Cleaning up the Dining Room

Luke decided we had lived in our house too long with an unacceptable dining room. Previously, it has had flat, dirty white paint, mis-measured blinds, and lots of choo choo train tracks.

So, Luke added choo choo train tracks to the wall a while ago, which I was slightly annoyed about, but I'll admit that I was also glad to have an excuse to finally get that room into shape.

But, I wasn't going to paint another room with popcorn ceilings. It's too hard!

One day while the kids were at playgroup, I decided to start on the ceiling. I knew my time to work on this project would be precious, so I didn't cover anything (big mistake!). Instead, I just started scraping. After 3 days, countless fights (Nate and I think it's fun to fight during home improvement projects apparently because we will fight NON-STOP until the project is cleaned up.), and a fine layer of dust all over everything and everyone, we got the ceiling done. It took another 3 weeks (and more fighting plus outside mediation of family and friends) to pick a paint color and clean up that fine layer of dust.

I should mention, though, that throughout the project, Luke was unfailing helpful.

"Here, try this!" he'd say as he brought us a scraper, vacuum cleaner, rag, etc.

He could offer you no less than twenty different helpful implements in an hour's time.

Then, as we worked, he would encourage us for any little thing (like climbing a ladder) with, "You did it, Mommy! You did it!"

We're happy it's all done now. Nate thought I was being neurotic and that no one else notices popcorn ceilings in a house. But, now, he's converted and has great plans for taking down the popcorn ceilings in the bedrooms when the weather is warm enough. (These ceilings are tricky to plan because one needs to not use the HVAC system while scraping away for days on end.) I, on the other hand, am not sure that I'm ready to embark on this process just yet.

And, Nate is glad to have Luke on board. He says that Lukey will make a great Elders' Quorum president one day.