Renovations, you last FOREVER. Last Thursday, the contractors left the building and their part of the laundry list of items was complete. I still had things to get done, but all the big work was done. The beige walls were slowly dying. Relief. Let's start with some before and afters.
I'm sitting in this room and I just screeched looking at this.
Beauties
I did this myself, AND installed the door knob and key-less entry pad
This turned into my favorite room. I love the colors, the new light fixture everything.
C's bedroom with furniture.
Outside of the front door, was white before.
About two hours after the contractor left, I decided to complete my final project for the family room. Getting rid of the brassy fireplace screen. I read a ton of post on pinterest on how to spray paint the screen. I took all the precautions. Papering up around the fireplace, and making myself a little plastic cocoon so the spray paint wouldn't get everywhere.
I was almost done, when a huge burst of flame spit out lighting my whole cocoon on fire. I jumped back and threw my can of spray paint and ran for the fire extinguisher. When I came back about 30 seconds later, the fire had gotten big. The paper around the fire place was a great kindle. I pulled the seal on the extinguisher and a tiny little spray came out. I knew I had to do something, or I'd sit back and watch our new house go up in flames. I grabbed my water bottle and started dumping. 6 trips later, waist high black smoke, I couldn't see any flames. I started beating the fire area out with a towel. After the fire was out, I ran upstairs and turned on the attic fan, opened all the windows, and turned the fans then ran downstairs and opened ever window and door we had. That's when the tears started. I checked my face for my eyebrows, phew still there, went up to my hair, a little crispy, but still there. My next instinct was to call the fire department, but I had watch my phone burst into flames and we didn't have a land line, and I was completely alone. (Thank god, hubs, baby and dogs were at my Mom's house) This is when I started to panic, I went door to door to my neighbors house covered in soot trying to use someones phone. Not a single person was home. The only thing I could think to do is set up our computer and Facetime Andy. As I set it up, my hands were shaking so hard. What was I going to tell him? Our beautiful house. When I saw his face pop up, and I started going over the events, I just kept thinking I gotta get this cleaned up. It can't look like this. He was on his way, I took a knife and ripped up all the carpet and started cleaning the walls. It was terrible. Nothing was working it was just spreading. Once he got there, we went over the damage, and just got into the car and went to my parents house.
We came back the next day and tried to start cleaning, not realizing how extensive the damage was. Half way into trying to clean the family room walls, we gave up and just decided to call a professional. I didn't think it was as bad as it was, and thought there was no way we'd hit our insurance deductible. Wow, was I wrong. The first and second floor had to be cleaned, the whole first floor repainted, the hallway of the second floor and a few rooms. The soot got into the carpet and the couch, and unfortunately was mixed with spray paint, so it wasn't coming out anytime soon. It's been a little over a week now, and I finally am realizing how lucky I am that I wasn't really hurt. Or that I didn't panic and got the fire out as quickly as I did. Things could have been WAY worse. We're back to the mid point of the renovations. The good part about it is I don't have to shell out more money to get it fixed, and we found some beautiful oak floors under the carpet in the dining room. We also are getting our ducts cleaned and sanitized. I mean who doesn't love that. Lesson learned, never, ever spray paint the fireplace, ever.
