Pardon Our Dust

This Thursday is the last day.  My husband is retiring, selling his engineering business after a full career and 29 years of being in charge.  It leaves us both wondering and excited.

And it means it's time to really get serious about finishing the ceilings/walls in the house.  Christmas pretty much stopped everything.  It didn't hurt my feelings particularly to take a break.  Now, however, the guest room, formerly our daughter's room, will also serve as an interim engineering office for those times when hubby does consulting.

Past time for this to go.

Remove the plant propagation shelf with all the grow lights.   Paint the ceiling and then the walls.  Make room for more book shelves. Getting a move on it sits right up there in the Things I get to do today.

The Woodwork

14 in 1 painter's tool.
What do I use all those
curves and holes for?

It turns out it's not all that simple.   Painting the trim, putting the decorations on the cake, if you will, has been a growth experience.  As one hitches along the perimeter of a room, first taping the edge of the carpet under the baseboard, then painting the baseboard (not the wall, thank you.  It's already done and is Pale Honey in eggshell, not white in enamel), there is plenty of time for contemplation.  If one is paying attention and finds joy in details, there's a lot to be learned.

The big curve on the right of the painter's tool cleans at
least a half cup of paint out of the roller before it is ready
to be washed!  Washing up goes so much faster.

At the beginning of this painting project (you remember it all began with washing the windows and deep-cleaning the kitchen floor), the work list said simply "paint the ceiling Air, paint the walls Pale Honey, paint the woodwork White."

Kitchen corner BEFORE

So the baseboards became white.  The woodwork around the windows was a different matter.  Cracks and dried calk between the window sash and woodwork needed to be cleaned out and recalked.  Mini blinds were taken down.  The sashes were cleaned.  And the woodwork was finally painted.

The mini blinds went back up--temporarily.  They are old.  They are dirty.  They are slightly broken here and there.  And they look hideous in the newly painted window frames.

 

Kitchen corner AFTER

So one of the Things I get to do today (or tomorrow) is shop for new curtains.  What a slippery slope this has been!  How truly fabulous it is to have rooms feeling clean and vibrant instead of heavy and dirty.  Who knew?

PS.  This what I was doing when I was not blogging.

Prep

This all started, you know, when I cleaned (really cleaned) my kitchen floor.  Be warned for your own situation.  Scrubbing can lead you to a very slippery slope.

So now I find myself preparing the interior of my house, as in living room, hall, kitchen and family room, to be painted.  According to my husband, it looks like the place forgot to take off its Halloween costume, draped as it is with ghostly, filmy plastic to protect floor and furniture from the "paint dust" from spray painting the ceiling.

Dirty, dirty

And down come the ceiling cold-air return covers.  In the twenty years of their boarding in our house, they've been cleaned (from time to time) but have never been removed and washed.  The gray heads of the screws annoy me slightly.  Among all the other painting details helping the heads look smart will be one of the Things I get to do today.

Going to spray paint these to match

Found that a 3x5 card, punched, worked just swell to hold the screws for a quick spray paint.  Photo soon of the delightful results.