Remodeling

I never ever dreamed that stripping wall paper would turn into a 9 month $3-$4 grand project. As most of you know Tony and I live in my g-mas old house (1920's or so). Nothing has ever been done to this house-if any of you have ever seen the inside you know what I'm talking about. Ugly dark green shag carpet in all the house except kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom. The bedroom has ugly dark red shag carpet. On each wall is layers and layers of ugly flowered wall paper (which is coming off in certain places). In the spare bedroom/office I wanted to paint the walls-MISTAKE!!! In order to paint you have to take the wallpaper off. In Nov. I started on 1 wall and ended on only 1 wall-there was I think 8-10 layers of wallpaper (that took forever) and under that wallpaper was plaster-plaster that was cracking and falling out. Can't fix that-so we had to knock down all the plaster walls. Did you know that plaster was held together by horse hair? I didn't.What was under the plaster, wooden slats most of which were not in the best condition. We had to pull all the nails out 1x1-this took forever!!! Many buckets were hauled off to be dumped. All of that had to be taken out. We had to buy new windows, otherwise the old ones would fall out. The old ones had the weights in them to go up and down. Then there was the blown in insulation (how it was blown it we don't know). In the walls we found interesting things: we had plants/vines growing up in them (alive), wasp nests, and spider webs. Needless to say Tony re-wired the room (as it was 2-wire before), put new insulation in, and then the fun began DRYWALL. Folks-people say it's easy and all but it's not, especially if there's only 2 of you and the room isn't perfectly sized and you don't have all the tools and know-how. Old house=crooked/slanted walls and supports. We started on the ceiling first. Tony is tall and I am definately by no means tall. How he thought this would work I'm not sure. My head came in very handy to hold the drywall up. After both of us standing on ladders and after many hours trying without a T and me crying cause I couldn't hold it anymore, he went to Lowes and bought the lumber for the T for drywall. Then it wasn't so bad Now the walls on the other hand-PAIN! Cutting all the holes out and lifting up-then down-then up-repeating it until it was right was soooo tiring. However, it got done. Then came the mudding and cutting out electrical holes in the wall. Finally came the painting, the trimwork (making it and painting it), and of course new carpet. I've never been so happy to see new carpet in my life. The trim work was outstanding-Tony really outdid himself on it. The window trim looks beautiful. I came home from work to find it and laid on the floor for what seemed like forever. I was sooo happy. Room is done-except for the door (which we are trying to salvage) and some trim work that can't be completed until the door is in. Tony has done an outstanding job-especially for someone who's never done this before. He did his homework and it paid off. I give all the credit to him-what did I do? Take the nails out of the slats, put up drywall, and whine about my house being a wreck. Tools everywhere, furniture everywhere, basically a mess. It probably wouldn't have take so long to be completed, except with Tony being gone during the week all that was left was the weekends. Hopefully we won't start a new project for a while-we have to build up our $$$$$$ and hopefully it won't take 9-months for our next project. We call it our "child' since it took the 9-months to complete. It was well worth the 9-months and now it's my favorite room in the house. It's nice to walk into a nice clean-bright room and be able to open the windows.