marlyse.comme, myself and my life
Sunday, February 17, 2008
How quickly one can forget.
After hours of labor I can state with confidence that “de-popcorn’ing” a ceiling has a lot in common to giving birth.
Having my roots in Europe, I am used to buildings built out of brick and stone and… well, strong and sturdy material, made to last. But here, here they build houses with walls out of thin gypsum and a layer of paper! Knock somebody in play into a wall and have his or her elbow hit the wall real well… it’s not the elbow that gives but the wall cracks! Ha! Don’t try that in a Swiss house!
And the ceilings, well there it seems that the American builder REALLY got lazy. Only in the USA have I seen this kind of ceiling. So what they do is after slapping up the “sheet rock” (this maybe 1/4 inch (less then 1 cm!!!) thin layer of easy crack-able gypsum), barely taping the joints and then they spray the ceiling with, well… popcorn. It is some kinda mix of (I assume) paint and/or gypsum, which has little pieces mixed in, smaller than normal popcorn, but very much the same kinda look of… pieces. And that is all over the ceilings. It covers up a lot of inconsistency and thus makes building rooms faster. Maybe it was also just a fad which never ended. But it is REALLY ugly.
Ever since buying our house, I have been removing these ceilings from one room after the other. And each time it is a painful task to do. And this is were the similarity of giving birth comes in.
During the hours almost every minute is painful and you can’t wait until it is over, but once done - well then it’s absolutely grand and you can’t stop enjoying it and only a few later you already have forgotten how much trouble and pain the ordeal was… until the next time, when it comes right back, flying into your face.
created mid-afternoon - it was 4:19 pm to be exact | trackback |
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