And so it continues

As you may have noticed,  I didn't blog for the week between Christmas and New Years.  Tim kindly took that week off work to help me get a big chunk of the painting done.  What a nice man.  Sacrificing vacation time to help me.  Probably there was a little self preservation in that.  The paint fumes alone could curl nose hairs. 

Well you all know how I feel about painting.  Sort of like intentionally slamming my hand in a door. It feels so good when its over.  And now more of it is done. Hurrah!  And it looks so good too.  The front hall, bedroom hall, kitchen and living room are finished! 

Well that's a lie. I still need to paint the trim and I will get to it. Eventually.  I got a little sidetracked. There was a small problem with the pantry doors.    They were special ordered during the kitchen reno. . Tim found them online. We both loved them.  They arrived and at the right time,  our awesome builder-guy installed them and they looked almost exactly perfect.  The colour wasn't quite right.  "Oh", build-guy says, "that because they need to be painted"  "I see," I said, although I didn't see at all.  The door to the utility room came already painted, why wouldn't the pantry doors?  "No big deal" said I, " I have to paint the kitchen anyway, I'll paint the pantry doors too" . Thus assured, and probably relieved that it wasn't something else on his list, builder-guy went on to his next job.







































Once he was gone I rolled up my   proverbial sleeves and got to work. Carefully, I taped off all the glass and surrounding walls, bought a narrow brush and began the pain in the butt job of painting the pantry doors.  There is frosted glass in the center of each door so it's actually more glass than wood. Well I believed it to be wood. As it turns out, not so much. But of course, I did not know that at the time.  The paint was not going on very smoothly.  I stopped and thoroughly stirred the paint again and again. Odd.  Maybe it will smooth out with the second coat.  The next day, painting again, nope, still not looking as smooth as I'd like.  Dang.  I bought a different kind of brush and by the (@#$%$%^) third coat, it looked darned good.  Taa freakin' dah, it was done.  It looked beautiful, almost enameled it was so perfect.

Right up until someone actually opened the doors.  The slightest touch, scratch or rub and the paint started to come back off. ARGH!   Turns out, it was the wrong kind of paint and the surround was "not wood'. Not certain what it is but I'm positive of what it's not.  So my distraction from painting the trim in both halls, kitchen and living room was removing the paint from the pantry doors. A lot of it just peeled away in huge strips. I made a little scratch with my finger nail, tucked the edges of my finger underneath the scratch area,  lifted that section and peeled.  There was a certain degree of satisfacation involved, I won't lie.  Unfortunately not all of it came up so easily.  It took the better part of an afternoon, a kitchen scrubbie and all of my fingers nails but it's finally removed.  At some point in the future, I will find the correct sort of paint and try again. I'm in no rush. The doors work painted or not.

So now I've moved on to preparing the family room for paint.   There are 13 windows in the family room. Some of them quite large. All of them had drapes when we bought the house.  One of the first things I did when we moved in, even before we had furniture, was to take the drapes down. They were filthy. I mean, disgusting. It appeared that they had never been cleaned. When I say dirty, I mean, not just the visible dirt, but there were bug carcases inside EWWWW!  But I left the hardware to be removed at a later time. That later time was yesterday. Carefully, I moved furniture to the middle of the room, hauled in my ladder and a flathead screwdriver. First error.  Upon closer examination, I also needed a philips screwdriver. Ok. Upon even closer examination, a second smaller flathead screwdriver was needed because there were three, yes three different types/sizes of screws involved. Naturally. 

It was a long and frustrating project.  Some previous owner painted over the screws so removing them was not a quick and easy thing to do. But after several hours, much cussing and several breaks to walk away and calm down, the hardware was removed. Or was it?  Nope, Once I got up on the ladder I realized that there was an older set of brackets underneath. (sigh)  Ok once more through the room and all the hardware was down. Then of course it's time to fill those holes! Spackle R Us!  When I finished the spackle I was ready to throw in my trowel.  I walked away, washed my hands and started dinner. I didn't even push the furniture back into place. I just left everything right there.

I'll press on today. At the very least I will get it sanded and cleaned up, furniture back where it belongs. We will see if any painters tape goes up today or not. 

I'm sure, that when it's all done, it will look great and I will consider my battle scars more as badges of honour received in the home improvement wars.  I have a deadline. We are expecting company in the not too distant future. Our first houseguests! Exciting!  All of the rooms will look pretty darned good.

My bet says that the pantry doors will remain unpainted though.

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