Monday, April 26, 2010
Today was the first "official" day of our interior paint job! A few days earlier, I'd received an estimate from our friend Olli at Finn Pro for various ways to handle the different rooms, and my budget would allow for either doing just the dining room -- but doing it right! -- or simply covering the dining room's problems but then being able to paint more of the rest of the house, too. Ultimately, I decided to do just the dining room for now, since that was definitely the biggest looming "project" of the house and the one I was most eager to address -- and I wanted to do it right, right from the beginning.
Why was the dining room such a big undertaking? Well, for starters, the ceiling sagged in parts and was covered with a horrible old 1970's square tile type of material. I wanted it removed and replaced, since aside from its poor condition, it needed serious cosmetic work anyway after the electricians had replaced the previous thick strip of track lighting with a single, central fixture.
The walls were covered in vertical paneling from around the same era and also buckled in places; one whole strip was even splitting off from the wall, so that a finger could pry it up and away from the studs. The trim around the big picture window and the two antique leaded-glass doors needed to be cleaned up, as well, and I was also curious to see what was behind the third, drywall-covered sunken rectangle. Whatever it was, I would need to address it at some point soon, but for now, it at least needed its trim touched up too.
Okay, so in actual fact, today's "paint job premier" was not really all that WOW, since the painters were only going to stop by to assess the dining room's condition before returning the next morning to commence the actual work of stripping off the old wall paneling and ceiling tiles. But still, very exciting for me! Because I was also going to choose my paint colors for the room, another fun "task".
The painters were not arriving until that afternoon, though. So in the meantime...
...our first stop was a trip to Dixie Kitchen for breakfast. My mom was having a board meeting at her house so we needed to clear out even before our 9:30 a.m. class started, and we had no food at the new house, since I didn't want to stock the kitchen right before the big construction/paint job started.
We hit the Dix, a fave breakfast hangout for us, where Ayize joyously colored and played with his complimentary plastic crocodile. Here you can see that he's making the croc "eat" his crayons.
Then we dove into our big four-dollar breakfast: a side of Cajun potatoes and an English muffin for him and a chickory coffee me. Yum! Let the "dip-dip-dipping" begin (as he refers to any meal involving ketchup). You can see that somebody really savored their tasty meal!
After our breakfast of champions, we headed to preschool at School for Little Children. Today's art project was totally awesome: the kids were painting Mother's Day flower pots (a bit early, since they required a week to dry).
I know I'm biased, ha ha ha...but I really LOVED Ayize's end result! He used a bunch of bright colors and covered almost the whole pot. In fact, he liked painting so much that once he finished his project, he painted me a picture on the table's protective paper covering (see photo above), and then when I walked off to hang it to dry in our classroom clothesline, he painted his t-shirt too.
Yikes. Good thing the paint (pretty much) comes out in the wash LOL!
Speaking of paint...on our way home from school, we stopped by Epco Paint to pick our Benjamin Moore dining room color(s). The only problem was, I liked them all! Well, all the bright ones, anyway...
Eventually, I took five samples of each of my favorite colors in varying hues.
How to choose, how to choose??
We arrived home and my mom's board meeting was just slowly breaking up. Ayize scarfed down some of their leftovers, flirted with a bunch of the ladies, and proudly showed Grandma the masterpiece he'd painted across his doggie shirt.
I distracted him with more tidbits and was able to wrangle his "artwork" over his head and off; while I washed out as much of the paint as I could, he settled in to play Thomas trains.
After a nice long nap, we headed off to our new house. For ages, he'd been absolutely addicted to this awesome toolbox that Tina gave him for his second birthday. I pulled it out -- my ace in the hole -- and set him "to work" as I chatted with the painters (he's always five times as enthusiastic about working with his "tools" when there are actual workmen around our house, I've noticed). Then they headed in with ladders and gear to figure out what tomorrow's job would entail, and we hung out in the yard to stay out of harm's way.
Ayize started with some serious hammering ...
...then deftly demonstrated his screwdriver savvy...
...before sawing me some very tiny firewood...
...and finally, assisting me with my weeding -- though of course he had to put his own unique "spin" on it. (Bad pun intended!)
Meanwhile, as I weeded, I admired my garden (what else is new??)
My peonies continued to pretend that they were going to imminently open (I know you all are sick of my dang peony updates by now).
These new purple blossoms had just opened that morning. I was in love with them! So delicate and pretty.
And my trillium (okay, there's some debate about what these plants actually are, so I'll just stick with the species that's gotten the most votes so far) had truly peaked; from this day forward, they slowly began to deteriorate. But on this afternoon, they were a gorgeous, brilliant combination of blood red, deep purple, green and gold.
The painters finished up and we settled on a time for them to come tomorrow morning to start tearing down the paneling -- 7 a.m. sharp.
I was so excited!
As I headed into the garage to put away my weeding tools, I flicked on the light switch, which I've taken for granted ever since electricity was run out to our garage. It occurred to me that I never showed photos of the great work North Shore Electric did inside our garage, so here it is! My new light switches (interior on the left, motion detector mounted outside on the right), a couple of new outlets...
...and my new garage light! (I didn't want to spend money on a fixture that no one but myself would ever see, so I opted for the bare bulb look.)
The rest of our day passed in a blur of fun and anticipation. After a nice long nap, we headed to my sister Akari's house to hang out.
Ayize played The Beatles: Rock Band with cousins, Sophie and Madison, and their awesome pal, Phoebe.
He was assigned vocals, though, which he found somewhat frustrating...
...so he tried out some new and unusual vocalizing methods.
Later, Akari accompanied him out to the yard to blow bubbles, so I took over the vocal stylings with the three kids, who wanted to stay in and play. Here's my score on the Beatles, "I'm Looking Through You" (playing as my niece):
Woo hoo! My first time, too (brag, brag) -- though we played again in Portland recently and I didn't fare quite so well...so I guess it was, sadly, beginner's luck!
The kids got bored of playing and Maddie ran outside to pretend to hit us with a giant ball through the glass picture window.
Sophie obligingly played the part of the bulls-eye. This was her reaction to getting "hit" LOL! Ayize provided the sound effects.
"Duzzzzjjjhhhh!"
...while Ayize happily played with Matchbox cars. He particularly enjoyed the hilarious (in his opinion) collapsing bridge!
But you can see how droopy his eyes were getting. It had been a long (though very fun) day so, shortly after this photo, he hopped back into our jogging stroller and I strapped on my Rollerblades. It was time to head home for dinner, tubby time, and sleeps.
Tomorrow was going to be an early -- and very exciting -- day!
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