The dog ate my homework

So because I got the key on 20 October, you’d think that by now I should have moved in, right? Everyone I talk to badgers me about it, which is meant well of course but it’s quite tiresome to have to answer “nope, because $reason”. So clearly it’s time for an update.

When I got the key I was very optimistic. I was going to paint right over the existing wallpaper which had already been painted by the previous owners, it was going to be easy. But then my dad started nagging (and rightly so). His idea was to first strip the wallpaper and then paint the walls. I walked into the kitchen, pulled off a bit of wallpaper and ended up with almost the entire strip in my hands. It’d be a breeze, I decided. It wasn’t.

The previous owners had painted over almost all of the existing wallpaper with a vague salmon pink colour. Those walls were indeed doable, mostly. However, in the living room there was one wall painted blue and a block on the longest wall painted red (in the study almost everything was blue). I bought 3 spray bottles and some bottles of liquid specially made for removing wallpaper, and some friends, my brother and me got to work. As we progressed, we noticed the problems with the red and blue paint. The red paint was slightly more tenacious than the pink paint, but after just spraying it lots and lots the wallpaper came off the wall. The blue paint was, well, a bitch. Three friends of mine have chipped bits and pieces of paint-covered wallpaper off that wall. It took two days to finish it. Then, a fourth friend sanded it and finally it looked better. We also stripped the wallpaper upstairs, which (thank heavens) went easier.

All in all, it took a few weeks before I even got to painting. In the mean time, my dad built a wall to make the one room I had upstairs into two: a nice bedroom with a lower ceiling and a bigger spare room, with added storage space above the ceiling of my bedroom. After that, me, my brother and one of my friends painted. Three buckets of paint (2×12,5 litres and 1×10 litres) were applied before it looked alright. The paint was quite expensive and the description on it said it should cover the walls in one layer, but we ended up painting the walls twice anyway.

And now I’m cleaning, which is even more of a bitch, because I found that the little bits of paint that came off the wallpaper have stuck to the floor and they’re only removable with force. I’ve now cleaned half my living room floor, it’s a slow, tedious and tiresome task. After that, I will only need to put the carpet in the bedroom and I’ll be able to live there.

And then comes the actual moving of stuff. Unfortunately I don’t have an endless group of friends with vans or something like that. I’ve been moving stuff as I went there every time, but it’s not going too fast. I still need to find the time, and boxes, to pack my room somehow (I expect that to take no more than a few hours), and all the huge stuff needs to go there too. My dad is going to help me out, but he can’t do that before the 19th, since I work mo-fr and he has a varying schedule and works weekends before then.

I’ve heard tons of arguments for why I should already be there. Fact is though, I work 5 days a week which leaves just 2 days for my house. Moreover, I do not have infinite strength to fix everything on my own in a short time, and I currently have a room I don’t have to pay for. It’s true that my parents and I don’t get along, but won’t take long anymore and I wanted to have a small measure of comfortability in my own home before moving there. So to everyone who exclaims “STILL?!” when I say I haven’t moved yet, please get it in your heads that I am not, nor will I ever be, Superwoman.

Right now this whole thing is making me rather cranky, but I hope that in a few weeks I will finally get to enjoy a few free days in my own home.