Unforeseen Challenges (DIY Post #9)

There were so many holes in the wall!

Yesterday we finally started the actual construction work of our project. Our goal was to get everything off the walls, repair the holes in the walls with spackle, sand the holes, and then paint. However, everything did not go according to plan. We found some time-consuming obstacles blocking our way to our ultimate goal: painting the room.

Connor and Makenna arrived at the pool deck about an hour before I did because I had to go to my club swim practice. When I got there, Connor was still trying to take some things off the walls and Makenna had started spackling the walls, but they were nowhere near done with the pre-painting work.  It had taken Connor half an hour just to take off one small bulletin board because of the strange way it was nailed into the wall. They had discovered that not only were the picture frames nailed into the wall, but they were also taped to the wall. So when I got there, I quickly got to work scraping off the paint, and sanding down the spackle while Makenna continued spackling the walls, and Connor worked on the last particularly stubborn screw that held the whiteboard to the wall.

The stubborn whiteboard that didn't want to come off the
wall. You can see the hole we made at the top - the white
stuff is the spackle we used to fill the hole. 

After working on the same nail for awhile, Connor finally stopped, and took a little break. I decided to go up there and give it a try by using the crowbar and brute force. At that point, we didn't care if we made a big hole in the wall - we just wanted to get that whiteboard off the wall. I pushed on that crowbar with all my might, and suddenly, the whiteboard started jiggling. Makenna kept wiggling the whiteboard, and the screw came out a little more. Then, Makenna switched the orientation of the crowbar, and I used all of my strength to use the crowbar as a lever to propel the screw out of the wall. Finally, after much exertion, the screw came out of the wall, and we emerged victorious and triumphant. But there was now a huge hole in the wall that we would have to spackle. We kept working - patching up holes, unscrewing things from the walls, and sanding down the newly patched up holes, but we realized that there would not be enough time to paint.

After patching up all of the holes we decided to call it a day and paint next week.