Seeing Red and Cutting Out the Oil

So I'm very excited because I think this post will OFFICIALLY, bring us up to date! No more jogging my fuzzy memory for details of things I can't seem to remember the time lines of. This entire thing has been a whirl wind to say the least. I'm sure I skipped a few important points along the way but at least I can post progress as it's happening now.

Although progress on the house has slowed from the original frantic buzzing it started with, it is now picking back up. MB has been talking to a plumber about switching our home heating over to natural gas (to the dismay of our neighbor who works for an oil company "don't do it man!") as our old oil tank needs to go and we want something more efficient. Especially since there are huge incentives for switching over AND, the master plan is with gas heating...comes a gas STOVE (insert ooohs and aaahhs here). Very exciting but SO far off it's depressing to think about it so I wont. He has ALSO been chatting (at a wedding this past weekend) with one of the guys that works with him part time about cutting a patio into the hill. We have this big huge yard and it's very un-usable. So, MB has is dream of cutting a patio into the hill. Great idea. Personally, I'm more concerned about trim on our windows and those silly little privacy things called doors but hey, I'm not here to dictate the schedule apparently.

Well this past weekend I was bound and determined to tackle painting the office so we can finally move all the damn office stuff that's sitting in our basement, to where it belongs. We had decided to paint this room red, much to the chagrin of MB's mom. This, being the major place we differ, other than the backroom but that's a battle for an entirely different day. you see, this office has one window, a former OUTSIDE window (or exterior if you want to be all official about it). Said window now leads into the very dark (although it shouldn't be with 20 effing windows) backroom. I see her point but upon announcing my plan to paint this room red MB's mom immediately countered with "Oh NO! you don't want to do that! No, it would be way to dark. No definitely don't do that." She repeated this several times but I was stubborn and stuck my tongue out at her theoretically speak and bought my red.

Now red was a battle. I LOVE me some cranberry red but MB is heavily against this. I was only able to get an agreement out of him by pointing out that his room at his parent's house is a brick red and met him half way at this brick red. So, we decided to go with "cinnamon stick". I pointed out to MB this past weekend that all of our rooms will end up food. I'm convinced I did this on a subconscious level as I happen to be OBSESSED with food. I love making it, eating it, thinking about it. It's the first thing I think of when I wake up and the most soothing thing I can think about when I go to bed (except for bubbles. I think bubbles are very soothing as well. Seriously, try it once). Therefore, we ended up with an herb in our bedroom "prairie sage", a dessert, one of my favorites as a matter of fact, in the living room with "banana cream" and now "cinnamon stick" in the office. I, personally, see no problem with this.

So I have convinced myself I'm getting pretty good with whole painting thing, not bad for a girl who mere months ago was scared of a paint roller in an very unnatural way. I may be getting cocky but I'm competitive and I need my 'thing' so painting, as much as I loathe it sometimes, I have taken on as my thing. Oh there's painting to be done? Oh that's OK, Lindsey can handle that! So Saturday I informed MB in no uncertain terms, that I WAS painting the office the next day so I didn't know what HE was doing, but that's what I was doing. This of course left him to finish the built-ins in my closet.

I laid out my tarp and began cutting the paint in the ceiling. It doesn't look beautiful because the ceiling and walls aren't seamless but, ehh, whatever. About half way across, and I have NO idea how this happened I got RED paint, on the ceiling. I panicked. I bolted from the room and grabbed a wet paper towel. MB sauntered in to find out what the f-bombs were about as I smugged the paint into the ceiling making it look worse. It now looked like I was trying to wipe up the evidence of a bloody incident on top of the ceiling. Arterial blood splatter perhaps? MB watched this with only mild curiosity. "You'll just have to paint over it, no big deal. your just making it worse." I gaped. I was appalled. I don't DO painting over! It should have been right the first time! I was just beginning to feel rather smug with myself about my totally bad ass paint skills and sure enough, I mess it up. I'm still pissed about this but I plowed on and finished cutting, dawdled a bit, helped MB rip some boards (i.e. stand at the end and act like an extension of the table, whoo-dee) and then finished rolling. It DID come out pretty cool. It's darker than I think either of us expected but I love it. It does make the room darker, I understood where MB's mom was coming from with that but I really like it. It's the only color that breaks up our pallet at all but it still 'goes' with other colors. I love it. It will look even more amazing once the antique white crown molding and baseboard go up too.

Now, just one more flipping coat to go and then we can finally move stuff in!

The Mad Dash!

There we were. 4 days in counting until the big day. D Day. The Housewarming Party. Now let me explain a bit here. We had originally set this date back when we closed on the house because the only plan was to re do the master bedroom. Oh we would DEFINITELY be ready by then! The house would surly be presentable. (snigger) You see, we have big families, MB especially and his family is very prevalent in our lives and EVERYONE wanted to see the house. Not to mention we have a large group of friends we often entertain with and we were convinced their social lives were ruined because of us.

Well instead of entertaining a stream of people every single weekend while we were trying to work on the house, we deiced to stave them off by having a big reveal party! Now, 4 days before the party MB had JUST finished the floors. Something, that until it was done, I hadn't realized was causing me such an ucler. But now, I was faced with the fact that we still needed, what was it? 14 coats of paint overall? Yeah, not gunna happen.

I decided to prioritize. I literally sat down at work one day and made a list of all of the projects. #1. heat registers (the metal thing that covers the pipe of heat that runs across the exterior walls for those of you lucky brats that do not have this), they were out. There was no way they would be sanded, primed and painted twice before the party. #2. spare bedrooms? Nope those definitely weren't going to be done. luckily, although I can't remember the time line for this as it's all a bit blurry, MB had finished priming the spare bedrooms but there was no way, wall, ceilings or closets would be painted for the party. OK so this left the living room as the "big to do" (heh. Drive By Truckers Album. tehe.)

Now by this time i had been desperately calling all the people who "LOVE to paint" short of the Home Depot "Paint Girl" (but don't think I hadn't considered it). I was faced with painting all of the trim around the windows and doors, painting the ceiling white (again), cutting and PRIMING the walls and then doing two coats of paint...in a mere few days. Now I work full time. That doesn't leave me with an awful lot of time to do these things. I had spent my whole previous week up until almost 11 every night painting. looked like this would be a repeat. Plus we had nice new beautiful floor to protect upon pain of death. So poor Mary (see girls weekend 2 days earlier!), who is self admitted not a good painter, showed her cute little face to help paint ceilings on Wednesday. Matt took painting trim, I took babysitting Mary and cutting the primer into the walls. Mary worked very hard but i ended up finishing. I finished priming the walls on Thursday and then Friday, I left work early. I HAD to. I was out by noon and had to, of course pick up MORE paint.

Now i was always told paint is the cheap thing. 'Oh it's a cheap way to change a room around/spruce it up.' HAH! Tell that to me nearly $400 deep in paint with still 2 more rooms worth to buy. Well any who, we had very smartly gotten what we needed for the party on Thursday night so I could get stuff done for the party Friday. I had a room to paint, a few dishes to make (we thankfully made it a pot luck because I knew there was no way I could make food for 60ish people given the circumstances) and a whole house to clean. Somehow, I got it in my head that, why of COURSE i could finish the second coat on all the trim and cut and paint the entire living room and hallway that night and have plenty of time left. I start at around 2:15 painting trim. Somehow, MB had to work this night. Of course. He would be home at 9pm. No biggy, i had plenty of time.

I finished the trim and got my paint. Now up until this point I had never been the one to put color on the walls. Everything else had been the same color (white) and MB had given me only a quick lesson in cutting in color by hand without tape. I took a big gulp and C-A-R-E-F-U-L-L-Y slid the angled brush into the crevice between the upper wall and ceiling in the hallway. I think my heart stopped. this was by far the most terrifying thing I had done yet. you get paint on that ceiling and your screwed. There's no going back. I jumped that hurdles and stood back and was assaulted by a whole new litany of fears. It was YELLOW. I mean YELLOW! Insert panic attack here. Now, in the scheme of things, this was nothing to panic over. But I did. It was just so striking to actually see color on the walls. And yellow is a very tricky color. Suddenly i was panicking that we had picked the wrong yellow. There was nothing I could do so I plowed on at my painstakingly slow rate.

As I did so I began to silently fume. At some point, I had stopped to attempt and prep my potato salad. I had boiled and strained potatoes and hard boiled eggs. I had attempted to cut up some vegetables. I may have fed myself but then again I may not have. the panic was starting to seep in even before i realized it almost in equilibrium with the fading light. The darker it got, the later it got and the less I seemed to have gotten done. This turned to annoyance and later anger that stupid MB and his stupid work were leaving me to do this all by myself. We hadn't moved anything in. I had so much cleaning to do. I still had a million things to cook. I do NOT like to be unprepared darnit! I'm a professional! I have things done when people get there, I have it together! Yet here I was faced with the realization that maybe I would have nothing together. There were also a million stupid little obstacles I hadn't prepared for. Like I forgot I would have to cut the paint in around all of the windows and doors and outlets. That took forever. It got to be almost 9pm and by this point, I was murderous. I began 'fantasizing' that MB would walk and the first thing he would say was that he hated the color, it was too yellow. This, in my fantasizing nightmare, was then followed by a complete storming rant from me and a karate chop to the face. By the time 9 o'clock came and went, in my mind, this is EXACTLY what was going to happen. MB was going to hate it and when he told me such, he would get a earful from me. This never happens. I'm a very peaceful person, very anti combative but I'll admit, the pressure was getting to me.

I started rolling the paint on the walls, feeling almost like it was starting over and it was now 9:45pm. MB was NOT answering his phone. His friend AC (and I can't believe I called him, I NEVER do that!) was not answering so I called the only person I could; AC's fiancee and my buddy Ashley. She too was painting (I will back her up here, she offered to come help me paint during the week but the poor girl was already doing the same thing and working so hard to help her brother that I turned her down) and she had no idea where the boys were. AC (her boyfriend or as I like to say, MB's boyfriend (he's married to his job, I'm just the mistress)) hadn't called her either so I gave up.

When MB sauntered in a little after 10 I was poised and ready, waiting for the line so I could take my paint roller and run it right up his body. I was nearly done rolling at this time. I had one wall left (rolling takes FAR less time than cutting). "This looks awesome huh?!" were the words uttered out of MB's mouth. I deflated, although, I will be honest here, there was a part of me that was a bit disappointed I didn't get to let him have it. I nodded, put down the roller and walked away saying I had had enough and he could finish which he did. I walked into the kitchen and deflated again. There was so much to do, the kitchen was a mess, I had about 1/3 of a potato salad done, a dessert with multiple parts still left, a house to clean and oh yeah, we STILL hadn't moved our stuff out of the back room where we were suppose to be housing all the food for the party the next day!

Now this, this is where a lesser person would have burst into to tears. But ohhh no, not this girl! I sucked it up, finished cutting the vegetables I needed, tossed everything for the potato salad in a bowl and stuffed it in the fridge, took a quick shower and went to bed. I know myself well enough to know that I was of no more use to anyone that night. I would be up at the crack of dawn. I would have it done. It would be awesome. I didn't really get a chance to stand back and appreciate my hard work (although since then I promise you I have, many a times, gloating most of it) in the living room. I actually LOVE the color! We got it just right. It looks amazing in every light but if you had asked me that night, I would have told you to got take your yellow and stick it where the sun don't shine! :D

Thank the God's on Mt. Olympus..the floors are DONE!

I have the up most respect for MB almost entirely because he's not afraid to take things on and do them himself. Independence, I'm a big fan of it. Well we were now a weekend away from our big housewarming party and I was being kicked out..sort of. MB decided he was going to take it upon himself, with his entire Memorial Day weekend, to sand and finish ALL of the floors...by his lonesome. This seemed slightly mental to me, like his time line of putting a coat of sealer on the floor at about 1am I think he figured it. However, when MB gets an idea in his head you don't question it.

The problem with this whole endeavour was that our only bathroom (tiny and ugly as it is) sits smack dab at the back of the hall...past all of the floors that were being re done. 3 bedrooms, living room and hall in all. Therefore, I couldn't be there. MB can pee outside. Me? Not so much. So I was told to find a place to put myself. Find a little salvation. So on Wednesday of that week (admittedly a bit late), I got a epiphany: I would call for a girls weekend! Two of my life long best friends just HAPPENED, by the grace of unknown forces, to be available the entire Memorial Day weekend and, why yes, they would LOVE to go up to Maine! So here I was, getting all excited; we found a great hotel for a cheap price right in the center of where we wanted to be, I got to take a little mini vaca which it been quite some time since I'd done so AND, the peice de resistance..when I got back I would have FLOORS!!! Brand new (not really sanded) shiny floors! We chose to not stain them, but rather seal them and keep them light. As I hoped around giddily, poor MB looked like he was planning for a funeral.

We took a trip to our other home, Home Depot and picked out the gigantic can of sealer. MB was going to do 3 coats. Now, since we started painting and this had become my task, I'd grown rather fond of "the paint" girl at Home Depot. thin, very tom boyish with the most dazzling blue eyes, way too much black eyeliner and always a paint splattered bandanna in her hair. She is cool shit. No doubt about it. She knows her stuff, shes honest and "dude [she] LOVES color!" I'm thinking of adopting her..she looks like she could use a good home cooked meal at least. lol well she helped us out and we took the big step and purchased our paint color for the living room. Pale yellow. This was BY FAR the hardest color to pick. We had a rough idea of all the colors we wanted and we knew we wanted them all in the same family so they would flow together. There have GOT to about 78 shades of pale yellow..at Home Depot alone. I came home with a STACK of paint swatches one day and through processes of elimination we picked "Banana Cream", I'm sure partly for the name but it beat out quite a few others.

Anywho, so there I was setting out for a great weekend with my two girlfriends ( and it WAS a great weekend let me tell you! BEAUTIFUL weather, good company, just awesome) while poor MB took on the roughest task yet. Now the saving grace here was MB's dad CB to the rescue yet again. He held off a little vaca of his own (he made some silly excuse but I think he wanted to help MB) and came to help MB sand the floors. They rented a sander and an edger and one worked one and one worked the other. While I was laying on the beach, walking around eating ice cream and getting my nails done I did think often of poor MB and his task. I kept my phone conversations short because when he's grumpy he's not fond of chatting. Luckily his family entertained and fed him during a party but he still worked his skinny tail off.

Monday night I was sent to stay with MB's parents as the floors still had to dry but I was DYING to see the floors! I went to work the next day and practically bounced in my seat with anticipation. When I got...I couldn't believe it!!! They were so shiny! I almost cried. The moment I, for some reason, was holding everything against, was there. We had floors. We could move things! (although we waited because it's easier to paint when there's nothing in the room and the sealer needed to set) It was a weep worth thing let me tell you. Just look at the pictures and you will understand my excitement and joy. HOWEVER, this did not negate the fact there were STILL, all told about 15 coats, after you break down cuttings in, ceilings and 2 coats of paint, and heat registers, i forgot to mention those, that needed to be done (?) in 4 days. NOT going to happen.

PAINT II: OK, I get it now.

Why is paint so complicated? I mean it should be simple really. You have a room, you need a color, you choose said color, you paint and your happy. But NOO paint is just as complicated as picking anything else in a house, in FACT it's probably harder than most things.

The thing that baffled me the most about paint was that it's not JUST about the color..it's about the finish. Eggshell? What's eggshell? And why do you need a glossier paint in high traffic areas? To WASH the walls? WHO WASHES WALLS?! Well apparently, you are suppose to, cause they get dirty. And the glossier they are the easier they are to clean. Well this was all news to me. Beyond this I also learned that really, in the scheme of things, painting a new wall with new primer and then painting it and adding trim is really relatively simple. It's the existing stuff that makes you want to cry. The prep, the prep will KILL you, drive you mad if you're not careful.

I learned this lesson one Saturday when MB's parental units both came to help with the progress on the house. MB's mom happens to be very helpful and rather good at decorating and design. Me? Not so much. I like simple, although I don't think I'd say I have bad taste, it's just some times I have not the slightest clue about how to go about something. It's like accessorizing your outfit. I can pull the actual outfit together rather well, its the accessories that I lose my nerve on. I'm the same with designing a house. I tend to go with things that are relatively safe and if I don't know what else it needs, I'm none the wiser and the house and my bank account are none the worse for wear. Well on this particular day we decided to tackle the living room. The living room was one of the few rooms that was not gutted. There was a random sort of hay color on the walls and carpet covering a beautiful red oak floor (we have been over this but I have included a before picture of the living room for effect) and wood trim around the windows and doors. Well these were all staying but being repainted. Apparently, you need to wash the walls with TSP(?) Before you paint. You ALSO need to sand down old finish on trim so the paint has something to stick you. I KNEW I wasn't going to like that part. I took wood shop. I know sanding is the most tedious and annoying task there is. Well luckily MB's mom took on the sanding for me (thank God in heaven) so I could go outside and pull weeds out of my poor, neglected garden.
Then we took a little trip to the store and got us some TSP and some sponges and went to work on the walls. YUCK. That's all I have to say. I had no IDEA walls could get so dirty! I'm a bit of neat freak so of course, now that I know how dirty walls get I will be washing them often I'm sure. Again, something you just don't think about in a log house! The water coming off the walls was a nasty greyish/black color. We worked in a wave, MB's mom going first and me following behind the clean up the rest of the grossness. I knew there was one spot that was obviously dirty where 'dude' had had his TV and that was disgusting. By the time we were done I was thoroughly disturbed and the walls were ready.

I was tasked with painting the ceilings and walls in the two closets in the master bedroom one weekend (mother day weekend mind you) while MB was a away on a boy's fishing trip. Lovely. I spent my Friday and Saturday night's drinking wine, listening to Nora Jones and Reckless Kelly respectively (those were the CD's in the stereo so those are what got played!) and painstakingly painting. It took me forever. I also painted Sunday. I was terrified I was going to mess up cutting everything in and it took me a whole night to do just that. I cut in all the primer. then rolled the primer. Then cut the white ceiling paint being used for the whole thing and then rolled it. All told it took me 3 days. A very long time but I was being meticulous. MB couldn't believe it took me so long. I then spent a Monday night or such finishing the third coat. By this point, I got it. I see why people don't like painting.

Having no idea real idea how to paint, and all of the switch plates being off of everything in the bedrooms, I had no idea how to tackle the living room but MB was confident that I could handle cutting and rolling the living room with primer. So, having a bunch of blue tape in hand, I proceeded to tape off all of the trim and, all of the switch plates in the room. I had primed more than halfway around the room and hallway when MB came in and bust out laughing. "You can just take these off you konw?" No, OBVIOUSLY I never thought of that or I would have done it! (working on a house puts tremendous strain on a relationship, everyone knows that but I kept my mouth shut). The first switch plate MB removed was to a random cable outlet and lo and behold the dumb ass that was the last owner, instead of drilling a proper hole for the cable, just HACKED a big hole in the wall! I was instructed that this would need to be patched before a second coat of paint could be applied, another annoying thing I learned being that all rooms need two coats of paint (and this hole has STILL gone un-patched but we did buy the materials last week to do so). So after all of this work and with some help from MB we had primed all of the bedrooms and ceilings and painted the master bedroom entirely.

This was now two weeks before our party "deadline" and we were getting there but there was still the issue of the floors. This was my big hurdle. It felt to me, as though once the floors were done we would BE there. Everything else was just fluff, but the floors, we couldn't move anything in until they were done and THAT was the big goal!