Slowly, very slowly

These kinds of projects that are really disruptive always seem to take a lot longer than they should. The foyer is just so visible. It is not like a bathroom or some other back room where I can close the door so I don't have to look at the mess. The foyer is just in my face every minute of ever day, mocking me, laughing at me, making me feel so inadequate. Oh, how I hate you foyer.

But I digress in to madness.

In reality, the project is moving along about as fast or slow as any other project. The scratch and brown coats are finished, for the most part. One wall in the stairwell is a little thinner than I would like. There are other small areas where the plaster meets the woodwork that need more attention, but all in all, I am pretty much ready for the skim coat.

Today I finished the last wall in the foyer and then I pulled up all of the cardboard and plastic that I put down a few weeks back when I started the room. It had served it's purpose and is now ready for the dump. Tomorrow I will put down a second layer of cardboard and plastic that will most likely be down for the duration of the project. I work with such small batches of plaster for the skim coat that I don't make as big of mess.

I'm also going to buy lumber tomorrow for the scaffolding in the the stairs. I haven't decided when I'm going to construct the scaffolding yet, though. Needless to say, scaffolding in the stairs is really going to be an inconvenience. I won't begin skim-coating until next weekend, at the earliest. If I build it tomorrow I will forced to walk around it or crawl up and over it all week long. What is the point. I think I will buy the material and start to frame some of the sections and then do the assembly next Friday.

The real question now is, do I install the light fixture in the stairwell. I should do that before I skim-coat. If I'm going to then it would be best if I re-wired the fixture, ran the wire in the wall, cut the hole for the box, and mount a temporary fixture before I skim-coat. Given that I must tie this fixture in to the foyer light, which is run off of a pair of 3-way switches, makes this is an all weekend long job. In order to tie it in to the foyer light I must remove baseboard and pull up some floorboards in the upstairs hallway.

So even if I don't build the scaffolding until next Friday I'm still looking at having it in the stairwell for a minimum of two weeks. Next weekend I'll do the light. Then the weekend after that I'll skim-coat the stairwell. Then the weekend after that I'll skim-coat the foyer. That makes it 3 weeks from today until the plaster is done. This all assumes that I get nothing done during the week.

For the first 6 years I owned this house I only worked part time. Things were so much easier then. {Sigh!} Does anyone want to buy I house? I'll sell it to you real cheap.