Breaking the silence

I HAVE PHONE!

It only took two weeks, a dozen phone calls, six different representatives, and one technie. The condo's business manager was actually impressed it hadn't taken longer. Of course, we haven't reached the end of the story: Another tech has to come this Saturday to get the bedroom extension working.

Oh, and they totally lied to me about forwarding my calls. So if you're wondering why I haven't given you my number, well, I thought I could subcontract.

Lessons for the nation

1. Good intelligence is key. My original plan for the Horrible Wall of Stucco (henceforth HWS) was to sand the relief down to nothing. Before I could borrow or rent a sander or anything, e. advised me that--based on her web research and consultation with her tool maven BIL--this would be a good way of ending up with a plaster wall in chunks at my feet. She suggested painting it with a nappy roller instead. Well, you've heard from bunj how that went. I blame myself for not starting out with the nappiest roller in the world (1.5"!). Next time, a spray gun and LOTS of masking.
2. Choose your advisers wisely. e. has been a phenom. Everyone loves the colours she picked--I wouldn't be surprised to walk in a few more freshly-painted Parchment rooms before the end of the year. She brought the supplies, she told me what to buy, and she herded at least some of the cats.
3. Know what you're getting into. It was a failure of intelligence not to have more operatives in Bathroomistan. We looked at the freshest, loosest layer of wallpaper and said, "A few minutes with the enzyme spray and we'll be ready to sand and paint." An hour later, e. said, "Well, we got the first and least offensive layer of wallpaper off." FOUR HOURS LATER, we were close to declaring major operations over, but defeating the evil forces of wallpaper had only brought us face-to-face with the shadowy resistance of Peeling Paint and Rotten Plaster. The occupation force has taken casualties every day since last weekend (will the tiny flakes every come out again from under my fingernails?) and talk of withdrawing it soon is premature.
4. Don't open a battle on multiple fronts. With one team slaving away in the living room and another scraping out pockets of resistence in the bathroom, I dove into the bedroom to begin prepping the walls. What was I thinking? We were lucky to get one coat over all the walls in the big room before bedtime. Now there's no place to retreat from the mess--except the closets.
5. Have an exit strategy. Dropcloths everywhere in the living room and they can't come up until I paint the Great Red Wall (formerly the HWS) at least once more and touch up the Parchment everywhere else. That mid-September housewarming date? Now I know why the former owner called me a "brave man" for suggesting it.

Domestic Mini-Poll

Seeing some of the choices previous residents have made (as revealed by peeling wallpaper, scraping paint, and so on) got me thinking: Years from now, long after I've sold this place and moved on to occupy the next one, what will the new owners look at and say, "WTF were they thinking?" Probably the Great Red Wall. I think it's awesome, but I recoiled when the previous owner told me one of his tenants had painted it purple. I can just imagine future tenants saying, "Who would PAINT a stucco wall? More to the point, who would paint it a red so dark that TWO COATS of primer won't hide it?"

What about your place? What is going to set your successors to pulling their hair out and questioning your sanity?

How gay am I?

I bought a bucket just before my last move. As I explained to e., in all the years I lived there, I had never managed to find the one I wanted. She said, "You're so gay!" I tried to explain that my reasoning was practical, not aesthetic--all I could find were round ones that accommodated a sponge mop badly, if at all--but that fell on deaf ears.

Then when she was cleaning up at my new place, she held up the big purple bottle on my sink and said, "You have aromatherapy dish soap? Omigod, you are so gay."

"I didn't even buy that soap!" I protested. My boyfriend picked it up for me!"

She looked at me and said, "That would be the gay part."

Oh, yeah. I think I'm catching on.

"A real drama queen"

Oh, and speaking of both (1) the previous residents and (2) being gay, I had a nice little chat with the business manager today. Honestly, I'm really beginning to like her. She actually said, "Some of the people who live here are pigs--excuse my language, but that's how it is." Fortunately, she tells me my building "Is not a bad building" in this respect.

In any case, she mentioned that the seller's last renter had "absconded" with the front/back door key, which is why I'm stuck with only one until they change the locks. In a bout of further intelligence-gathering last weekend, e. had discovered from my downstairs neighbour that that renter was...er...problematic. So I ventured, "Yeah, apparently that renter was something of a case, eh?" And she responded, "A real head case, you're right. For starters, his hoop skirts wouldn't fit through the door."

Suddenly, the rationale for some of the past decorating choices becomes a bit easier to understand. Also, the warm reception I've been getting from the other residents. Oh, thank heavens! This one looks positively normal!