Yes, that one badly placed nail was all that was holding this piece up! 

Again, just one nail keeping this piece in place - this was the baseboard that was hiding pine needles and kibble...which explains why my first day alone in the house a baby mouse emerged from the corner! Oh, and look at the horrible job of staining the baseboards...believe me, it does not match the rest of the room!