Month: March 2006

It's been a looooong day, but it's over and we're done. For now. We finished what we wanted to do. The upstairs rooms are done and so is the kitchen.

We thought we were ahead of schedule this morning but then Sod's law reared its ugly head. The smallest room required the most work. The white walls required 3 coats of paint to finally cover (compared to only one coat for the blue paint). We then had to give another coat to the last wall on the bedroom when we noticed that it had streaked.

Finally, we got everything sorted out and started out on the kitchen. The first coat was scary as hell because we realized just how many bits and pieces there were to paint and we thought the paint wouldn't cover well. The second one went on smoothly though and the kitchen looks great!

So now we're back home and we need to pack the last of our things.

Tomorrow is going to be a bitch.

We're dead on our feet. The enormity of the scope of the job we've taken on is starting to sink in. Thinking that we could ompletely repaint a 2-story 3 bedroom house in 3 days is hubris. Our schedule was particularly blown out of the water today because we realized that we'd need to give 2 coats of paint to most of the surfaces. What's not helping also is that we were supposed to have another pair of hands to help out, which has subsequently fallen off the map rather suddenly.

The house is also making its displeasure felt at being given a facelift. As I was masking walls to prep them for paint, I needed to reposition a length of tape – only to be faced with a long line of paint being stripped off the ceiling when I took it off. The paint is so old and so layered that it's falling off in chunks if you pull at it. I ended up having to cut in by hand, without taping. Results are mostly good, except for the odd oopsie that I'll need to correct. As a side note, the oopsies mostly happened at the end of the day when we both were tired, hungry and rather fed up :)

Anyway, at the end of today, we can say that the living room is done and sparkling, and we have two coats of the light shade we're putting in the bedroom and guest bedroom. What's on the menu for tomorrow is:

– putting two coats of light color in the office (2 walls)
– fixing the ceiling oopsies in all the rooms
– putting two coats of dark (1 wall)
– putting two coats of dark color in the office (2 walls)
– putting two coats of single color in the kitchen

The bathroom and the trim/baseboards have been pushed off the schedule for now, because they can be done after we've moved in with a minimum of fuss.

A long, warm shower is now called for to get rid of all the paint that has managed to make its way in the various nooks and crannies of my body.

We have the keys, huzzah! huzzah!

Got up this morning and loaded up the car with the paints, brushes, supplies, vacuum and stereo and headed to Hinxton. We stopped by the office to photocopy some paperwork and met the agent at the house. I signed my soul away (or so it seems, that rental agreement was chock full of legalese. For all I know, I'm now Bill Gate's towel boy…) and got the keys.

The agent took an inventory and we'll be getting a copy of that shortly. The good news now though is that we can now start to paint. It's going to be a tight schedule. We need to sand, prep and paint rooms in 3 days. We got all the ceilings done today and we're going to start on the walls tomorrow. Finally, the plan is to do the trim work on friday and move on saturday (assuming that we're still alive and have more than an iota of energy).

I don't know what kind of people had the house before us, but dayum, they left it in a state. Nails and screws in the walls, when not actual holes. The place will really benefit from a slap of paint. The bedroom ceiling itself was the most in need of help.

For a while there, I thought I was back in Montreal. Untold generations of paint overlaid on top of each other until the windows won't even open anymore and a half-assed job all around. Gave me a warm feeling in the bottom of my heart.

We're back home now, complaining about our jackasses of neighbours and libreally speckled in paint and covered in dust. Going to be an early night tonight.