Upstairs painting COMPLETED!!!

Our living room in progress

Bethany taking a painting break

I haven't written about our house in awhile so I thought I would attempt to do a "before and during" blog as we are not finished but have made significant progress. As you can see we have moved some living room furniture into the house as well as the bookshelves that nicely cover our pet "piggie" (graffiti) that we could not completely remove from the stone walls. Some day I will take the suggestions of friends and try some creative stone painting. But for now his outline is still faintly embedded into the stone so the bookshelves are doing a fine job of covering his cute but annoying presence!

Our focus in the past month has been getting the upstairs painted and Gary wiring the house for electrical service. Everything has taken more time and effort that we ever anticipated. The house is enormous and seems to devour the work we have to offer her.

Bit by bit though, we are making progress. Gary has nearly completed the wiring in the basement and first floor. He has mock-wired the upstairs by pulling twine through the conduit until we had money for more wire. This is an enormous job for him to accomplish on his own along with all the Mexican mysterious of the previous wiring job. Nothing that had been done when the house was built is predictable so he is having to solve a lot of mysteries and problems along the way. It is also much more expensive as the conduit doesn't run in a line from shortest destination to shortest destination but more back and forth and back and forth. Therefore, he has used about twice the wire that he would have needed in the States. At $50 a box he has gone through many many boxes of wire and he will still need more before it is all finished.

Painting has been another grueling issue!
The upstairs is much more difficult than the downstairs had been. First of all, all of the beautiful brick upstairs had already been painted white and then had graffiti covering it. Brick is an extremely tricky and time consuming surface to paint over. It is very pitted and with the rough mortar it is a challenge to get a good cut in line. It's not a simple roll out but we must push the roller brush into the brick in order for the paint to get into the many cracks and crevices. Thank God for a large nap roller cover but it is still a very challenging surface to paint.

Bethany's "pretty in pink" room finished!

Bethany's room before we began!

Gary painting Nathaniel's 14 foot tower room ceiling!

Along with the jagged brick surface the ceilings are ridiculously high. Nathaniel and Bethany's bedroom ceilings are 14 feet high! This adds a significant amount of work in painting an already large second floor.

Nathaniel's manly tower room!

Nathaniel's tower room before we cleaned or painted!

Yesterday we finished painting all of the rec-room, the school room, the laundry room, Bethany's tower room and Nathaniel's tower room. What a triumph to reach the finish line of painting upstairs!

Rec-room before any restoration work was done!

Laundry room/school room before any restoration work was done!

School room looking into the rec-room before any restoration work was done!

Stage area (Nathaniel's Lego room!) before any restoration work was done!

We still have the hall to paint after we are moved in and settled a bit. We decided since there wouldn't be furniture in the long hall with enormous ceilings and 35 windows, that such a large job could wait until we move in!

I worked on Gary's and my bedroom a few weeks ago. This room was the most difficult for me to clean. I sobbed the whole time that I had the mop and bucket in my hand. There were disgusting things all over the floor, from rat droppings, to human excretions, to condoms (if you can imagine anything so horrible as being intimate in that filth!) I cried and prayed that first whole day of cleaning. AS the filth was removed I began to feel the joy and peace of the presence of God! Therefore, the finished room is particularly meaningful to me!

Gary and Rachel's bedroom before any restoration was done!

Gary and Rachel's bedroom-before!

landing outside of bedroom before any restoration!

Gary and Rachel's bedroom-complete! (I will stencil flowers on the green on some relaxing Saturday afternoon!)

This house is like a child's education! We may celebrate graduation from middle school and a high school diploma is worth an ice cream and a restaurant but we are never finished learning. In the same way we celebrate (haven't seen the ice cream or restaurant though!) the victories of electricity and lights in the house and painting throughout but in reality we will never be completely finished. We will always enjoy the slow and occasional puttering that this house will give us in the future. Gary will come home from preaching all day and relax by planting a tree or working in the vegetable garden. We will have a Bible study and fiesta in our home and the next day we will unwind from all those people by painting the hallway! I think the house project is our introvert time in Mexico. It's our way of saying, "Okay, enough already with the fiestas! We need time alone!" It's wonderful to be finished with the heavy duty work and be able to look forward to the "puttering" aspect of living in this old house.

There is still quite a bit yet to do before we move in at the end of this month but we are well on our way to living in our new old Mexican home!