Busy Beaver

Hi Cindy!

We had our turn to be wet yesterday morning. I got up early to take DH to his zen retreat because he didn't want to leave the truck there. A woman from the group had her car broken into during the week. We left the house shortly after 5 am. There was lightening nearby and it was quite windy. We had a few drops on the way there and more on my way home. Within a few minutes of getting home the sky opened up. We had quite a bit of lightening and a lot of rain. It's hard to see in the picture but our street flooded out a few feet. I left around 6:30 to volunteer for the co-op and it was still pouring and it was pretty hard to see on the freeway. I wore my rain coat but ended up taking it off because I was getting wetter from sweating than from the rain even though it was still coming down in buckets. Fortunately the storm pushed its way through in just a couple of hours and by 9 am it was pretty much done. It was cloudy and humid for the rest of the day but no more rain.

The plan for the rest of the day was to paint one wall in the front room. We haven't done much interior painting since being in the house and it is definitely time. And they're going to come in the next few weeks to put in the new carpeting so it'd be nice to have it done before then. When the last owners painted the front room they must have run out of paint because the only did 3 walls in an almond color. It looks okay but you can see in places where they didn't finish touch up all the way to the ceiling. The fourth wall they left a dingy white.

Here is the wall before painting. You can kind of see the two different colors between the white wall (left) and the almond wall (right). The front door is a dingy white with the insets painted another off-white color. The closet door is the same dingy white as the wall and the baseboards.

Here is a picture of the first wall complete. It took two coats to cover the wall completely. I liked the color so much that I decided to extend it along the other wall too. Unfortunately it is all door and window so I couldn't use the paint stick with the regular size roller. I had to use a small roller and a brush. The hardest part was going back and forth between the step stool and the ground. In the end I really liked how it looked but was a little worried that DH wouldn't like the color. I'd picked it out without him.

Here is a picture of the finished wall with the pictures hung back up. It really looks good and Teddy matches perfectly. DH really liked the color too. (yay!) I still need to paint the base boards and the trim around the doors so not every thing has been moved back. I also have a few spots on the popcorn ceiling that got caught with the edge of the roller so I have to touch those up too. It has inspired me to move on to the hallway and laundry room next. And all the doors need painting too. Here is the color card that I chose from. The one on the walls is called "Rich Caramel", the third from the bottom. I think we may use one of the lighter colors for the other areas we need to paint.

The other thing that I painted that isn't showing up here is the vent cover over the AC outlet. I took it down to paint and found the inside covered with mold. Really gross! I soaked it in bleach water and scrubbed it good before hitting it with white spray paint. It (as well as all the others in the house) was an icky dull gray metal. Now this one is bright white and looks good. When I pointed it out to DH he thought I'd bought a new one.

Today I spent about 2 hours attacking the palm tree while DH changed the oil on my car. All the rain yesterday soaked into all the areas where we'd cut the old palm fronds last year. I was able to pull down the old date fronds and then use a hoe to pull the other little pieces down. The pieces ended up filling 4 garbage bags and the fronds took 5 trips to the alley. We still don't have all the dirt moved from the fence so it was "fun" off-roading the wheel barrow through the dirt. I was really stiff in the arms and hips from yesterday. I bet tomorrow it will be more so in the arms and shoulders from attacking a tree with a hoe.

Time to finish and start HP#3. More knitting content next time, A