What doesn’t kill me…

For the past hour or so, I’ve been pondering this old adage: “What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.”

This is A LIE.

In fact, I now believe what doesn’t kill me will sap me of my will to live.

Specifically, I’m speaking of my newest home improvement project — the downstairs room that no one really ever knew what to do with.

It’s configured in a weird L shape, and it’s the first room you see when you come into the house. It’s kind of cool because it has a fireplace.

(Which you can kind of see on the left-hand side of the photo. It will eventually be re-tiled.)

It also has a really wired little alcove, and some really awful textured wallpaper.

This room used to belong to my father, but he has since moved to Florida. Unfortunately, under his tenure as Liege Lord of the Downstairs, the room saw some … how shall I say … neglect.

It was the location of his recliner, television and pool table. It had a pretty terrible tile floor that, because whoever built this house was on crack and didn’t line up the walls right, began to crack shortly after it was laid down (albeit, in a very unprofessional manner). Yeah, I got rid of that crap last weekend. MaryLou helped whilst on a visit from the Sunshine State.

And, just for the record, I did not — repeat, DID NOT — throw all of the tile into a dumpster I did not own in the middle of the night.

That being said, I was left with this on the floor:

Clearly Mike Brady designed this house.

(Sorry the photo is rotated. I did not use Photoshop at all for this post).

Anyway. With a mixture of concrete floor and linoleum sprinkled on top of it, I thought I was ready to go. I had the room measured for a nice new floor today. I bought paint this afternoon with the intent of painting over the icky wallpaper as has been done many times. Unfortunately, I discovered it peeling away from the wall in some places.

It was MOLD. There was MOLD behind the wallpaper. I will spare you the grim, photographic evidence.

Nice cleaning job, dad. Well done.

Therefore, I bought this concentrate stuff that helps you get the wallpaper off the wall and also makes you light-headed and your hands kind of tingle just a little bit while you’re using it.

So, that’s going on — but I took a break from the misery to share with you. While the wallpaper comes off just fine, it has the nasty tendency to take some of the wall with it. Oh boy, time to spackle. It also leaves behind this nasty pasty stuff:

…That you have to scrape off. By hand. Every. Freaking. INCH.

That is my weekend.

At least I have this…