Remodeling Has Destroyed My Looks

Although my looks can be described as ‘The Girl Next Door’ type, remodeling has turned me into ‘The Haggard, Somewhat Deranged-looking Girl Next Door.’ I’m about to give you a sneak peak into the dirty realities of living through a whole-house remodel. Please don’t judge me.

CONFESSION 1:
Recently, I wore the same crappy work clothes for four days in a row. By the end of those four days, my clothing was decorated with mud, drywall dust, caulk, paint and texture. What’s even more disturbing is that I went to Home Depot on day three of wearing that clothing. And ya know what? I didn’t think twice about it. Where else can a girl who looks like she rolled around in a construction site fit right in and even get knowing glances from other customers? They felt my pain, I could tell. Those people are my hommies, my brethren, my peeps…just like you guys are.

Here are my jeans on Day One, after an afternoon of mudding:

And here’s what my hands looked like on Day Two:

I was briefly infected with “I’m Not a Professional Drywaller, So I Have to Hide my Wall’s Imperfections with Texture-itis.” This condition has been running rampant in my home, infecting both Joey and I simultaneously. Thank goodness for the wonderful remedy “Water,” which makes Texturitis vanish in mere minutes. In other words, this is what my hands looked like after applying texture to our drywall. (We discovered this amazing roll-on texture a few months ago. It covers minor flaws in mudding and taping really fast. Read more about it here.)

CONFESSION 2:
This next confession will devastate my friend Courtney, who says you age one day for every morning that you don’t wash your face. During the weekend, when the ebb and flow of my days revolve around drywall, miter saws and tiles, I don’t bother washing my face in the morning, because the tiles don’t care if my pores are clean and the drywall mud, no matter how hard I try to avoid it, always ends up smeared across my face. So thanks to this project, I’ve probably aged about 40 extra days. I’m hopeful that drywall mud has magical skin rejuvenating properties.

CONFESSION 3:
Sometimes I don’t take a shower. Instead, I wake up, throw on the dirty work clothes from yesterday and rely on the spray from the wet saw to rinse me off. I don’t bathe until bedtime because during the day, I get covered in enough crap to rival a mom with a newborn baby, so why bothering getting clean in first place?

CONFESSION 4:
On the work-filled days when I shower at night, if I know I’m just going to get filthier the next day and the only other human I’ll encounter is my husband, I don’t wash my hair. I’ve gone to bed with paint and texture in my hair just to wake up the next day to get even more of it in there. Am I grossing you out yet? I’m a very clean and well-bathed person when I’m at my real job, I swear.

CONFESSION 5:
I cannot be held responsible for the way my makeup looks. This is light I have to illuminate my beauty routine in the morning.

Yes, it’s a construction lamp. The vanity lights don’t work. And the construction lamp is connected to an extension cord that runs through the hallway and up to the attic since there’s no electricity in the bathroom.

I cannot help what I’ve become. My house did it to me.

My penance for these confessions shall be five Hail Marys and an Our Father. Except I’m not Catholic. Guess the lord will just have to accept me, dirty hair and all.

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