What have I done?

By Dan Barber

Six months ago my wife and I decided to scrape the popcorn finish off the ceilings in our home… a huge mess. Scraping the stuff off was easier then I thought. However, as easy it was, with a long pole attached to the ceiling scraper thing, I then contemplated my living room ceiling with concern because it is 20-feet high and I have this fear of heights.

I spent several hours these last six months, since retiring, staring at that dang ceiling trying to figure out how I could retexture it with another attachment to a long pole. If I placed my 12-foot high step ladder in the middle of the room and stood at the very top of this ladder in mid-air and stuck my hands up like I was being held up, I still couldn’t touch the ceiling. I pretty much decided that I could live with a bare patched ceiling. That was not to be however, my oldest granddaughter announced that she was getting married and while looking up at my bare patched ceiling she stated that she wished to hold her wedding reception in grandpa and grandma’s home… the pressure was on to come up with a solution.

All of my grandchildren know that I have a very hard time saying “no” to them. When this particular granddaughter was 3-years old and the only grandchild at the time she and her grandmother decided that I would buy this house with the really high living room ceiling and a really cool area in the courtyard for a play area. The play area is now a heart-shaped patch of verbena, thanks to grandma, in honor of a grand daughter’s wedding reception.

We have done a lot of living in this house and a lot of repairs, we’ve seen three flash floods come through the house, and because I am too cheap to pay someone to do the cleanup and repairs I have managed to take care of everything myself, with the help of friends, neighbors and Mike. Strong winds once blew the shingles off our roof; I saved a bunch of money by ordering the delivery of asphalt shingles, removing what was left of the roof with the help of my sons, and making numerous dump runs in my pickup to get rid of the old roof. I wore out the seat of my pants on that job because I had to scoot around up there a lot because I was too scared to stand up (the fear of height thing). The people at the dump still remember me and my wife by sight whenever we take stuff there to dump. I made sure that I put on shingles rated by the big box home improvement store to be guaranteed to last 30-years, hopefully well past my own expiration date. I finally had a great idea after our last flood this summer. I got some of my grandkids together to fill some sandbags and placed them 2-bags high, along our back fence to hopefully hold back next summer’s flash flood waters.

My wife and I even decided to redesign our very small kitchen to add on a narrow pantry and new cabinets. It was then that we discovered that under old kitchen cabinets was burn scared walls. Again, we overcame the challenge and obtained new cabinets that we installed ourselves… sure some of the wall and floor tiles are a bit off, but I just mark that up to my artsy side and call it rustic.

I finally figured out how to retexture the high living room ceiling. I got my daughter Kimberly, the new bride’s mother, to climb up on the scaffolding to spray the texture on to the ceiling. I did try to get up on the scaffolding myself, but because my shaking caused the scaffolding to vibrate uncontrollably it was deemed too dangerous. My wife said I turned beet red and was sweating buckets. The texture is on and now I can use a really long pole with a roller on it to paint the ceiling… but it may have a rustic look because when I tape the paint brush to the really long pole to cut in the edges, the paint job might get a bit sloppy.