The paneling in my current house, for the most part, is actually fairly attractive as paneling goes. The stuff that’s in the living room kind of looks like wormy chestnut. The paneling in my office and the hallway isn’t like that, but it’s a nice, light brown. The paneling that irks me the most is in Pumpkin’s room. It’s dark in color, and it just makes the room look drab. Thankfully, the kitchen and main bedroom have normal (although painfully plain) walls

I’d love to completely redo the walls in the rooms that have paneling. I’ve thought about covering them with wallpaper, because that would probably be the easiest route. But we would have to sand the paneling so the wallpaper would stick, and we’d need to fill in the grooves and pits if we wanted it to look smooth. Or we could replace it with beadboard. I know, that’s paneling too, but I think it’s prettier than regular paneling, and it would go well with the cottage styling of the place.

Of course if I redid the walls, I’d be hankering to do more interior decorating. Like getting new floor coverings and furniture. I love the look of cabin furniture, but I think it would be a bit too much for such a small house. Shabby chic pieces would suit it much better.

But I’m getting way ahead of myself here. We don’t have the money to redo the walls right now, much less do all this other stuff. So, at least for now, I guess I can just dream on.

Well, actually, I’ve got a whole lot more to say about it. For one thing, the timing could have been better. Here’s how the whole thing came to fruition. Hubby went to the chiropractor last week, and they said that his back was improving and he could start doing a little bit. A couple of weeks ago, they told him not to even do so much as wash a dish. So that was good news… sort of. The problem is, when they told him that, he took it as permission to do anything he damn well pleased. And after sitting around for so long, he wanted to do all sorts of stuff.

The first thing he did was push mow the yard, since the riding mower is out of commission. Then he decided to clean off the front porch, which was a huge mess. Then he decided that since I wasn’t motivated enough to have already started on it, that he would start on the spring cleaning. And the first thing he wanted to tackle was the living room.

I had actual paying work I could have been doing, but I knew that he was overdoing it, and I wasn’t about to let him do it all himself. So on Monday, we got started. The living room was pretty messy, and it took a while just to get it straightened up. The carpet was ridiculously dirty, thanks to my barely functioning vacuum cleaner. It took him a while, but he finally got it to work reasonably well, and I did the vacuuming. And then he said it was time to rearrange the furniture.

As much as I wanted to rearrange, and as many times as he had planned to help me do it and then changed his mind, I tried to talk him out of it. I knew he didn’t need to be moving furniture with his back just finally starting to heal. But he wouldn’t budge, so once again, I figured the best thing I could do was help. So I did.

The living room looked great. But by the time it was all said and done, I felt like I had been to the gym and made the rounds on all the fitness equipment they had. And I knew if I was that tired, it couldn’t have been good for him. So when he mentioned doing some more cleaning on Tuesday, I begged and pleaded with him to take a day off. It wasn’t easy, but I finally talked him into it.

It’s a good thing I did. Yesterday, he was really feeling it. He kept wanting to do stuff anyway, but I put my foot down. And I know he had to be hurting, or he wouldn’t have listened.

He seems to be feeling even worse today. He’s hardly mentioned doing any more cleaning, and he sat around all morning playing video games. I wish he would learn to pace himself. I was actually relieved when his mom called and asked him to come over and sit with his grandpa while they went to town. Now I have the house to myself for a while. After I get a few things done on the computer, I’m going to get to work on the kitchen. Hopefully I’ll be done with it by the time he gets back, and he won’t decide to move on to another room.

So in a nutshell, I’m delighted that we finally got the living room rearranged. It’s got a lot more space, and looks 200% better. But I wish Hubby would have done it when his back wasn’t in such bad shape. Now I’m going to have to push myself to try to get the whole house cleaned up as quickly as possible, because if I don’t, he’ll be right back at it as soon as he starts feeling a little better.

I’m not sure how the previous owners of my house managed to keep everything copper. If they had as much trouble as we have with the plumbing, they would have had to replace some things at some point. But every bit of the pipes that I’ve seen appear to have been there for eons. Copper pipes are pretty much impossible to find any more, so we’ve had to replace everything that’s had to be replaced so far with pex piping.

Every time we have a little trouble with the copper, we have to spend a lot more on fittings and such than we would with some other type of piping. And pex is flexible and durable, so you’re much less likely to have trouble out of it. Maybe one of these days we’ll be able to afford to get it all redone with it.

The new year hasn’t been kind to me so far, and that’s why I haven’t been around. I could write a big, long post about it, but I don’t think I will. I’d rather just forget about it all, and bits and pieces will probably come out in future posts anyway. So I’ll try not to bore you to death with details here.

But in summary, I’ve been horribly ill, finally got on medication for depression and panic attacks, and had to contend with major plumbing problems all last week. I spent a lot of time when I didn’t feel like doing anything but lying in bed waiting around in various hardware stores, looking at fancy Whirlpool dishwashers and Toto toilets that I can’t afford while waiting on employees to help me. A few hundred dollars later, we finally got the water going again.

Things are finally somewhat back to normal, so maybe I’ll get something accomplished today. The jury’s still out on whether or not the medication (Prozac, to be specific) will help. I started it on New Year’s Day, so the two week mark is coming up, and that’s how long the doctor said it would take to kick in. I hope it does the trick.

When you just barely turn on the water in the kitchen, it makes a horrible noise. It kind of sounds like a jackhammer. And we’ve got a mystery leak coming from the bathtub that we can’t quite figure out. It only leaks every once in a while, so maybe things will be okay until we can investigate further.

At least we did get the shower going. Hubby’s cousin saw to that. When he took the paneling off of the wall outside the bathroom, we knew instantly what the problem was: The pipe was completely unhooked! I haven’t a clue why, but it’s par for the course. From everything I’ve seen, the previous owners of this house weren’t the brightest crayons in the box.

It won’t be cheap, but hopefully once Hubby starts his new job we can start saving up to redo it all. If we don’t find something that we think needs attention before that, that is.