Paint & Piles

With many thanks to Faith, who helped us on Saturday, we got the living and dining rooms painted this weekend. It's hard to imagine what the walls looked like before, so here's a picture of the wall shared by both rooms (and Dave starting to tape off the trim, etc)...

I think I said this color was 'Last Tango' - it's actually 'Tinder Box' - but what it mostly is is awesome!!!


It dries to the color of a baked pumpkin pie - as seen in these shots, where it's the new color of the curved wall and the next adjacent wall in the dining room. The next two walls are a lighter but still intense orange, and the living room Atomic Tangerine (which looks nicer in person - much deeper)...



And here's our non-functioning wall furnace, newly sprayed glossy black...



...you know, to mask it ("Hey what's that big, black--" "I don't know what you're talking about."). Kidding. It's painted to match the coffee table.

Sunday, I put a third coat of paint on the orange + yellow, while Dave replaced almost all of the electrical switches and plugs in the house (!); then we tested our new Hoover FloorMate - a wet/dry vacuum safe for sealed wood floors (I recommend it!); then we put together those nifty paper-shaded lamps for the living room, cleared away all the paint/repair clutter, and collapsed on the couch for some TV.

We're putting our art back up tonight, when the paint's fully cured. Will blog pretty pictures.

In other news, Destructo Girl made sporadic, undocumented, and ultimately frustrated appearances this weekend, too.

Saturday afternoon began not with painting, but with a big, dead tree, a ladder, and a chainsaw. Dave made a valiant effort to dispatch the tree, but soon found that it was too big a job for us.

Dave: This is too big a job for us.

Destructo Girl: (tossing cape over shoulder) Harumph.

He did cut off two big branches, which we put on our Bonus Brush Pickup Pile.












Then, first thing this morning, I cut down several small trees on our back fence (in an effort to train the honeysuckle vines there to creep along the fence, not up into the trees), and added those trees to our brush pile.

Then I showered and changed and started working.

Not long after, the Bonus Brush Pickup began on our street. When the trucks reached our house, though, the driver came to our door to say they couldn't pick up our brush because it was too close to a low-hanging tree (they use one of these), but if I could move the pile down the curb they'd be back.

So I changed back into my yard clothes, and dragged everything 10 meters down the curb. This included some trees that our neighbor had asked to put on our curb because there are power lines over their curb (another no-no, along with low-hanging trees), and a chair of mysterious origin. Did the neighbor come out of his usual chemical haze to help? Guess.

Good news: the Bonus Brush Pickup did indeed happen.

The kicker: now I'm itching to mow the lawn, which means I'll be changing into my yard clothes for a third time, and probably showering again, before the day is out.