covid diary: day 20

Friends, even in the middle of a pandemic, it's important to celebrate the small victories in life. So let's do that for a minute, because the library project is finished! Come with me on this remarkable journey ...

First, the before pictures. The stains on the carpet in the library and office have bothered us from the day we moved in. We've tried scrubbing them, renting a machine from the grocery store, even hiring a professional carpet cleaner, and still the stains stubbornly remained. In the library, we strategically deployed an area rug to cover the worst of it, but the area rug kept shifting and bunching up under the furniture, and having to adjust it every day was driving us mad. The other major issue, which honestly has probably only been an issue for me (not for Mike or the boys, who don't care so much), is the overwhelming beige-ness of the whole main floor. Look at the library walls: cream on top, taupe on bottom. Beige in spades. And yes, in retrospect, I realize that buying a cream-colored couch/love seat set was probably a mistake, but I really liked the shape of them.

 The first step on our agenda was to clear the room. The big boys carried the couch (and the love seat from my office) down to the basement, where they will live permanently and make a nice contrast to the multi-colored floor down there. They are pretty excited about the extra seating in their video game/TV area too. Henry and I cleared the rest of the room, and packed away all the books and Fiestaware (while also going through the books and donating a bunch of them), then Henry started carpet removal and pulling up the tack strips.

Mike took out all the bookcases and trim, and then it was time to get down to business. I picked a very light lilac for the top half of the room, which Henry was convinced for a while was actually white. Yes, that's my dad's painting platform. Don't tell him. I borrowed it almost 13 years ago, so I think by law it's mine, no matter what name is emblazoned on it.

I picked a darker purple for the bottom half, and now you can kind of see where I'm going with this, right?

Once the painting was finished, we turned our attention to the floor. Since the carpet had thick padding underneath it, the subfloor, once we uncovered it, was about half an inch lower than the floors in the adjoining rooms, so the solution was to put another layer of subfloor down. This was entirely Mike's department, with assists from the boys in carrying big sheets of plywood to and fro.

Mike finished laying the subfloor Saturday afternoon, and then it was my turn to shine. I spent the rest of the day laying out, cutting, and adhering the new carpet tiles.

Sunday morning, Henry got to nail the trim back up, with a little guidance from Mike. Then Mike, Liam, and Max hauled the bookcases back in and installed them, and I filled them up.

I finished bringing in the last of the furniture this morning, and voila! We have a new and improved space. Eventually we'll want to put another chair in there, but probably not for a while, since a new chair would probably cost as much or more by itself than all the materials (carpet, paint, subfloor) for the entire project cost us. But we've got time. Behold the "after" shots:

Pretty cozy, right? And not at all beige.

This project has really been a sanity saver for me. I've been in such a state of anxiety about the world. I'm exhausted all the time, and it's been very hard to concentrate on anything, including and especially reading. And if you know me, you know how dire that really is. So patching, painting, ripping up and putting back together ... these are things I can do on autopilot and sort of shut my mind off for a little while. I know I'm not the only one — five out of five people in my house are sleeping way more than normal, and exhibiting plenty of other stress reactions too. And maybe tearing the whole main level up isn't the healthiest way to deal with all this stress, but it's the way that's helping me most. So onward we go to give the office the same treatment.

Meanwhile, in the world outside our house, the situation continues to deteriorate. It looks like many places won't hit the peak of medical need until the middle of April. Which is truly terrifying because so many hospitals are already overwhelmed, and there aren't a lot of options for increasing capacity/personnel in the next two weeks. It's hard feeling so powerless, but we understand that the best way we can help is to stay home and do nothing.

Nationwide cases: 164,671. Deaths: 3,180.