Primer, Paint & Indoor Plumbing

We're coming into the final stretch now. According to the bank's appraisor we have 75% of a house. I have a feeling that that last 25% is going to be a killer. (When Kim was tearing his hair out over everything on his plate and glaring at me calmly flipping through design mags I kept telling him "don't worry, my turn will come" - well, it's here) We're trying to save money wherever we can and one of those places is the walls & ceiling: priming & painting to be specific.

The drywallers were supposed to be finished by Thursday, giving us lots of time to prime & paint the rooms where cabinets were being installed the following Monday. Naturally, there was still one guy there Saturday, finishing up.

After a long, frustrating and ultimately un-productive attempt to rent a paint sprayer, (including an encounter with a confused & surely Home Depot employee who really shouldn't ever be allowed out of the tool crib to talk to customers) we bought a small sprayer and the whole family got to work Saturday, cleaning up and covering windows in preparation for the big primer spray event.

When my Dad stopped by to say hi I asked him if it was possible to temporarily install one of our toilets as the builder of the house next door said they no longer needed the porta-potty we'd been sharing. (Guess it wasn't doing much for their curb appeal, right in front of their front door) The next thing I knew he'd sent Kim off in search of toilet-installing supplies and shortly after we had working indoor plumbing. No privacy, no sink for hand-washing but much better than running outside in the rain or dark to use a plastic out-house. One step closer to civilization.
(I do have a picture of it but, uhm, it's being used - you really don't want to see that)

Dad stuck around and my Mom soon joined him so we had a full painting crew. Cole assembled the sprayer and I read the instructions (how would males function without a female around to read the instructions), then the rest of them got it loaded up and ready to paint. Before Kim or I could try it out Shea had taken command of the sprayer and, with Poppa giving directions and doing the back-rolling, the two of them had soon finished a large room. Nothing like a new gadget to get the guys doing some work.

We always seem to be barely one step ahead, realizing at the last minute that 'this' needs to be finished before the next scheduled thing can happen. We decided it would be best to finish all three coats of paint before the cabinets were installed so we had to make a quick decision on the white for downstairs. I had been to Benjamin Moore with my window frame, cabinet door and chunk of granite for help choosing an appropriate off-white so had already narrowed it down to two (Cloud White or Cloud Nine), so it was just a matter of painting two sample swatches to make the big decision. Kim & my Mom were our jury and they both agreed Cloud Nine was best. I pointed out - just to make sure Kim was fine with it - that Cloud Nine has a fair bit of green in it. We had a little bit of panic when we'd cut in around the ceilings and it looked like a stripe of light lime green against the primer. Fortunately once the whole area was done it looked like white again.
The rest of that weekend was spent frantically painting.

Amazing how much brighter everything was when it was primed.

Shoe as paint-tray.

Late Saturday night, after we'd started packing up I noticed a place on the vaulted ceiling where I'd missed cutting in. Too tired to haul over the tall ladder or refill a small can, I grabbed the full paint tray and climbed onto a stepstool. I was teetering on the edge, stre-e-e-e-tching to reach the farthest spot when Kim started yelling. "What are you doing?" I peered up at the wall, trying to to figure out what I'd done wrong. Did I use the wrong colour? - Not possible, we only have one open. Wrong wall? No, both of these walls are going to be this colour.

Tired brain was still trying to sort out what the yelling was about when foot sent up a signal - "I'm getting a little damp down here". Uh-oh. A waterfall of paint was pouring out of the full tray, and cascading over my shoe into a growing puddle on the floor.
Didn't need the paint tray after that, there was enough paint on my shoe to finish the job.

Thanks to the help of Grandma and Poppa we finished the kitchen just as the delivery guys showed up with a truckload of cabinets on Monday morning......

which almost completely filled the living room.

And this? This was just plain weird.

Who forgot to tell the weatherman that this is Vancouver?! And it's March?!

We don't get SNOW here on March 9th! Crazy stuff.