It’s true I can’t do everything. Every time I get stuff done on projects, the whole rest of the house falls to chaos.
This is a cat who went up on the kitchen counters this morning in the wee hours, scavenging through the clutter, and chose not the leftovers, or the empty cat-food can, or anything else vaguely food-like, but a silicone jar-seal that I had set out to put back into the jar lid. Ate about 20% of it. But is still hungry this morning. Now I have to babysit his poop all week to make sure he doesn’t get a blockage. 🙁
I got some stuff done.
Before…
After!
Doesn’t look like much, I know, but that stuff is really on there, that was probably 16 inches, and it took me just over an hour with the cheap Black&Decker steamer and a scraper. Luckily my shoulder didn’t give me much trouble.
And then I cut the patch for the drywall upstairs. As you can see in the picture, it’s not exactly a nice square hole, so I dragged it up and down the stairs once and then cut bits off upstairs until it fit. Next step is finding the right length of screws to go into lath on one side (weird length) and line up with the paneling on the other side and then into the stud (also weird). and then, then I get to the messy part where I “mud”.
Which it turns out is like 5 steps:
- one kind of mud into the gap, allow to dry
- layer of another kind of mud
- then tape
- more of that second mud, then allow to dry
- then sand if needed.
…and and then I can finally contemplate paint.
At this point I’m ignoring the fact that someone is supposed to come up and fix the drywall on the ceiling up there. Because if I don’t do something, I’m going to lose my damn mind.
The WHEDA loan. Is still an ongoing saga. I’m trying to do the responsible adult thing, do everything I’m supposed to do. But it’s a struggle for every single lousy step.
I found a loan agent who genuinely wanted to help me, talked about all of it with me, we got all the paperwork done and he went to put the official part through…and he’s not allowed. They can’t put through a loan outside their own geographic area. I need a different lender.
The only lender that officially covers up here is someone called CoVantage Credit Union. Which as far as I can tell, is some sort of cooperative association for the smaller credit unions in the area? As far as I can tell, they have a largish office …somewhere? I know I called and their intake is a big callcenter. You can punch in a name and get a specific live person, so maybe it’s just the intake? But none of that matters…
Their loan guy didn’t know about the WHEDA “More Like Home” loan I am looking for, the one I should qualify for (because I already went over the numbers with the previous guy). He was checking with his supervisor, leadership or whatever…and he didn’t call me back. Because of course he didn’t. And I called him at 4pm because I wanted to give him the day to talk to his people without rushing him, but he was gone already. Because of course he was. They don’t call it “banker’s hours” for nothing.
Oh, if I didn’t mention, the WHEDA loan should cover a new front door, new back door, fix for upstairs ceiling, fix for upstairs floor underlayment, resetting the shower pan in the bathroom so it’s actually leveled properly and will drain, and a new shower-curtain-rod cuz that’s small-potatoes so I figured we’d just roll it in. What it will not cover: actual floor-covering upstairs, whether laminate or carpet, refinishing the kitchen floor, building of wall and adding of door at top of stairs so I can finally enclose the second bedroom. All of those would put it way over what I’m comfortable doing with loans. 🙁
Without loan help…I don’t know what I’m going to do. There’s so many huge “what ifs” right now that are mostly about money that are generating completely justified anxiety, I want to cry just thinking about it.
…or, closer to home, what if something happened to Loki? Sometimes I think he’s the only thing keeping me sane.
