Painting

It’s been a slow slog lately with the drywall contactor costing us between two and three weeks delay due to workers failing to show up. Why are people like that even in business?? Finally one day however, we had textured and completed walls.

We moved onto painting the back portion of the house last weekend but the bare walls soaked up the paint much faster than anticipated and we ran out. Not only that, as it dried we found that Marc’s techniques with the spray gun were not of professional caliber and there were an unacceptable amount of holidays. Then, to add insult to injury, the color I had chosen for my hobby room, although an alluring green when one was standing in the room turned into something that should have been called Neon Lime Sherbet as seen from the front rooms and hallway. It was just too garish to stomach, so back to Lowe’s for another color once again.

Yesterday, we completed the blue bathrooms with the color we had run out of, we switched out the green to a much softer and palatable whisper of a green, and redid a second coat on all the gray. The gray doesn’t photograph true to color but I am very pleased with it. However, Murphy still wasn’t done with our painting efforts so right after I finished cutting in ALL of the ceilings and painted out Marc’s over sprays and ut ohs, we both looked at it and saw that it was the wrong white! I was so disgusted I couldn’t face waiting for it to dry and then doing it all over since it was already late in the day so that is a task for another day. I figure we’re likely going to end up purchasing double the paint we had originally anticipated by the time he finishes the rest of the house. He wants to concentrate on getting the back rooms done, with flooring laid and electrical outlets and switches done, so we have a place to start storing stuff we can move in, before he paints the great room and kitchen.

Meanwhile, the cabinets are here and sitting in their boxes pending getting all the painting and laminate done in the great room. We also really scored on a deal at Menard’s on interior doors. Originally I had planned on going with the white Masonite builder production door you see in 90% of the homes of America for the past twenty years but in my heart I lusted for solid wood doors because there is just nothing else like them to impart a feeling of quality and hominess in my opinion. But at a usual price of $300 per door it wasn’t happening. Menard’s featured pre hung solid pine six panel doors for $89 each (with rebate); even the Masonite on sale were at $59 so it became a no-brainer to go with the solid core real wood doors. Marc scored on some leftover wide maple baseboard trim at pennies on the dollar from Blenker, which is already prefinished in a light natural maple so we will do the same finish to the doors, leaving them light and natural. Those will tie in well with all my natural colored pine furniture.

Sunday has been a whirlwind of shopping at Lowe’s and Menard’s for more house widgets and our flooring and our Visa is so spanked it probably won’t come out of hiding for a month! I chose stock in-store vinyl for the bathrooms and laundry, which Marc will install, but had to order the laminate I wanted since it is a unique choice of embossed grain, mainly white pine made to look vintage. It should arrive in a couple of weeks and we plan to also install that ourselves. The small amount of carpet we are planning will require a guy to come out and measure this week before we get the complete price quote including installation. Suffice it to say we haven’t purchased carpet and pad in a long while and the generalized quote threw us for a loop since one room (master bedroom) is going to run the better part of almost $1000! 

Despite February’s brisk temperatures which have yet to even reach the freezing point of 32, we slave on endeavoring to try and wrap this thing up in order to move by mid to late April. Certainly not everything will be completed with the house by that point but hopefully enough that the inspector will allow us to move in. Stay tuned; it’s never a dull moment.