spackle: tackled.

while Extreme Makeover: Home Edition was busy building a whole new house just up the road from my office this past week, in the realm of our smaller-scaled and longer-timeframed own home "makeover," we managed to find a little bit of time this weekend (in between graduation parties and church picnics) to squeeze in the next step in our seemingly perpetual fireplace room project.

Mark spent Friday evening putting all the extra screws into the wall, and he only called it a night when the box of screws was empty. also, he discovered that putting a different, larger bit (head? screwdriver-ish thingamabob?) into the drill gave him more power and saved him all the time he thought he was going to have to spend cranking down all the screws by hand. yay for a plot twist in this saga that ends in time saved instead of time wasted!

Saturday morning, Mark made a quick trip to the local hardware store to pick up some more screws and other supplies, including my very own mud tub and spackle blade! take note ladies, because i'm pretty sure that when your man buys you your very own tools so you can help him with projects, it means that he really loves you a lot and he trusts you enough to let you help. either that, or it means he just doesnt trust you being anywhere near HIS tools. but i am choosing to believe the former, and either way YAY i got to help!

 Mark put up the special joint mesh spackle tape and spackled all the joints. and do you see all those screws he put into the wall and ceiling? no? well that would be because they have all been spackled over by the spackle queen extraordinaire, yours truly. i only dropped just a little bit of spackle on the floor, only flung one blob halfway across the room, and only spackle bladed my finger enough to draw the tiniest amount of blood. i'd call that a major success.

we only had time to put the first coat of spackle up this weekend, since the grass also needed to be mowed and we had places to be because we're in such high demand, so we still have a couple more coats to put up, and then sand down, before we're ready for paint! and with a few weeknights of work and a three-day weekend coming up, i think there's a possiblilty that we could have this room done (or at least functionally complete) by the time we leave for vacation in 31 days!

also, i started two more little-er projects and almost finished one of them this weekend. here's a sneak peek: