Do not attempt this at home

I would first like to offer the following disclaimer. Painting the inside of your house for three out of four consecutive weekends is not recommended and should only be let to the truly clinically insane.  Yes, once again we decided to consume the majority of our weekend with more painting but let me back up.

I picked up mom after work on Friday and then made a stop at Lowe’s.  The visit had two purposes.  We wanted to get color swatches to pick out the color of our accent wall and I needed to get concrete border blocks and some more rubber mulch to dress up the trees in Nicki’s area.  As I was loading up the blocks in the truck a torrential downpour started.  Instead of heading for shelter I continued to load the truck, to hell with the rain.  I went back inside to find my mom looking like a drowned rat.  I saw lots of smirks as I passed fellow Lowe’s shoppers. Mom and I grabbed a bunch of possible accent colors.  When we got home surprisingly Ali didn’t have much difficulty zooming on on the color she liked most as an accent color. It was a terra cota -ish color called Sienna Red, cool.

Saturday morning Ali and I wanted to knock out mowing the grass since it was now very long after skipping a week.  As Ali mowed I ripped around the property with the weed whacker and got the trimming done in record time.  I got done quick enough that I actually had time to set up the border around the tree in Nicki’s area before Ali finished the tractor work.

I then moved inside and started on the arduous task of disassembling the kitchen in prep for painting and I stress arduous.  We didn’t cut any corners, the fridge and oven were pulled all the way out so we could completely paint the wall behind them.  Pulling out the fridge was particularly disturbing.  As I moved the unit away from the wall a hideous collection of spider webs mixed with Spook fur was revealed.  I could not believe how much had collected.  I don’t quite get it, the refrigerator is not a hiding spot for the cat, why so much of her hair would have collected back there is beyond me.  The oven also hid some messes of it’s own like the food residue that always manages to fall down between the stove and countertop.  The shop vac was able to make short work of the scuzz.

Another very laborious part of the process was the pantry.  Our pantry is big, probably around 7 -8 feet wide.  Inside are four wire shelves that span the length of the space.  Holding these four long shelves in place are tons of little plastic brackets, those of you that have installed wire shelving should be very familiar with what I am talking about.  Well in the small linen closet Ali opted to just painstakingly paint around each little plastic support.  Well there were probably 50-60 supports in the pantry and initially Ali said she would just paint around those as well.  I assured her the half hour or so it would take me to pull them out would be far less than the time and frustration involved in painting around the shit.  Pulling them out wasn’t too bad.  Initially I used my fingers but then switched to a needle nose pliers to cut down on the finger abuse.

The last thing I had to help with before getting the paint was cleaning all the dust off the high areas like the top of the fridge, the top of the kitchen cabinets and the top of the partial wall that separates the kitchen from the dining room, fun.

So off to Lowes I went to grab 3 gallons of paint and a couple brushes.  Good paint is expensive nowadays, I dropped 100 bucks.  While I was gone Ali and mom started on the prep work. I was pleasantly surprised when I got back and they had already started putting paint on the walls.  By this time all three of us are pretty adept at the painting process and have our own designated roles.  Mom’s primary job is as the border painter, she paints along the taped areas as far up as she can reach.  Ali is the preferred baseboard / door jamb taper, as well as being a border painter and quality control.  I specialize in ceiling line taping/painting,  paint rolling and anything requiring you to be on a ladder.

We got the kitchen painted rather efficiently.  The Sandy Shell color looked great against the white kitchen cabinets.  We needed to let the paint dry before doing the accent wall since I was going to need to tape the line where the walls meet. We were all pleased with the fruit of our labor.

On Sunday morning while Ali went to spinning I put the pantry hardware back in before starting on the accent wall.  By the time she got home I was just finishing up the second coat, it was only one wall so it didn’t take long.  Mom was concerned that Ali would not be thrilled with the color, it’s a bit “daring” compared to the bland and safe colors Ali prefers. Ali said she liked it when she got back although I could tell it was only a half hearted endorsement.  However as the paint dried she became more of a fan.  I think it looks great.  That is the perfect accent wall and the color goes well with the Sandy Shell that is in the kitchen.

The color is definitely a bold step considering our walls have been stark white for 8 years but it is a welcome change.  I was very ready to be done painting.  Painting takes a physical toll on the body.  Pushing against a roller for two days aggravates the tendinitis in my forearms, my legs are tired from constantly going up and down the ladder and the back of my calves were tender from having rungs of the ladder digging into them.  Well it was done, we all liked the final result and throughout the afternoon we slowly got everything put back away and cleaned up.  Another job well done.  The rest of the great room should not be nearly as difficult.  The biggest challenge will be painting behind the tv with the huge cable monster that resides back there.

We tried to get some relaxing pool time in Sunday afternoon, we certainly deserved it.  I was just physically beat and exhausted.  Around 5 o’clock I was slumped in a chair like a zombie and declared I needed to go and lay down for a bit.  I was asleep for 90 minutes and could have slept much longer I’m sure.

Sunday night mom and I had a Wii sports rematch.  I needed to make sure that mom’s upset bowling win from a few weeks ago was a fluke.  The first game I stomped her 216 to 118 I think.  We bowled two more games, each one my score dropped a bit.  The third match was a much more competitive 168 to 143 score.  We followed up with some Wii golf.  Mom had  hard time mastering her putting stroke but didn’t do too badly overall.

In between all of the painting fun I was also doing work from home, trying to upgrade our work domain controllers to Windows 2008.  I ran into numerous unexpected snags along the way which turned into me spending several more hours than I planned on the project.  I eventually got the domain upgraded but did so in a some what hack and slash manner which resulted in some repercussions today. Did I mention it was a tiring weekend?

If you want to see the updated pictures from the project they are here.

Spook has still not been eating as I think she should be.  She has eaten some, more than the zero she ate for 7-10 days but I would expect a cat that was starving itself to be pigging out now.  She is certainly not doing that by any means.

  Giving her the medicine has been a joke.  As soon as we try to give her the liquid meds she instantly begins a mucus waterfall out of her mouth.  We are lucky if she actually ingests a third of what she is supposed to be getting.  It’s very frustrating.  If the eating doesn’t pick up we’ll have to call the vet again I suppose. Such a pain in the ass…..

My sister got around to posting the family pictures she had taken while we were out in Arizona on Facebook.  There are a number of good ones. I’ll post a few below.