This Olde House - Part 4

Another fun filled weekend. By fun, of course, I mean "Back breaking manual labor and trying to convince Cindy to chill out and trust me on this whole "renovation" thing.

Per the new norm: Click any picture to enlarge.

The living room and dining room have been primed with two coats of drywall primer. Five gallons of the stuff. We are glad to be rid of the red wall panels! Now, the wait between stages of the project isn't nearly as bad, since we don't have to suffer through crimson walls burning our retinas.

Cindy went ahead started painting the ceiling in the living room. I gotta admit, at first I didn't think we needed to burn cycles on the ancient popcorn. But once Cindy started rolling it on, the difference was staggering. Check the photos, but we didn't have a white ceiling, we had a gray one! Not for long, though. Cindy put her back into it and covered up the haggard old thing. Quick note: popcorn ceilings suck up paint at a phenomenal rate. Two gallons for just one room!


After Cindy cleared some space, I whipped out the rollers and dropped the big green hammer. Check the furniture all covered in plastic. Loads of fun there, too. We pretty much haven't been able to use the living room for two weeks. But that just helps encourage us.

Anyway, the green paint went down pretty slowly. It's a fairly dark color and any thin areas showed up quickly. I'd start rolling new lines and notice old places where I hadn't put it down thick enough. So I'd roll back over that a couple of times. Two steps forward, one step back. But once it was down, nobody would ever know the horror of the red wood panel walls!

Of course you can't keep the kids under wraps for too long. And it was only a matter of time before they came up for air. Which means they fired up the Nag Machine and switched into Full Auto Fire mode with "I Wanna Paint!" and "Can I Paint!" A few thousand rounds later, I had to give in to the fullisade. First up was Ms Meg. Couple of the finer details from the picture: 1) Check the safety glasses that Cindy made her wear, 2) She's barefoot and still wearing her PJs, 3) Check my sharp flipflops!, 4) Yes, I'm sweating like a stuck hog, paintin' hard work! Anyway, she slapped down a couple lines of the green paint and quickly grew bored.

As you can imagine, The Boy didn't want to be left out of the equation. He threw on some shoes and joined us on the front line. By this time, I'm about half way done with the living room. He had the floors covered with paper so I left him go to town. He did a pretty good job and stuck it out longer than his sister did. Unfortunately the picture doesn't do any justice to the scope and magnitude of his Bed Head. The whole mass of his hair was pretty much one fluffy cow lick, but it doesn't show up very well. It looked like he'd stuck his toe in a light socket!



Once the kids were spent, Cindy wrapped up the ceiling and I wrapped up the walls. Here's a shot of the long wall with the windows. No more panels. No more Little House On The Prairie casings. It does look a bit TOO green, but the white of the windows and the white of the crown molding will offset everything. Fix up that old ass door one day, too!

Several hours after we got started. And here's the opposite wall, with Lady McD tidying up the mess. Her safety glasses came off long ago. And check her favorite Braves shirt. See the green paint? Heh heh heh. The back is even worse. I don't think that one will see the light of day in public again.

And that's our weekend. Painting, painting, and more painting. Next steps: level the floor in the dining room, rip up the old tiles, put down the new tiles, and new molding for everyone.