DIY rant

I spent about 8 hours scraping wallpaper today, which gave me a lot of time to think, but mostly I thought about this DIY conspiracy.

There is literally an army of people out there trying to convince the average person who couldn't make a bird's house in shop class that he can save time and money by undertaking major projects on their own home.  I'm not sure if they are shils for the home improvement stores -- peddling the modern-day equivalent of snake oil -- or for the builders themselves, who know they'll be called after the homeowner has thoroughly botched it -- and that they can charge double to fix it.

I was quite clear that I was going to hire someone to strip the wallpaper and replaster the walls, but builder #3 (of 5 we've interviewed so far) convinced Jess we could save money by stripping the walls ourselves.  Now, I understand this was the builder's way of avoiding the crap job, but unfortunately Jess was already convinced.  She borrowed a wallpaper steamer from a friend, dug out a couple of scrapers, and off we went.

To be fair, it has turned out to be much easier than I expected -- I had read about anaglpyta and was expecting a nearly-impervious vinyl wallpaper.  Fortunately, the previous owners had cheaped out and had used an inferior paper product, which peels off without too much effort.  The wall steamer then loosens up the glue and paper backing, making quick work of both.

That said, it still takes 3-4 hours per room, and we're only halfway through.  Jess' brother and nephew came over yesterday and helped, and while watching a three-year-old scraping wallpaper was very sweet, what was hilarious was that Jess -- finding all 3 scrapers in use -- picked up a plastic knife and continued working.  I wish I'd taken a photo.

Having come this far, we'll persevere.  The electrician is waiting to start, but I'm holding him off until I know what we're doing about the boiler.  On Tuesday, we're going to see a few of the projects builder #5 has done, though I suspect builder #4 is going to give us a better price and be able to start sooner.  We got the quote for PVC windows but are waiitng for the quote for aluminium windows.  And we've decided to do full laminate flooring throughout the house -- we just haven't decided which color yet.

The architect completed his drawings and determined we will have to move the bathroom wall when we build the stairs into the loft, so we need to decide if we want to do that now, while we're remodeling the bath, or wait until later.  Augh!