Monday, June 22, 2009

Paint.

I worked very hard over the weekend. It stunk.

On Friday, I went home after work and helped hang my TV up over my fireplace. It took some effort, but it's up, and it looks great. I also hung a few curtain rods before going to test out some bikes with Amanda. Amanda bought a bike and that was that.

Once we finished up dinner, we headed to Home Depot to buy all kinds of lumber. 6 doors, hinges for them, handles for them, and trim for the doorways upstairs. I had to buy, and I'm not exaggerating, 140 feet of door trim. 140 feet! Terrible.

Saturday brought the real work. After a quick and delicious greasy breakfast from down the street, we headed to a grocer. Not our usual grocer, but one I was initially a bit skeptical of. What a glorious decision.

This new grocer was very very bad overall. Poor selection, ugly interior, minimal brand names, etc. It was closer and we heard less expensive, so we tried it out. Towards the end of our overall disappointing trip through the store, I noticed a bunch of boxes of Count Chocula. Whenever I see Count Chocula, I immediately look for its less celebrated, but easily superior step brother, Boo Berry. Sadly, it never materializes. Usually, surrounding Count Chocula is only more of the same, blandly chocolate tasting garbage. Even throughout the years, my eyes light up in hopes of finding the elusive, blueberry flavored, marshmallow infused breakfast, only to be disappointed.

Saturday, however, to my surprise I saw a few boxes of it. Elated, I danced over to the boxes, grabbed two, and happily tossed them into the cart.

I can't tell you how excited I was. It is easily my favorite cereal of all time. It was almost never in any store I entered growing up and generally, the only place I could get it was at my friend Josh's house. His mom knew where to get it. Since going off to college, and thus not visiting Josh and his miracle working mother, I have not eaten it once. It was nowhere to be found in Philadelphia (where I resided for seven years) and until Saturday, was in parts unknown here in the Providence area. What an unbelievable turn of luck. Even though that grocery store is terrible and has almost nothing that I would like to eat, I will go there at least once a week.

What a fantastic start to the day.



Yum.

After we got home, I immediately began taping off the second floor windows to prep them for my new in the box paint sprayer. After a few hours of meticulous taping and covering, I was excited to start. I put on latex gloves, pants, a long sleeved shirt, a respirator and my earbuds and got to business. What an incredible invention. I had the entire second floor primed in less than four hours. Even if I used my handy Wagner Power Roller, it would have taken me at least six or seven hours (there are very tall ceilings in each room, and huge walls everywhere). Paint sprayers are great. Messy, but great.

When I finished up the painting and cleaning of all my painting stuff, I called it a day (night?).

On Sunday, I got to work early. I filled up the sprayer with some flat ceiling paint, got all my gear back on, and sprayed away. An hour or so later and the ceilings were done (again, this would have taken at least 4 hours to do without the sprayer). Awesome.

One thing I haven't mentioned yet is how suffocating the process is. Since there is no electricity yet upstairs, it's pretty dark. The windows are taped off, letting no light, or air in. It's basically a dark, foggy (from the paint particles floating around), super hot working environment. I probably sweat out 5 pounds per day this weekend. Paint sprayers aren't without their downsides...

Once the ceilings were done and given a little bit of time to dry, I started to paint the walls, the semi-old fashioned way (aforementioned Power Roller). This took forever and I finished up around 5:30 or so. The second floor is now painted, but not yet trimmed out.

Also, Amanda worked on priming the cabinet doors and getting some wood putty up in the hallway. Killer.

An electrician is coming this week (hooray) and I plan on finishing the painting, getting the second floor bathroom floor done, starting to get the trim up and finally finishing the stupid first floor bathroom.

I should have some pictures of our hard work from the weekend up tomorrow. Be excited.

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