see before: “Paint and Repairs”:http://www.spacepod.org/rtp/archives/renovatin%27/paint_and_repairs.php

and the lovely, lovely after:

We even washed the windows:

So far this year we have…

* Had an underground oil tank removed

* replaced the gate to the back yard

* had all the windows restored to working order, cleaned and painted

* had a damaged part of the house re-built

* had all the gutters replaced

* replaced the door to the screen porch

plus numerous small repairs and projects. at the moment, J is stripping and restoring all the HVAC registers, which are pretty gross with paint and rust.

and there’s oh so much more to do…

it’s definitely time for some paint work:

on one part of the house, the painter also found some rot. he’s also a carpenter so on his recommendation, i asked him to take out the rot and repair the damage.

it started with just the corners and the top…

and then he realized that the brick veneer wasn’t attached, it was just kind of balancing on the foundation and lightly held in place by the rotting siding that had been removed.

so i gave the go-ahead to take off the brick.

which is going to allow him to access all the water damaged structural areas:

it looks like bad flashing around the chimney allowed water to move along the chimney and soak the wood repeatedly. i think a bad gutter was also to blame – it soaked the ground, water moved up through the masonry and soaked the wood at the bottom.

the flashing has been fixed – in fact the rotted out wood was all dry despite a good rain the day before – and the gutters will be replaced.

i’ll also be getting rid of the obnoxious herringbone brick veneer, which never looked right.

…again. this weekend we attack the dreaded kitchen. which still has stuff in it, and other interesting challenges. the goal is to paint the exteriors of the cabinets white, change out the hardware (some of which will need new holes drilled), put paintable wallpaper over the existing wallpaper (it was all we could find) and, hopefully, paint the wallpaper. and paint all the trim white including yet another window.

it’s a short weekend, we mainly have tomorrow to work. jason is downstairs right now doing… something. i refuse to work after a full day at work then a four hour drive. but – it’s his house. i’m just the helper.

this evening we planned that i would email him just before i left work, and he’d go to the q shack to pick up dinner. it worked out perfectly and he arrived just minutes after i did. i was plowing into my cobb salad many hours earlier than we normally eat at what is, i think, my ideal time to eat dinner. i told him that any time he wants to do that, it’s just fine with me.

just two more weekends before the house is deemed complete, or as complete as it is going to be. next weekend is the yard sale and moving the tools in a u-haul, which i’m dreading. but then just one weekend of cleanup after that, and we’re done.

i’m still blown away by how fantastic the fireplace looks now that it’s been painted. we’ll have pictures of it later this weekend.

despite dire warnings from teh internets, our ride home was quite safe and quite beautiful. no traffic, no ice, no downed trees, no snow on the road… but snow, snow, snow everywhere around us, on every branch of every tree, on every rolling hill…

me: now see, i actually know the lyrics to the songs on this channel.

jason: really? what is he saying?

me: “i am the son, and the heir, of a shyness that is criminally vulgar. i am the son, and the heir, of nothing in particular.”

jason: really? i can’t hear anything he’s saying.

me: really. oh, and, “i am human and i need to be loved – just like everybody else does.”

we painted more today, and j installed shoe moulding in the living room – which has had baseboards but no shoe or cap. i also painted the brick around the fireplace. it had been badly dry brushed or sponge painted the same dingy mauve-brown as the rest of the room. the difference is stunning. we used a sandy tan color on the brick and bright white on the wood mantle. i couldn’t stop looking at it when it was done.

we’re in Va for several days working on J’s house. the goal is to get it on the market very soon. to that end i have started painting the living and dining rooms. well – the living room. the previous owner painted the living room a dingy brown both on the walls and ceiling and left the old dirty beige trim color as it was. the dining room is painted an equally dingy green – both walls and ceiling again. in this room it appears that a chair rail of sorts was added above some form of wainscoting. some of the trim was painted a light, creamy yellow and some of it was left dingy beige.

dinge. dinge i say.

the walls and ceilings in these rooms have also been textured with stucco, which means they drink the paint. J has five gallons of flat, pale beige paint – i bet i use all five before it’s all said and done.

today i didn’t feel well after breakfast so i didn’t get as much done as i would have liked – only about half the living room, and only one coat. it’ll need two. trim won’t happen during this trip.

j is catching up on many weeks of yard work while i paint. he was in shock over the difference the new paint is making already when he came in for the evening. “why didn’t I do this when I first moved in?” well, now we know. the House of the Future will have flooring and walls sorted before we move in. and anything else we can afford to do.

anyway, i’m sure we’ll post pictures at some point in the process. ah, jason has just entered stage right with a camera, and he’s taking photos. excellent.

they say this about old volkswagens: straight and clean. means it’s probably never been wrecked, no rust, that sort of thing.

i can’t say that the windows in the back bedroom are truly straight and clean, because that would have taken a week of work, but they’re much straighter and much cleaner now.

there’s still much to paint, but i got a lot done this weekend.

the wall color is complete; the cabinet interiors are complete, and the exteriors are under way. tonight i got a first coat in the baseboards and door moulding, and they will definitely need a second coat.

_so fascinating._

i took pictures.

i guess i worked for about five hours on the massive painting project. between the room itself and all the furniture i’m painting to go in it, i think i’m maybe a third of the way through what i need to do. i suspected it would take longer than the weekend and now i’m sure it will. that’s fine; i’ll get the bulk of it done this weekend and that will motivate me to finish it completely.

moses seems to have bounced back after his bad morning yesterday. he was being really cute and wanting to wrestle and stuff this afternoon, which always makes me feel reassured that he’s feeling okay. he got me pretty good a couple of times, too. i figure he can’t be feeling that bad if he can still move that fast.

anyway, now i’m really tired. i got all cleaned up (i have to admit, i took a shower that lasted more than four minutes. does that mean i don’t get to shower tomorrow?) and i think i’m going to get some chinese takeout and relax with one of the netflixen that have been languishing in my living room for some weeks now.

tomorrow the ladder work begins. ugh.

and i don’t mean the good, frank zappa kind of freakout, either.

i just moved most of the rest of the back bedroom into the rest of the house. _now_ i feel overwhelmed by it all, and i swear… it’s tempting to take tomorrow off and take as much of it as possible to the scrap exchange and goodwill.

seriously– me and mo in the house like this is one thing, and it’s not a great thing. me, j, puppeh and kitteh? what was i _thinking??_

sigh.

the other thing is that i’m not sure that my furniture plan is going to work. i’ve got the two big tables in the center of the room now, and they really dominate it. now that i think about it, i think i tried something like that in my old apartment, and it was kind of impractical. maybe i need to keep them in an L shape.

moving all of that stuff, i felt the _weight_ of all of those possessions. i really remember that feeling from my 20’s when my whole living space was one big crap pile. i REALLY want to be free of it.

-:|:-

i didn’t hear back from the vet today on moses’ test results, so i guess i will hear tomorrow. maybe no news is good news, or something.

he’s been great this evening, following me around the house and just generally acting normal and happy.