Seeing the master bedroom without a bed in it is more disturbing than I imagined, which is either because I really am phobic about moving or uncomfortable deja-vu or maybe a combination of both. We’ve moved the bed into the smallest bedroom and put a new window unit in there, because we’re hitting 106 these days and the central air really can’t cope. Even the old window unit in the master bedroom can only do so much, especially with the large west-facing windows.
The last time the bedroom was empty was when my housemate moved out five years ago. It had been kind of tense around here for several months before that, and I was marginally aware that the room was going to need a lot of work, and I was just ready to be alone a bit before dealing with it. I just closed the door and probably didn’t go in for a week.
Once I felt fortified in my independence, I surveyed the damage. There had been a lot of guy and a whole lot of dog living in there, and it was pretty bad. This was late winter, so I closed the vent, opened the window, opened the sliding glass door, closed the bedroom door, and didn’t go back in for a couple of weeks. I went in and vacuumed every day for a couple of days, putting down the most toxic flea-killer I could safely use indoors (there weren’t any fleas, and we’d been using Frontline, but I worried about eggs) and then left it for another week.
And then I started. I washed the walls, which took me three days for 5-6 hours a day. It took me three trips to the hardware store to find something strong enough - tools and chemicals - to get the blackout paint off the sliding glass door and windows, except I ran out and one window still needs the paint removed. I patched holes in the drywall. Then I taped off the baseboards, primed one wall to cover some homemade artwork, and painted half the room, the worst half that hadn’t washed clean very well.
Then I rented a Rug Doctor and cleaned the carpet 7-8 times.
I left work undone. I did try getting the toilet to work properly in a couple of fits over the years before deciding it was a vent issue that I haven’t bothered to have looked at. I didn’t repaint the bathroom until last year. The ceiling in that bathroom, the laundry room, and the garage were clearly not primed before they were popcorned, and the popcorn’s been coming off for years - not my problem except cleaning up the fallen crap. When I repainted the bathroom I re-caulked. The door and part of the frame need to be replaced, but it hasn’t been a big deal. The room was just so much better that I was happy to call it done for the time being.
Once the paint had dried, I moved my bedroom out of the room we’re back in now.
And so now, I guess, we’re going to sort of do it over again. We’ll stay in the front bedroom until September, which will give me time to clean the carpet (which I did again a couple of years ago by cleaning half of it, letting it dry, moving the bed over, cleaning the other half), paint the half I didn’t paint before, get the rest of the paint off the windows. Then we’ll move the office into the master bedroom and clean and paint the office. Then, when it cools off, we’ll move back into the master bedroom and clean and paint the front bedroom, which has needed painting since before I moved in here.
Then if we’re really smart, we’ll immediately move before anything else needs to be cleaned or painted.