Painting's over! Thank goodness!

I was getting tired of 'camping'.

Since Jan 21st or so, we had a flurry of home improvements done in rapid succession. First the asbestos-laden popcorn ceiling had to be removed. We had to move everything out of the house into the garage for this. The air was tested & cleared on the 22nd, and we were back in the house the next day.

Then before painting, we thought we'd get the electrical updated. All new wiring all throughout the house (except the kitchen, which looks liked it was fairly recently updated). Dedicated circuits for the TV & computer; a separate circuit for each bedroom, outlets on every wall, a dedicated circuit for the compressor in the garage, and one outdoor outlet. We even had canned lights installed in our living room. All this was done to code, with the exception of not having the smoke alarms wired into the electrical system.

After the popcorn ceiling was removed, we had a really ugly, unfinished ceiling. My friend Derek recommended a drywall "Tape & Texture" guy - who turned out to be just awesome. He was very good at what he did, and I'm the first to admit I have neither the skill, nor the patience to develop the skill he has. He did a fantastic job on our ceilings, and patched all the holes the electricans put in the walls, then skim-coated the walls so that the wall would look more like one smooth piece instead of having a bunch of patches all over. He took care of a number of cracks, and taped all around our windows to prevent cracks from happening in the future.

At this point, we had plastic sheeting all over the floor, and drywall dust everywhere from the sanding we had to do before painting. We started painting on Wednesday Feb 6. Painting was such a pain - taping, cutting in, primering, 1st coat, 2nd coat. (in some cases, 3rd coat & 4th coat!) And picking colors is crazy - if we want beige - there's literally hundreds (if not thousands) variations on the color. Anyway - for the record, we liked the RL color palettes - ended up with RL Architectural Cream (UL55) in the living room - a light tan - which seems to look a little green with the contrast from the wood floors, RL Hazel Woods (UL50) in the back bedroom (a very nice soft green), and Benjamin Moore Horizon (a light gray) in the front bedroom.

Geez. We finally finished up around midnight on Sunday night, but we were pulling off tape & rolling up plastic sheeting until 4am. Last night we started moving some furniture back into place - and things are starting to look much better. We got our new mattress delivered today too. So all looks set for the houseguests arriving tomorrow, except we have to clean our kitchen & bathroom tonight.