How was your long holiday weekend? Ours was pretty nice, although probably not as relaxing as we had hoped.
First hurricane Gustav threatened to hit us, so J and I were prepared to evacuate. He is part of his company's emergency/evacuation planning team and we would have gone to San Antonio (this time around). Last time we did evacuate for Rita, but ended up going north.
Since Louisiana was getting a pretty direct hit, a franchise group of J's company from New Orleans evacuated and took shelter in H-Town. Since our city and surrounding areas weren't sure if we'd need to leave, certain roads were closed for our own evacuation. Hello? Did they think other people wouldn't be coming through our town in their own evacuation plans? Not the smartest idea, but we understand it was part of the city planning ahead. As a result, the poor people from 'nawlens (and many others) were not able to take normal roads and make it through without getting lost or having help from J and some of the other employees.
J was on the phone with the manager/director of the New Orleans group trying to direct her via some lesser known farm to market roads, without having her backtrack and go too far out of her way. She and her brother had been driving since the previous day and finally made it to their destination at around 4:00 am.
J and I know all about that. During Rita, he and I drove from about 10:30 pm until 6:00 am the next day. That same drive typically takes only 4.5 to 5 hours. Ask me about it sometime, and I'll tell you how I just about lost it several times during that experience. Yes, I'm a big girl, but I will admit tears were shed, and we were both pushed past the point of exhaustion. This time around, J and I planned that if we needed to evac. we would take only one vehicle and then we could switch drivers when one got tired.
Second, back to the employees of the New Orleans location. They finally made it to H-town safely on Saturday, Sunday and even Monday afternoon. Some of the employees would be working at J's office, in the space that was available. He and I went up to his office on Monday to help. He set up phones, then tested and connected extensions. A coworker helped set up the New Orleans' server with one of their employees. We all carried equipment, computers, cables, etc and generally tried to help out. All in all, we enjoyed each others company and got things done much quicker so everyone could go home and continue to rest from their drive.
I have to admit, it was kind of neat getting to hear such a different accent for a change. Listening to some of them, I could really hear that Cajun drawl.
Third, later that day we returned home to finish tearing down the wallpaper in our two bathrooms. Wheew! For the record I'd like to suggest against anyone applying a second layer of wallpaper on top of the first layer, especially after the first layer has a coat of primer/paint on it. It. did. not. want. to. come. off.
First hurricane Gustav threatened to hit us, so J and I were prepared to evacuate. He is part of his company's emergency/evacuation planning team and we would have gone to San Antonio (this time around). Last time we did evacuate for Rita, but ended up going north.
Since Louisiana was getting a pretty direct hit, a franchise group of J's company from New Orleans evacuated and took shelter in H-Town. Since our city and surrounding areas weren't sure if we'd need to leave, certain roads were closed for our own evacuation. Hello? Did they think other people wouldn't be coming through our town in their own evacuation plans? Not the smartest idea, but we understand it was part of the city planning ahead. As a result, the poor people from 'nawlens (and many others) were not able to take normal roads and make it through without getting lost or having help from J and some of the other employees.
J was on the phone with the manager/director of the New Orleans group trying to direct her via some lesser known farm to market roads, without having her backtrack and go too far out of her way. She and her brother had been driving since the previous day and finally made it to their destination at around 4:00 am.
J and I know all about that. During Rita, he and I drove from about 10:30 pm until 6:00 am the next day. That same drive typically takes only 4.5 to 5 hours. Ask me about it sometime, and I'll tell you how I just about lost it several times during that experience. Yes, I'm a big girl, but I will admit tears were shed, and we were both pushed past the point of exhaustion. This time around, J and I planned that if we needed to evac. we would take only one vehicle and then we could switch drivers when one got tired.
Second, back to the employees of the New Orleans location. They finally made it to H-town safely on Saturday, Sunday and even Monday afternoon. Some of the employees would be working at J's office, in the space that was available. He and I went up to his office on Monday to help. He set up phones, then tested and connected extensions. A coworker helped set up the New Orleans' server with one of their employees. We all carried equipment, computers, cables, etc and generally tried to help out. All in all, we enjoyed each others company and got things done much quicker so everyone could go home and continue to rest from their drive.
I have to admit, it was kind of neat getting to hear such a different accent for a change. Listening to some of them, I could really hear that Cajun drawl.
Third, later that day we returned home to finish tearing down the wallpaper in our two bathrooms. Wheew! For the record I'd like to suggest against anyone applying a second layer of wallpaper on top of the first layer, especially after the first layer has a coat of primer/paint on it. It. did. not. want. to. come. off.
Nice. You can actually see both layers of wallpaper from this photo.
See where the glue didn't want to let go? Fortunately C will sand down some of the areas and we will retexture and paint both bathrooms.
After two days of work, we had most of the paper removed.We scored the paper, and then sprayed a mixture of fabric softener and water onto the walls. Keep that method in mind, because it actually works! It's still tons of work to pull off the paper and glue backing, but the fabric softner helped. Plus we didn't have to buy any special stinky or toxic solvents. Our bathrooms smell like clean laundry.
I will note that this method will probably cause you to sneeze and might make your nose stuffy. That's because you typically don't breathe in a fine mist of fabric softner when you do laundry.
Blue, green and gold-ish striped wallpaper in the master bath.
Bye bye!The master bathroom seemed to be easier, because there was only one wall with paper and there wasn't too much of the room that had two layers of paper. We will need to remove the top part of the commode so we can get to the remaining paper behind the tank.
Have a great shortened week. I should be busy, since I already have another new project, to go along with the other's I have been working on.
What did you do for your long weekend?
1 thoughtful comments:
You all sure know how to have fun on a holiday!
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