Work Wednesday « Robin Writes

Okay, let me clarify: a LOT of painting sucks. That’s what I did last weekend. A LOT.

The plan (there’s that word again!) was to finish the living room side of the house so we could “move” into it for the time being, and then work on the bedroom side.

Good plan. As always, taking longer than expected . . .

Since we picked up the paint for the bedroom side and the doors—same color, one interior, one exterior—it was that time. And, since the bedroom side wasn’t ready, the doors were on the list.

Four doors. One solid day of painting.

Three of the doors apparently were, at one time, yellow. At least the trim around the glass was yellow; you could still sort of see that. A little.

The fourth door was gunmetal gray, except for the trim. And filthy, in the stained kind of way.

Now, normally, painting dark over light is relatively easy; the dark covers really well. Not this time.

I’d brush it on, I’d see yellow; I’d add more paint, I’d see yellow.

I thought my eyes were going kaput.

Yellow, yellow, yellow.

It took three coats on each door, plus some more touch-ups. And I’m betting that when I go back down to the farm and take a look, there will be MORE SPOTS TO PAINT.

And lest you think that being “in good shape” means you’ll be fine after a full day of painting, allow me to correct you with two words:

Different muscles.

My right arm fared the best, since I use it the most anyway, but I thought the left one was going to fall off the next day. Yes, I paint with both. I’m ambidextrous, to a point. And while, yes, I’m pretty sloppy, there’s no real difference as to which hand I’m using.

No, I don’t tape. It takes extra time and I’ve discovered that it never seems to work the way the commercials show—my brush will inevitably slip under that tape. Tarps? Oh, please! They don’t stay put and, if I’m going to dribble, it’s NEVER where the tarp is lying. NEVER.

So I’d much rather take time afterwards to wipe up the mess. Or scrub. Or paint over it.

My husband, bless his heart, spent his weekend putting up drywall on the new walls.

So I’d have more to paint.

Anyway, this coming weekend is Labor Day Weekend—ha, “labor,” get it? But we won’t be doing much in the way of construction. We plan to go to the river, canoe in the pond, barbeque, go to the rodeo, and have some target practice.

And maybe put up a zip line. Maybe.

With the start of the school year, we’ve changed to only working at the farm on weekends; that means approximately 48 days, weather depending, to get everything ready for the spring move.

Last weekend, we spent the entire time—except for a little gardening and a little shopping—inside the house.

The gardening resulted in fewer weeds, cucumber and yellow squash harvesting, a little burning, and one less damn copperhead.

The shopping nearly filled our supply unit and added some drywall to our collection.

And then we worked our butts off.

The living room/kitchen dividing wall frame has been drywalled and painted! Actually, we finished the second coat on the ceiling in that half of the house and almost all the painting.

We still need to get paint for the doors on that side, which is the same for the bedroom/office/bath-side walls, and we need to hang the door to the lean-to. And of course, the kitchen remodel/rearrange/additions.

But this coming weekend, we’ll be moving the bedroom/office into the living room and finishing drywall, ceiling repair, and more painting.

After, of course, the skim coating. Ick. So tired of that, but the alternative is worse . . .

And yes, we’ve started moving. To a point.

Originally, I wanted to wait to move just about everything so we wouldn’t have to do it twice, once to the barn and then again to the house. In light of certain economic issues—the world, not ours—we’ve started the process a little early.

Pretty much anything that we won’t need or use between now and spring is headed out the door.

Extreme? Perhaps. But it needs to be done sooner or later and I hate to drive a few hours down there with an empty truck. And we have to LIAH, there would be items that I couldn’t take but would miss.