It's A Train Wreck, It's Piling Up One By One (Part 1)

This post is in response to a question I received in a recent post's comment section. Here is the question:

"Anonymous said... I've read your posts from beginning to end during the last week...it's kind of like watching a train wreck...You can't look away! But I've never seen an answer to this burning question: Did you always plan to sell the DQ? It seems the answer is YES. But then my question is, why are your color choices so personal?? I don't mean to be rude, but how many gigantic yellow houses do you see in Ark. with purple kitchens and orange bathrooms?? Just wondering..."

So, did we always plan to sell the Devil Queen? It wasn't our primary goal, but we always figured sooner or later we'd sell it and move.

Our decision to use "personal" color choices was influenced by our last home improvement catastrophe. Our first house was bought with the idea that we'd fix it up and sell it almost immediately. As such, we tried to make it as vanilla as possible. Lots of white walls, neutral colored carpets and flooring, and bland color and style choices in general.

As our luck usually runs, bad things happened. We finished the house and put up for sale. We sold it. Almost. The buyer died the week of the closing. So, we continued living there until we bought the Devil Queen and moved into her a couple years later. We rented the house and put it up for sale again. We sold it. Almost. Our buyer married a crack whore and moved to Conway to live closer to a rehab facility shortly there after.

But, I digress. What I'm trying to get at and failing to is that we ended up living in this first house a lot longer than we planned. With my luck, I'll end up retiring in the godforsaken turd of a house. White walls are okay for nine months to a year, but after that, it starts to grate on you. Frankly, we hated the vanilla.

So, when we started working on the Devil Queen, we decided that even though we might sell her one day that we'd do her up the way we wanted to since we could be living there for a quite a long time. Besides, a new paint job is pretty easy compared to installing new plumbing, reframing walls, etc. See the rest of this blog for details. Granted, we grossly underestimated most people's willingness to work on their own home, including a seemingly simple task like painting an interior wall. We also failed to realize until much later that quite a few people seem to suffer from a fatal lack of imagination. Confronted with a purple or red wall, they are total incapable of imagining it as being anything else.

I'll be the first to admit that not all of our experiments in interior painting have gone well, the Pee Wee's Playhouse Laundry Room is case and point. However, most people who actually come and see the house in person love the color schemes. The master bathroom & bedroom, the living room, and the kitchen are favorites. Most people are overwhelmed by the orange and blue bathroom, but I still like it anyhow.

As for the yellow exterior, I'm really not sure how much of a consideration that is. Granted, it's not really finished and the first two painters we hired ass-raped it. I would argue the Joseph's Coat of a roof and the Amazonian jungle that is our yard probably deter more people than the yellow. I would also argue that while yellow might not be a traditional or period appropriate color for a Victorian, it is not entirely unheard of even in Arkansas. An image search of Google Images yielded these two houses.

I've seen more both here in Arkansas and elsewhere in the US. We also reasoned that most people who would be in the market for an old Victorian house would probably be okay with a certain amount of flamboyance.

Anyhow, I somehow still have more to say about this, but that will have to wait until after the long weekend.

Pet My Monkey

Here is the Home Improvement Monkey silkscreen t-shirt design, 1.0. It still needs some work, but I think I ought to be ready to take orders by next week. Now, here is a question for you all: does the design need text (example: Home Improvement Monkey, etc) or should I go with the graphic only? Or, both? Any input is appreciated. Thanks.

Her Best Asset is Getting a Good Nip & Tuck

Hopefully, these pictures speak for themselves. The bay window's paint job is in the process of being upgraded to the non-zombie 3.0 version. Even though most of the "Clear Corona" or orange still needs to be finished, but it's looking a lot better in my opinion.

And, please excuse the fact that our brick walk is in desperate need of a mowing.

Clear Corona

Clear Corona, does that mean orange?

Here is the Queen's new skirt.

This color, Clear Corona, will be used for the window sashes, the porches, and some of the trim work.

Watertight

The weather will not cooperate. It's very depressing. We haven’t seen a blue sky for nearly three days. All we have is an endless progression of cold wind, rain, and low, grey clouds. Last weekend was beautiful. Minus the section of skirting under the back porch, we put a coat of Watertight all of the way around the Devil Queen. We'd like to do a second coat, but it may have to wait for a while with the rain. Besides, we still need to seal up some windows before the days of endless winter arrive.

If the rain stops, I'll take some pictures of the Watertight. Even with one coat, it makes a huge difference.

Fugly, Meet Watertight

This week's rain provided the perfect photo-op for me. On the left, fulgy, unsealed concrete board. Notice how it looks as it absorbs all that rain. And, let's not overlook the old stains too. Actually, this particular corner is the worst spot on the Devil Queen since all the run-off from the porch roof splashes up on the skirt too. Gutters will take care of that problem.

Anyhow, back to the comparison. To the right, one coat of tinted Watertight. When we are finished, there will be two coats all the way around the house. Still, with just one coat, it looks so much better. It is worth every cent.

The color used for the skirt, Clear Corona, will also be used for the porches, window sashes, and crown trim. Gotta match, right?

Farrell-Calhoun Paints

These folks are great. I'm still in shock. I've become so accustom to Lowe's apathetic and marginally competent staff that receiving good service is enough to stop my heart.

Per King Streets Farm's advice, I tracked down the only three stores in the state that carry Zinsser's Watertight masonry primer. Zinsser's is the same company that produces the greatest water based primer I've ever used, Bulls Eye. Priming with Kiltz is about as effective as priming with piss compared to this stuff.

Of these three stores, two were in Little Rock and one was in Fayetteville. I scratched Fayetteville off my list since I don't want to drive four hours round trip for primer. I called Mystery Store X first.

Me: "Hello, do you carry Watertight, it's a concrete primer?"

Mr. X.: "Uhm, yeah. I think we do." Then, to someone in background, "Do we carry Watertight?" Muffled answer. "Yeah, we have it."

Me: "Can you tint it?"

Mr. X: "Uh, no. I'm pretty sure we can't."

Me: Bull shit. "Okay, thank you."

Since I trust another houseblogger more than most home improvement store clerks, I knew that the guy was wrong. And, if he didn't think they could tint it, I didn't want to even bother with trying to make them do it.

So I called Farrell-Calhoun and they provided me with a wealth of information. Yes, they could tint it. However, I should know that the tint may be a little lighter than the paint chip. Excellent.

Two days later, I finally make it down to store. I ask for 15 gallons of Watertight and slide my paint chip (from Lowe's) across the counter. "I'd like it tinted this color."

The bad news was they only had eight one-gallon cans of Watertight. The good news was they immediately found seven more at their North Little Rock store and told me they'd have them by Monday of next week.

They tried to mix a color to match the paint chip and tested their concoction on the first gallon. As I watched them tint the paint, I noticed that right under the "Zinsser's Watertight" and the logo the can's label read "TINTABLE." I couldn't help but wonder about Mystery Store X, dumbasses. Once the primer and tinting were mixed, they smeared a sample of it on an index card and blow-dried it. The colored darkened to a near perfect match as it dried.

Since I was pleased with the result, they tinted and mixed the rest of the Watertight and checked every can to make sure it matched the first batch. Then they gave me a five gallon paint bucket so I could blend the individual cans into a single batch of paint. By combining equal parts of the eight cans, I can neutralize any slight variation in tint from one can to the next. Nice.

They wrote the exact tint combination down on the index card and filed it. So, when the next batch is ready to tint, they will already have the exact formula. And, without asking, they took it all out to my car and loaded it in the trunk. I greatly appreciated this since I was on my lunch break and in a suit.

I've never received this kind of service from the Lowe's paint department. Ever. I just get teary eyed thinking about it. More people would do home improvement if everything was this easy.

I told them that I'd had a lot of trouble finding someone who carried Watertight and asked why that was.

"We don't have a lot of demand for it. It costs a few dollars more than other brands, so most people go with a cheaper option. We only sell about 20 gallons of it a year."

Aside from the fact that I've just bought a year's supply, I'm not sure what to make of this. If most people buy the cheapest stuff and not the best, it would explain a lot about the selection of products offered at the big-box stores, the tyranny of the low-brow taste (or general poverty of us home improvement types).

Anyhow, if I need anymore specialty paint supplies (or even non-specialty), I think I will be coming back to see these folks. Life's too short for shitty paint and piss-poor service.

Farrell-Calhoun Paints
401 South Bowman Road
Little Rock, AR 72211
(501) 224-2500

Damgoode, Jeff Trismegistus

I meant to post this a couple months back, but it got lost in our rush to prepare for our appraisal.

One night, I came home from work to find the following message on my answering machine. "Hey, I'm calling for John Ahlen. This is Jeff T[rismegistus] from high school. JP and I were talking and wanted to know what you've been up to. . . "

For those of you who haven't been keeping up with it, I graduated from high school 13 years ago. I hadn't seen or heard from Jeff since my freshman year of college. Wow.

Jeff is one of the people I'd always wondered about from time to time. I was pretty floored to have a message from him on my answering machine. I mentioned it to my sister and she said, "Jeff? You mean that fuck enormous guy, the one who broke the ceiling fan?" Yes, that Jeff. And, it wasn't his fault that he broke the ceiling fan. When you're well over six feet tall and you stretch in house with eight foot ceilings, thing happen.

Sis is right too. Jeff is a big in every way. Not only is he physically big, but he has a big voice, big ideas, and an incredible about of energy. Somehow, the combined effect makes him seem even larger than he actually is. He's like a bright light in a dark room. Your eye is drawn to it and it is impossible to ignore.

I called him back and we talked for a little. Made tentative plans to get together sometime. We talked about the Devil Queen too. He'd Googled me and found my beast; he definitely wanted to see it.

That weekend Jeff called and asked if he could come up and see the Devil Queen. He even offered to help paint. Now, how many of you have actually had someone you haven't seen in 13 years call you up and just volunteer to work on your house?

We had a nice visit. Jeff met the family, Scarlet and Gideon, which blew his mind. Apparently, I am one of those people that folks have trouble seeing as a father. It makes sense too.

Both Gideon and Scarlet decided they liked Jeff immediately. That is high praise indeed. It would be fair to say that together, they make quite the hard audience.

Since I'd seen Jeff last, he'd stumbled (literally, long story) into owning his own business. I'm not sure that I fully understand the particulars (Jeff, correct me if I'm wrong), but what started as a small production company of sorts somehow spiraled into a chain of pizza restaurants, Damgoodepies. And, there were numerous other side projects. I'm not sure that I quite figured out what the two computer programmers living in his basement were up to, but the whole notion of their being two guy and a computer squatting in his basement is pretty intriguing in itself.

Scarlet asked Jeff, "So why look John up after thirteen years? Why now?"

Jeff said that over the last few years a lot of people, a lot of friends, had let him down. He said that he was tired of trying to meet people and make new friends, so he decided to track down all the old friends he'd lost touch with over the years. Besides, he like a lot of them better anyhow.

Pretty damn cool.

Thumbs, Not in Sphincter

Or, I haven’t been spending all of my time with my thumbs up my ass lately. Really. Sure, I know that it doesn’t look like I’ve been doing much lately. The lack of news, information, and whatnot has been staggering. It’s easy to let your imagination run wild. Visions of me, naked with a bevy of supple, young, foreign women, a case of whiskey, and a predilection for white powder must be quite distracting. I don’t know how you manage to get anything finished at work when you’re daydreaming about me. I mean what else would I be doing at the Devil Queen in the long hours of the night? Right?

Don’t fear. I’m lamentably ordinary. I come home after stopping for milk or laundry detergent. I eat an unremarkable dinner and afterwards brew a pot of coffee. Maybe I catch a catnap as it perks. After a cup or two, I take my oil paints outside and paint for thirty minutes or an hour. I pack-up under darkening skies and call my wife. After we’ve talked, maybe I call Kenny, our real estate agent, or renter as need may dictate. I load the dishwasher, drink more coffee, and work on another oil painting. Or, I install weather-stripping, paint a built-in, or something of the sort. One or two nights a week I treat myself to a stiff drink and an episode of Rome or WKRP Cincinnati. I take a shower and read a little in bed because the written word keeps the lonely man civilized in a fashion. Then I sleep for four, five, or six hours. I aim for six since it helps my keep my inner psychotic at bay. My wife appreciates it.

I am sure you’ve noted that I spend more time oil painting than getting my home-improvement mojo going. There is a reason for this. As I mentioned before, there are a lot of things we plan to hire out in the name of expediency. Lamentably this requires money.

Last week my lady friend and I struck a deal. I get to paint my amateur heart out and try to raise a respectable amount of money to get this stupid fucking home improvement project jump started by October 1st of this year or I have to get a second job. Given what my second-job options are, I’ve been painting my fucking heart out. It’s gotten off to a slow start but I’ve got the bitch on the move. I have two long-standing commissioned works to finish off (an nearing completion as we speak, sorry guys), and then I’m free to roam wide, open spaces. Artistically speaking that is. It would take more than a few paintings for me to be turned loose on the world, something I lament daily.

That is enough merde for now. If you happen like my art and have a $100 or more dollars to spare (or know someone who does), please buy my art. If not, wish me luck. The second-job field is looking pretty grim.

The Mysteries of Drylock

I still haven't made time to take pictures of the Devil Queen's "skirt" so I dug up a few old ones. Aside from the lap-siding being painted, it still looks the same. That is really sad since we enclosed the crawlspace in January-February of 2006. If you would like to indulge your morbid curiosity, here are a couple of links (Link 1 & Link 2) to the original posts.

To answer some of your questions, our crawlspace is enclosed with concrete backer board, not poured concrete or masonry blocks. Why? We couldn't afford any other option. Mr. Clow, our concrete guy, suggested using backer board since it is basically bug proof and weather proof. We spent roughly $1,000 for enclosing our crawlspace including labor. The other options we considered ran between $8,000 to over $20,000. We consider the concrete board our semi-permanent temporary solution to sealing our crawlspace. Except for the bottom couple of inches, all of the concrete board will be above grade.

Our interest in painting the board it two fold. One, it will look better painted. Two, paint hopefully will keep the board from wicking-up moisture when it rains. Periodic exposure to water tends to stain the board and it is not an attractive look. No one wants to look at an old woman who has pissed herself, right?

I'm thinking about using Drylock, a latex "waterproofer" for masonry, which is produced by a company called UGI and sold at Lowe's. From what I've read, I need to sand-off or otherwise remove any paint, dirt, etc, and then paint on two coats of the stuff. I'm thinking about spraying a bead of Good-Stuff foam along the bottom of the board where it meets the concrete perimeter foundation. I'm hoping this will keep water from getting under the bottom edge and seeping up the concrete board.

I'm hoping this will seal the backer board. What I'm trying to figure out is whether I can paint over the Drylock with exterior, waterbased paint. Or, should I prime the Drylock and then paint? Or, is just a waste of time?

As long as the Drylock keeps moisture from seeping up and under the exterior paint, I figure it ought to work. If it doesn't keep the moisture out, it's just a matter of time before the exterior paint will start to blister and peel.

Any thoughts about how well this will work? Or, do I just need to buy a gallon of the stuff and play mad-scientist?

Meet the Zombies, Part 1

Now that certain things have come to pass, certain insurance policies (in fact companies too) have been eliminated, and a mortgage has been signed and dated in blood, I may speak freely about our dread horde of zombies.

Not that it was too much of a secret but we didn’t paint the Devil Queen’s whole exterior ourselves. We hired it out to two different guys, Zombie 1, Danny, and Zombie 2, Larry, and neither of them really worked out too well. In the final weeks before the appraisal, we fell back on our family, friends, and our own hands to “finish” the exterior paint.

We hired Zombie 1, Danny, in October 2006. He wasn’t our first choice. Our first choices were excellent painters on all counts, but we couldn’t afford them and they were booked for the foreseeable future. We asked Kenny if he could recommend anyone. At that point, he’d steered us to some top-notch folks for our tile, wiring, and drywall. We called Danny and he came out to look at the house. Danny definitely knew what he was talking about. He knew how to do the prep, priming, and painting correctly on all counts. His bid was reasonable and he gave us a definite timeline. We hired him.

Things started off well enough. He came to work everyday with “his woman,” and they scraped paint. After the first week or two, his attendance became sporadic. They’d leave early, show up late, or not show up at all. Then, he vanished for a couple weeks. Normally, we’d have fired him then, but we gave him another chance since Kenny recommended him. We probably shouldn’t have. Actually, I should say that I probably shouldn’t have. At this point, I was starting to take over all our contracting duties since Scarlet was burned-out by this point.

One of the big warning signs that you have a shit contractor on your hands is when you start getting lame excuses for their time MIA. You start getting stories about how they lost their wallet with $700 cash in it while deer hunting (who the fuck needs $700 to go deer hunting?), their pissed off ex-wife is after them, and what not. Now, it is possible that what they are telling you is actually true, but they key the story in such a way that you can hear this undercurrent of please-feel-sorry-for-me-you-stupid-chump-so-I-can-continue-to-dick-you-around. And, unlike someone like Kenny who calls when a disaster befalls him and tells you that he won’t be at work, they never call and only give you their sob stories after the fact. Anyhow, you probably get the idea.

Another thing that he started doing was trying to get us to buy expensive equipment like pressure washers, scaffolds, and ladders for him to use. Every couple of days I’d get the same line of bull-shit, “I’m still trying to find a pressure washer to borrow, but, if you could get one, I could be ready to paint much sooner.” The first time or two, I didn’t think too much of it and just dismissed it. After that it really started irritating me a lot. What kind of building professional shows up to work and then tells you to buy him the tools of the trade?

Eventually scaffolding and pressure washer show up. Progress crawled. Fall was preparing to change into a rainy winter. The time for exterior painting was rapidly coming to an end.

Finally, I had to have a chat with Danny. Since I’m passive aggressive to a fault and hate overt conflict, I said, “Look, the Bank is not happy with the progress on the house, and they want me to hire someone else so we can finish and close out the construction loan. I need to see some primer up on the house by Friday.” Really, this was basically true, but, at this point, it didn’t really matter to me whether it was or not. I get assurances from Danny that there will primer on such-and-such section of the house and I can see a wormy-fear in his eyes. Oddly, he seems genuinely worried about loosing the job. Weird. I certainly couldn’t tell from his work ethic.

I mention this to Scarlet later, and she says that she thinks he may have a problem: drugs, alcohol, or something that is interfering with his ability to work. “I don’t know what it is, but he’s not quite right. I’ll be glad when he’s gone, he makes me nervous.”

Friday comes and there is primer on the Devil Queen when I get home from work. Four pieces of siding have been primed. Four. No fucking way, you have to be shitting me. Four boards?!

So, I call Danny and get his voice mail. “Danny, this isn’t going to work, let me know what you final bill is and come get your stuff.”

Making Fugly Fly, Part I

The last few weeks, we (my wife, her friend Laura, Jack, me, but mostly my mother-in-law and her friend Liz) have been working feverishly to overhaul our fugly exterior paint job. We didn't get anywhere close to fixing the whole Devil Queen, but we fought and won several important battles.

First, every window, door, and piece of trim on the back porch plus the one master bathroom window visible from the back porch have been scraped, primed, and painted with a pale yellow. It looks nearly white next to the sunglow yellow of the house (Valspar incase you're wondering), but it's actually yellow.

I love the ceiling fans. It's amazing how much cooler the porch is with them. We're trying to decide if we want to get light-kits for the fans or not.

And, as you can see, we actually got one of the storm/screen windows back up. This is great because we can open the windows without cats, bugs, and God knows what else coming into the house. Since summer is nearly here, this is very important.

Making Fugly Fly, Part II

This problem gable is where Zombie Number 2 painted on the WRONG FUCKING COLOR. It was remedied by cleaning up the bottom edge of the overspray making a clean line of demarcation. Then, we could (semi) convincingly claim that we meant to do this and were planning to paint the rest of the house this way. Or, something. It's not perfect by any stretch, but it's much better then before.

The Devil's Dance: Two Steps Forward, One Step Back

It's progress, but we're way behind where we'd like to be. Fidge got poisoned, so I had to baby-sit (is it really baby sitting if it's your child?) Gideon while she waited for Allegra-D to get out of her system.

What is even worse is that I am indirectly responsible for Fidge's poisoning. The last two weeks Fidge has developed a really nasty rash. And it keeps spreading. Not poison ivy. Not hives, not pox, not a bite or anything else anyone could name. Finally, she went to the doctor and he didn't know what it was either. But, this didn't stop him from prescribing her Allegra-D, one of those stupid "miracle" allergy "cures" the pharmaceutical companies keep churning out. I guess when in doubt, assume its an allergy and bill their insurance.

Apparently, he gave her a dose high enough to treat a sperm whale. I not sure what exactly it did to her, but it didn't sound pretty. Something about a droopy eye and the other was dilated so wide that determining the eye color was a challenge. Fortunately, she sweated it out and got back to normal without visiting the ER. Nice.

What makes it even better is that Fidge finally figured out what was making her skin breakout, The Devil Queen. She's been scrubbing a lot of the walls and painting them for us, and she thinks she has an allergic reaction to the stuff. As a hypochondriac with a well developed collection allergies (oak pollen, old books, molds, dust, etc), I'm at a loss to account for what is getting to her. Maybe it's the paint?

So, since I was tending to the young master, I didn't finish off the master bathroom, the dining room ceiling, or sundry other projects. Even so, things must be going the right way. For the first time since the Norman invasion of England, my wife came home and was thoroughly excited by how the house was looking. And, another sign that times are changing, Gideon has stopped calling the Devil Queen "Monster House" and now calls it "Yellow House." That has got to be good, right?

Here are some pictures of what we knocked out over the last few days with a lot of help from friends, family, fiends, and hired help.

First we have our new cherry wood floors.

Second, a heavily primed master bathroom ceiling.

Base boards in the living room.

More base boards and window trim.

The dining room nearing completion. Note, more base boards.

Here is the pantry door and trim. We've decided to leave the beadboard walls and ceiling unpainted. We may go back and oil or clear coat the wood, but like the bare board look a lot.

Cabinets in the pantry. The counter top is left over cherry flooring. The weird strips to the left will be painted or stained to make them less noticable.

And we've been cleaning the place up too. Liz, our itinerate painter, wanted a good bit of our left over building materials, so Fidge hauled a truck load of that to her this weekend. This was a great relief for us. The Devil Queen is getting close enough to completion that all the construction materials, tools, etc need to find a new home. A lot of that has been ending up on the porches, and that just isn't cutting it anymore either.

We also traded Kenny some left over electrical supplies for work on the house, yet another good deal for everyone involved.

Anyhow, more to come. I've got six or more posts in the works to catch up on everything from the last week or so.

Merlot

The living room walls are finished. I'm really pleased with how the red looks since it would be my fault if it looked bad. After the whole Pee Wee's Playhouse Incident, I swore that my wife would have to pick out all of the other colors for the Devil Queen. Otherwise, the we'd be those people living in the Clown House. So, Sunday morning we ran out of paint for the living room and I was dispatched to Lowe's with Gideon in tow.

Since I've begun obsessively hording and labeling every paint chip we've used, getting more paint for the dinning room was pretty easy.

I was really worried about the red though. Why? Here is the conversation I had with Scarlet before I left for Lowe's.

Me: "So we need 2 more gallons of both the browns and more white too."

Scarlet: "And red too."

Me: "Red like those curtains there?"

Scarlet: "No, darker."

Me: "Darker?"

Scarlet: "Yes, like wine."

Me: "Dark purplish-red?"

Scarlet: "No. Red like wine, not purple."

Me: "Right."

Scarlet: "Can you do this?"

Me: "No, probably not, but I'm going anyhow."

Thirty minutes later I'm standing in the painting section in Lowe's looking for wine. Fortunately, they have a bunch of "theme" brochures one of which is "Decorating with the Richness of Wine Country." I'm ashamed to admit how excited I was. I open the brochure, and it is immediately apparent that there are only two colors remotely close to what I believe my wife wants: Gooseberry and Merlot. The problem is, I'm not sure which is the winning color. I'm leaning towards Gooseberry, the darker of the two, even though it's a little too dark and too brown. I'm suspicious that this is the wrong color, but the Merlot doesn't seem dark enough. I need help.

"Gideon, which of these colors do you like best?" I show him the paint chips. He grabs one in each hand crushing them. He grins, waves them around, and slaps them down on seat of the cart. Then, he very carefully points to the one on my left. I look, it's Merlot.

So, buy two gallons and Ms. Scarlet loves it. Moral? When in doubt, trust a three year old.

Double Bagged

[The Devil Queen, Summer 2003]

Too be honest, I'm way too tired to maintain that up-beat, morosely fatalistic facade to which you've become accustom. I shit you not, I actually have two bags under each eye this morning.

I have no pictures or engrossing tales for you today. In short, we worked on the Devil Queen all weekend. Friends and family helped us too. We burned through several gallons of paint and don't have a finished room to show for it. Beadboard is beautiful, but it takes three times as long to paint than any smooth surface. And, while I toil at work today, Fidge and Liz are returning to paint some more, and Kenny and his small crew should begin work on the hall and the rest of their impossible-to-accomplish-in-one-week to-do list.

If I'm lucky, I'll be able to take a few days off of work to work on the Queen too because the end is nigh.

Hopefully, I'll a little more for you Tuesday and Wednesday. After that, don't be surprised if you don't hear from me for a week or more.

Home Improvement Blue Balls

Sometimes there just isn’t a climax.

I finished painting the hall ceiling last night and installed the three light fixtures. Woohoo.

[In case you're wondering about the decidedly non-Victorian lights, there will be a post devoted entirely to them soon.]

I was expecting an immense sense of accomplishment, but I felt like I'd eaten ash. Maybe it's because the crown still needs to be stained? Maybe it's because I need to scrape the excess paint of the transoms? Or, maybe I need to paint the doors and install the cherry flooring? Whatever it is, I just can't get excited. As I polished off a midnight snack, I even indulged in some photo therapy. How is this for an extreme before photo?

This is our hall rolling across Crow Mountain three-some-odd-years ago. The hall has definitely come a long way since then, but . . . I don't know. Maybe I just need some sleep?

Paint Progress

First, many thanks to Fidge and Liz for painting the hell out of the foyer and hallway. Incredibly enough, they are actually planning to come back next week to do some more. Sure, it might not look like much of a difference in these photos, but they made a lot of progress. All the walls and wainscoting lack is for me to cut in the blue around the trim and crown molding in the foyer. Instead of doing that last night, I put a coat of paint on the ceiling. Tonight, I hope to follow up with some caulking, touch up painting, and light fixtures. Tomorrow, I hope to finish do the afore mentioned cutting-in of blue. Aside from the doors and that pesky floor, the foyer and hall should be finished.

For those of you who care and keep up with such things, I am officially sick of not only caulking but painting as well. Too bad I have three rooms, one hall, and a ceiling to finish. And some exterior touch up, trim, and detailing after that.

Did I mention I was sick of painting?

It's All About the Pain

You haven't really worked on your house until you have a giant, bloody hole in the middle of your palm. My wife, burdened by her morbid sense of duty, refused to be out done by me. Even though she is sick with the crud I had a couple weeks ago and looks genuinely pitiful, she refused repeated suggestions that she rest. Instead she gulped back copious amounts of over-the-counter cold medicine and struggled on with a paint brush locked in her white-knuckled grasp.

The worst part is the house looks even worse than when we began. That isn't to say that we didn't make progress, but we tore the house to pieces in doing so. Boxes, trash, displaced furnishings, dirty laundry, toys, tools, and God knows what else are everywhere. It's depressing to say the least. And, to add insult, we didn't finish nearly as much as we needed even with my mother-in-law pitching in for six hours Sunday. Our progress is probably comparable to half a dozen poor-bastards trying to row an oil tanker to Nigeria. You row all day, feel like shit, and really aren’t going anywhere.

Anyhow, there was some progress. I'd tell you all about the brick walkway I started with around 300 bricks, twelve wheelbarrows of sand and broken hoe, but I forgot to take a picture, so why bother?

Speaking of things I forgot to take pictures of, there is the half-way finished paint job in the foyer and the three half primed doors (looking nice if I do say so).

So, here is the one meaningful picture of progress that I did take this weekend.

The living room built-in is roughly 75% complete. I love the browns, and I swear I could smell chocolate when I opened the cans. Unless Lowe's has started scenting their paints, I assume there is a psychosomatic explanation for this. In any case, I've officially added these two colors to my list of Paints I'd Like to Eat.

We were pretty excited about the built-in so we decided to start painting the walls too. You know, we wanted to see the full chromatic effect of it all. Unfortunately, it was not pretty. If a very small person took a discrete dump in a gallon of Pepto Bristol and gave it a good whirl with a drill attachment paint mixer, this is the color "red" you'd have.

The origin of this paint is an utter mystery to us. That's right, we got so far ahead of ourselves at some point a year or more ago that we can not account for the color. We don't even know if this is the color we meant to buy. If it was, no one is claiming it now. So, back once more to Lowe's I guess. This time we hope to come home with something a lot more like alizarin crimson.

If I'm not a complete slouch, I may get you all some more pictures soon. Hell, tomorrow even.

As a side note, I would like to thank Chris for reminding me what sensible folks do with their weekends: have a tasty breakfast and leave the house to have fun. As one of those working-overtime-and-putting-in-three-hours-a-night-on-the-house crowd, I'd like to confirm that you are living the dream Chris. I hope to join your crowd in late May or June.

And, as a small token to my commitment to a life outside of scraping paint or plumbing, I finally planted our tomato patch and did some oil paintings this weekend. About bloody time, I know.

What Is Wrong With These Pictures?

The full story should follow soon.