some melancholy

Today while driving to Orem for my last of the 7:00 am class, I had a brilliant bit of insight--hey, you can go see Jessie and the girls after class-----

And then, just as quickly, the realization that while I definitely can go see their house, which I did with Jack and Jr, I just as definitely cannot just go see them. Boohoo for me.

However. I soldiered on to class and then met up with Jack and Jr at the house.

Progress Report:

Jack and Jr pulled more wire and stuff.

Jack dragged around stair stringers and only cussed a little under his breath at some broken or missing part and stuff.

I scraped off more old falling plaster in the stairwell and replaced it with loads of new spackle and stuff. And I made a plan, which upon hearing from me, Jack gave his highest approval: Go take care of it.

The plan is that I'm done with the spackling. Next step is to wash down the walls with TSP (tri-sodium phosphate--the ultimate wall cleaning and preparing for paint chemical), rinse well (and during the washing and rinsing, smooth out the bumps--major bumps that is), and then prime and paint the stairwell.

I considered trying to apply the same heavy texture that the former remodelers added to the walls throughout the rest of the house. And I thought about just sheetrocking over the whole thing. And I even paused long enough to weigh the pros and cons of trying to get mostly smooth walls before priming and painting.

But really. The house is almost 100 years old. The walls are not smooth. And they're walls in a stairwell. A back door stairwell.

I'm thinking the remaining bumps and dimples and such should be viewed as character. Bits of character in the stairwell. So there it is. I may be done painting by the start of next week and wouldn't that be some progress.