Yesterday we went out and bought a bunch of crap to fix the place up with our household goods arriving soon. TV wall-mounts, shelves, etc. I was so excited to get things functional. It took me over a week to hang Amaris' bedroom curtains because the wall next to the window where the bracket was supposed to be installed seriously had the consistency of Papier-mâché and screws, anchors, nails, whatever all just literally FELL into the wall. It was the most irritating crap ever.

So after a week of debating, and having her brand new, beautiful curtains hang awkwardly from cabinet handles above her closet, it was while I was at the computer that I had the epiphany. I looked up and saw, to my surprise, curtain hooks. Mounted directly onto the metal window frame. Of course!

So we bought a drill. And we made holes in the window frame. And we put her curtains up with success. They look fantastic.

I was motivated last night to do the remaining DIY projects around the house. Get the brackets up on the walls to mount the TVs, hang the shelf over the computer desk for the printer to sit on, you name it. But Mark was in the mood to have a "lazy day" and we put it all off till today. Which would have been fine. Except today everything turned into a total disaster and failure.

We found a stud in our living room wall and went to drill into it for the plasma mount. But that thing is some kind of solid. We determined that it must be a metal stud. After looking it up online, we learned that mounting a heavy TV onto a metal stud is not a good idea at all. So I put the mount back into it's box, thoroughly disappointed and quite frankly upset.

On to the next project. We moved everything out of the way to hang the shelf on the wall above the computer. Only to discover that the entire wall is chock full of the same apparently metal material that our studs are made of. I am assuming this is because the wall backs up to the kitchen - specifically the area where the stove is - and I would suppose the exhaust from everyone's units above and below ours are utilizing some sort of central exhaust system encased in this wall. No shelf for me.

Finally, beaten down, I thought the bracket in Amaris' room HAD to work out. We tried two studs to no avail (those metal bastards mean business) and then I said something along the lines of... Why do I need to use a stud anyways if I have these huge-ass anchors?? So we managed to get the "huge-ass anchor" into the wall, but to my dismay when we attempted to screw the bracket into it, the anchor fell, with a clatter, into the wall. Leaving a dime-sized hole in Amaris' room.

I cried.

Seriously, can't SOMETHING go according to plan here? Are these walls doomed to be forever blank? I'm frustrated and disappointed and depressed. And, okay, we can blame a good chunk of it on my hormones, but the truth is I just wanted to have SOMETHING accomplished. And instead, I've got nothing. Nowhere to put our TV, nowhere to put the printer... The house looks exactly the same as it looked last week. Except for Amaris' curtains. Which look great.

I give up.