Mario and his boyz are here getting started. I dashed over to the paint store for one last sample. Russ thinks Light Yellow will be the ticket. This after I got the scientific breakdown on the colors I'd selected. Holy Cow! I guess the yellow is o.k. with me, though I wanted to go more neutral, and thought Russ did too. You must wonder how we decide what to eat for dinner each day.



This is Light Yellow:







The boyz have taped off the openings to the living and dining rooms with plastic sheeting. Troy will have to climb under to get out of the livingroom in a few minutes! I'll have to shut the dogs in the kitchen/basement side of the house. Molly has already tried pushing her way through the plastic, and she keeps trying when she doesn't think anybody is looking.


Russ asked Mario to please put two coats of Kilz primer on everything before they start painting. Mario rolled his eyes at me (behind Russ's back) kind of like a horse will when you're trying to make him do something he thinks is stupid. I believe he intended to prime the bare wood, but it clearly didn't make any sense to him to prime everything else. He said he would, however, so good for him. I'm not going to check to see if he did two coats.

What's getting painted

This is the blasted hallway, the first thing you see when you enter my home. Ugh. The archway to the dining room is to your left, the livingroom to your right. In this shot, you can see the two colors up for selection next to the trim on the right of the photo. I did a swatch of Barely Beige on the top, and Lambskin on the bottom. (I just got up and checked my penciled notes on the wall to be sure.) As Kathleen says, the Barely Beige has a little bit more personality, which is to say still not much, but it will still give a bit more contrast to the white trim when it is indeed clean and white again. By the way, the discoloration on the lower half of the wall coming down the stairs is from Russ's mom putting gloss paint on that part to "separate it" from the rest of the wall. I think it just attracted fingerprints from the children and nose prints from the dogs.

Russ promises to put up a Shaker rail on the wall to the left for coats, leashes, etc., but I'm thinking that's going to make our pristine wall look trashy. We should find another place for our coats or do without. The funny thing is, the coats hanging in the closet have been there for years, hardly used, while we keep putting more hooks on the door and on the wall of the stairs to hang the things we use more frequently. Whatever. None of us (yes, ), me included, can keep to a two coat limit. I can't remember what Russ's mother used to do, but she would never have put up with this mess. I say leave the hooks on the side of the stairs (that you can't see) for leashes and backpacks), but coats get hung up or tossed. Well, tossed into bedrooms anyway.

Other Progress

One other chore I've been meaning to get to: replace the racks in the dishwasher. It's a perfectly good dishwasher, but the racks are rusting and losing their pins. Glassware got chipped. The holes in the silverware caddy were maddening too. So I called up Trible's. They had the parts, shipped them to Falls Church, and I picked them up Wednesday. Zack helped me figure out how to get the the stops off the top rack rails and install the old water director thingie off the old bottom rack onto the new one. I'm glad it wasn't an IQ test; I'd have failed. And/or my son is brilliant. In any case, it was easy and now I'm happier about doing the dishes.

The painters are coming!

So it's just the hallway, but I'm very excited. Just told Russ (in an email) that they're coming Friday. This is the first he's heard that I'm going to have them paint too. The only hitch here is that I'm leaving town on Saturday. Mario has good references from the neighborhood, including one family who had them work while they were on vacation. Russ didn't want to paint yet because he wants to install crown moulding, chair rail, etc., replace the trim around the living room and dining room archways, sand blast the radiator, blah blah blah. I know he means well, and he does do excellent work, but he doesn't have the time. I told him I decided that we should paint now and fine tune with the trim later. I know he's going to have a cow (as Bart Simpson would say). I just want him to throw his hands in the air and say, "Whatever." I don't want him to fire Mario. I also don't want to miss going to Cape May, which is where I'll be next week.

Reading Progress

I finished reading The Appeal. I'm disappointed I kept trying to get back into it. Wasn't worth the effort or whatever I paid for it in the first place. I'm way over Mr. Grisham.



Also finished Duma Key. I did like that one. I don't know why Stephen King strikes me as a guilty pleasure. His character development is wonderful, and while this story wasn't his creepiest, it has enough creepiness to keep it going.



I'm nearing the end of So Brave, Young, and Handsome and loving it. Beautiful pictures with words. I'm trying to cast the movie. What a great story.

So it's been a month. . .

. . . but who's counting? Yikes!

So the engineers have come and gone. We got the column in the basement jacked up about an inch. I don't notice any dramatic change in the cracks in the walls on the first floor, but for the first time in more than 20 years the bathroom door on the second floor shuts without binding. The hardwood floors have been getting really creaky lately too, and that seems better, although I can still hear Zack trying to sneak upstairs at 2 a.m.

The construction crew took down the outer scrim of plaster on the hallway wall and patched the wallboard beneath it, but they stopped at a point over the archway into the dining room. They tried to smooth over the line where the old plaster is and where it now isn't, but it still looks like the difference in a road where the old asphalt has been scraped off but not repaved yet. On the dining room side of the wall it is as it was before, with the hole from the door knob and all. I've got a fellow coming Friday evening for an estimate to take down all the old wallboard and redo it all. I'm dying to see what's inside there. Worst case scenario is old termite damage. Well, I shouldn't say "worst case" because I think that's asking for trouble, don't you? I kinda heard an echo when I read that last bit out loud. The house gremlins are listening and coming up with new problems, I just know it.