A Tale of Two Walls

It was the best of walls, it was the worst of walls.  The best because we got some walls fixed, the worst because we had to damage another.

Reese's room finally got the makeover she wanted.  She chose a dark purple to paint her walls, but I refuse to put any dark wall colors in my low-ceiling home, so we painted two walls a light lavender, and then used the dark purple to put different hue stripes on one wall.  The last wall was left white.

But the best news is that her walls were gross, with unidentified substances crumbling out of painted-over lumps in the wall and icky smells, to much more uniform, clean-looking walls.

Before:

Holes

bumps

Kenzie sanding all over the place.  Because it needed to be sanded all over the place

smoothed, textured and primed!

Purple waves

The second wall.  

This is a story of the day we tried to get rid of a dumpster load of tree and vine branches in our yard.  Ahem, I mean a second dumpster load.  This time we actually got down through the piles to the ground, and found some mice running around.  At first we brought Liam over to see them and then felt grateful we were getting rid of hundreds of potential nests.

But then when we came in and heard the SOUNDS IN THE WALL!!!

 a We couldn't figure out how a mouse got into a wall on the upper floor.  Will vowed never to leave the door open again and I kept putting my ear to the wall to figure out where the mouse was.  Turns out the sounds kept coming from the same spot.  The mouse sounded like he was trying to jump up and get out.  He was trapped.

What to do?  We debated about calling an exterminator, but then determined that if we did, he would end up cutting a hole in the wall, and we can do that ourselves.

Will told me that rodents give him the willies, and capturing our unwelcome guest was up to me.  That's the deal.  He gets the spiders, I get the mice.  Fair enough, I guess.

After drilling a little hold in the wall, we discovered where the mouse was. It even tried to escape while Will was pulling out the saw, and then I was up.

After some searching I made a discovery.  No mouse!  It was a bird!  A bird?  How the heck did a bird get into an interior wall?  Will reminded me that that particular wall connected with the attic.  Now the search is on to figure out the hole in the house.

But I'm gonna admit that I was relieved to find a bird, because if it had been a mouse then I would be worries about little mousy babies.  A bird you can just let fly away and he won't want to come back.

And now to patch up that hole in the wall...