We’ve been tackling right and left this week.

Last week I showed “stage 1” of our bathroom renovation — taking out the old tile and replacing it with a shower surround. We decided, instead of patching up the wallpaper, to pull it off and paint. Jeremy and Jesse pulled off the old wallpaper, then Jim patched up several little imperfections and replaced some pieces of molding and primed everything. He and I went shopping for paint and towel racks. We found a really pretty light tan called “Pecan Sandie” — looks like coffee with cream to me. But he painted and put up the towel racks, then today I put the wall decorations back up. Here is the finished product:

Here are most of the decorations in there.

This print was a very inexpensive one at K-Mart years ago. The old sailor reminds me of Mr. Peggoty from Dickens’ David Copperfield.

We had gone with a lighthouse theme with the old wallpaper because the pattern looked to me like sand dunes and sea grass and seagulls and blue, beige, and tan as the color scheme, and early on I found the above Thomas Kinkade lighthouse prints for a very good price in a catalog. We decided to stay with that theme and color scheme. I looked around just a little for a lighthouse border or stencil but didn’t really have much time to put into it this week. I may look some more — I don’t know — I don’t want to overdo the lighthouses. I may expand into a general nautical theme. Or I may just leave it. Right now everything related to a theme is in the decorations and shower curtain, which can be easily and inexpensively changed if I want to do something else.

We’re also having out of town company come in tomorrow, so I had the boys tackle vacuuming, dusting, sweeping, taking out all the trash cans, and a few other odds and ends. I changed the burner pans and rings on the stove, cleaned the range hood, cleaned the microwave inside and out, moved everything on the counters out and wiped them off and cleaned the counters, dusted the little ridges on the cabinet doors that collect dust as well as the back edges of the dining room chairs, which do the same thing, did several loads of laundry, and did “my” dusting (my room, picture frames in the hall, and some of my decorative shelves). I also took Jason for an appointment at the oral surgeon’s: at his dental cleaning last May, before he left for the summer, they said his wisdom teeth would be needing to come out. He has none on the top, but one of the bottom ones is coming in exactly sideways, and the other one is at a 45 degree angle. There is some concern that one is close to a nerve, and if it develops more roots may cause problems, but they felt he could safely wait til Thanksgiving or Christmas break. He decided he wanted to do it over Thanksgiving break. I tried to talk him into waiting til after Christmas — there’s more time for recovery and a little more flexibility in his schedule then. But I think either he wants to get it over with or they scared him about the possibility of damage to the nerve. He said he didn’t mind missing Thanksgiving dinner — I wonder if he’ll still feel the same way when the time comes. 🙂

Anyway, Tuesday the one thing I have to do is clean bathrooms. I also hope to get the laundry finished, clean out the toaster oven, declutter the sunroom, vacuum the lamp shades in the living room (one of those odd little jobs that is often overlooked, but once I notice it I can’t stand it), and a few other little odd jobs. Once you get started, especially when company is coming, it seems like the more you clean the more you notice tings that need attention. But I have learned from experience not to spend so much time cleaning that I’m exhausted when company finally does come, so I’ll stop and rest in the afternoon.

Happy tackling!