Wednesday 3 October 2012

The Hovel in the Ghetto - a Tale of Pain

The other night I fell asleep while I was in the middle of writing a post about the sanding saga. Today I almost fell asleep in the middle of the sanding!

It's looking better though.
The room formerly known as the Glue Room

Hallway, with grotty scabby looking mystery stains removed
Away with the kitchen tiles

Reaching the end of my tether and working in 60-second bursts by this stage.

I, however, am more broken than I was last time. Sheesh, I think I'm just too old for this stuff at this level of intensity. Had Nurofen with dinner, but even Nurofen couldn't fix my creaking, aching, barely-moving body.

The whiz-bang belt-sander that I hired this morning, while far easier to handle than the Monster from ther Other Day, still had plenty of oomph. Enough oomph, in fact, to almost pull me off my feet after I'd been at it for 6 hours.

Stopping for lunch was a bad idea. I downed a huge amount of ice cream, sitting in the dust-covered lounge room, staring listlessly out the window at the half-filled trailer-skip and feeling the last shreds of energy ebbing away.

I spent the final hour or so working in 60-second bursts, with a few minutes off in between. When I finally got to the end of the kitchen I had a go at the bits the belt-sander couldn't reach. I spent much of the time sitting dazedly while the little weeny sander made a noise that, inside my earplugs, sounded like 'Loooovely, loooovely, looovely'. I found myself dozing, lulled by the buzz. I got closer to the floor. Lay on my stomach, in fact, cheek to the floorboards, and battled to stay awake. Couldn't get up because my knees hurt so much I couldn't put them on the ground.

To get myself off the floor I rolled onto my back, groaning as hips and shoulders came into contact with the timber, and again as I strained every last muscle to get into a squating position and then pushing to a standing position. Ouch...

Never again.

Floors are looking a lot better though!

1 comment:

Geoff James said...

Sue,
I share your pain having gone through that process a couple of decades ago. I was so knackered that we got a professional to do the 2 pot epoxy coating for us. The smell for a couple of days afterwards kept us on a permanent high and probably killed more than a few brain cells too. A bit like glue-sniffing on an industrial scale!!