The Woes of Stitches, Online Returns, and Caulk Tubes

Hello and welcome back to another blog on Wallpaper Acres! John and I took a lovely vacation which allowed us both to relax and step away from reality for 10 days! Man, was that nice. With all the wallpaper removed, it was time to transition to getting the house ready for paint and lighting.

Early in the week, John was busy prepping for lighting which started with a lot of research on what lights to purchase, what switches we liked better, and most importantly learning what the heck he would be doing. If you do not know how much electrical wire costs, man it adds up! Also, did you know there are tons of different light switches to choose from? How does one make a decision on what to buy? Well, John gets his advice from YouTube. So once we returned from vacation, John placed our online order for the lights, switches, gang boxes, and other stuff (there was a lot...)!

On Tuesday, John made it over to Wallpaper Acres and I got the call at work...he had managed to take a box lighting fixture to the face and was at the urgent care waiting to be told if he needed stitches. Overall, he received 3 stitches on his chin and they managed to do so without shaving his beard. John was pretty bummed because as the box fixture fell, it also shattered our range to a point of no repair. Yes, it was upsetting; however, things could have been a lot worse and John is ok. Were we planning on buying a new stove...no. But at the end of the day, that is a better outcome then John getting all new teeth...and cheaper!

As the lighting orders continued to arrive in multiple shipments, John discovered that he wanted to purchase different dimmer switches from the ones he had ordered so off to the store we went to return them. Did you know that if you order a 6-pack of something and they send you 6 individual items that the SKUs will not match? Well, that is what happened and we got to spend 30 minutes patiently explaining our issue with the customer service desk. Boy was that exhausting! We also got to use our 15% off coupon for being a new homeowners. So we loaded up on electrical wire, pre-primed trim boards, 2 tubes of caulk, and beadboard panels.

On Saturday, we made our trip to Habitat for Humanity and made a donation of paints and light fixtures that were in the house that we were not going to use. From there, we met my dad at the house and focused on brush cleanup. One great perk of living in Nashville is free, quarterly brush pickup! This paired with the amount of brush that we have, it is very convenient and we will be taking full advantage of it. We apologize to our neighbors for the our new front yard landscaping...it will be gone soon! Dad and I picked up all the loose sticks and the remaining bushes and transported them to the front yard while John prepared the master bedroom for an accent wall.

My brother showed up to then help out with power tools and the building of our accent wall. He helped me do the accent wall in my house in Murfreesboro and we learned a lot of tricks from that one that we were able to use here. Key takeaways when building an accent wall are:

1. Run all your horizontal pieces first, these are the ones that you need to be level for the entire wall to look right.

2. Your wall will not be square...trust your level and place it at multiple spots on your horizontal boards.

3. Each vertical piece will be a different length due to your wall not being square, this will require you to measure each piece and you cannot cut all pieces to one length.

This process went rather quickly and we moved on to caulking all the joints and where the boards met the walls. Remember I said I bought 2 tubes of caulk...should have tripled that! Whenever you think you have bought enough caulk, just throw 2-3 extra tubes in the cart...you will need it! The irony here is that John's mom and I thought it was blasphemy that a painter would need so much caulk and could not understand why she kept getting charged for caulk...turns out that they need it and we learned our lesson. We will be purchasing a case of caulk at bulk pricing!

The last project of the weekend was to update our tray ceiling in the master bedroom. John and I were not a fan of the standard, 2-inch trim that was there so he got out his router and customized new trim and it turned out great! We also decided that we wanted to beadboard the uppermost part of the tray. Dad came back out on Sunday morning to help out and we were able to get 'er done in 2 hours with only a couple of additional cuts. I am a major fan of this look and excited to see what this room looks like once finished!

We are hopeful to get some paint on the walls this week so stay tuned!!!