We would have been well and fully done by this time, I'm sure. But as we've come to expect, life got in the way.
In the form of this.
Long story short: Installing the baseboards in our bedroom, we evidently put a nail through a pipe in the bathroom wall. The nail goes in and seals the hole, until it rusts through some weeks later. So we came home a couple of weeks ago to this gaping hole, filled with dozens of gallons of water from the out-of-control leak all day while we were at work.
Also meaning we had to tear a huge hole in our bedroom wall for the plumber to work.
All fixed now.
And the library shelves are all finished and the crown molding installed too.
Plus I ran cable through the walls to get phone and computer network cable installed where we'll want a desk. Why not, when I'm tearing things up anyway?
Ready to move to the guest room. Stayed up till 1 a.m. today getting the popcorn scraped. And a nice bonus for once: The single wall of wallpaper was installed with a very water-soluble paste that came off with no struggle whatsoever.
However, the wall had always had a strange lump right in the dead center. In fact, it's obvious the textured wallpaper was installed expressly to "hide" the lump -- which it didn't do one bit.
Always realizing the cause might be a lot stranger than I thought, I dug in. I didn't bother to try to strip a section of wallpaper around it, which was a good thing. A 3-by-4 foot section was pretty much all torn up, as though the top layer of drywall paper had been removed. Jeff theorizes they had something glued to the wall, and I bet he's right.
Let's cut away.
And what I discover when I get inside the wall:
Look at the stud closest to the camera. Your eyes aren't playing tricks. It's been cut in half and then sorta-kinda put back together, with a huge bend outward.
In close up. This is one of the more bizarre things I've ever seen. I have absolutely no idea why they would have done this. Especially strange is the little nail seemingly attempting to hold the two pieces together. The pencil line you see is where it needs to be in order to fall in line with the rest of the wall. It's an easy fix with a swipe of the circular saw, and an easy patch.
And that's all done. Time to smooth and paint. Then trim, then floors, then doors, then baseboards.
Then the laundry room gets its doors and everything receives a final once-over. And then upstairs is done.
