I got to cat sit Lucy again! And I found out Lucy has a new friend Boris. Also I got to have a sleepover at Poppa & Grandma’s. Poppa and I planned our vegetable garden for this summer!
He said
As is usually the case around here, the discussion around making some changes to paint moved very quickly from talking to doing. By Monday morning we were settled on painting the dark, dated wood trim on the main level to a crisp, bright ultra white. It was something that while spending a lot of time over the years discussing whether we wanted to cover over the large, beautiful hardwood baseboards that attracted us to the house, once we were settled on doing we wanted to be already done. In all of one week’s time we’ve gone from not even considered it yet, to having the second of three or four coats already on, as you can see in the pictures that accompany this week’s post. And we’re quite happy with the result! The rooms already look so much brighter.
Thursday this week for the first day in a long while that I had off and not much to do. It was a bit of a strange feeling to have not much on the agenda. After Emelia was off to school, as Danielle can attest, I got real lazy. It was nice to be able to mostly just hangout with Danielle in the daycare setting and see her in action. The biggest thing I’ve learned is that I don’t know how she does it. I mean she has the patience of a saint, and of this I was aware, but seeing what she deals with day in, day out, makes me want to quietly sneak off upstairs and find some peace and quiet. Just like I did.
The real treat this week was cat sitting for one of Danielle’s friends. Danielle and Emelia have been doing this for her friend and her cat Lucy for the last few years, but this year there came an added benefit: a hot tub! It seems they had recently acquired one and didn’t mind us going over and making sure the water got circulated properly by sitting in it. So it became a thing we did almost every evening before bed time. And man did my muscles ever appreciate the cat sitting! The highlight was the night that Emelia and I sat in it, while it snowed, catching snowflakes with our mouths!
Later in the week, once we had settled on painting over the trim and knowing that I had the luxury of a half day of work on Friday and was off on Saturday we agreed this weekend would be as good a time as any to get a start on all the trim we needed to paint. Because we knew Emelia would have little attention span for the sheer amount of time it would take, and because I knew Danielle and I could use quiet time in the hot tub by ourselves without Chatty McSwimming-Pool, we asked if Poppa and Grandma would like an overnight visiter which of course they jumped at.
After we got relaxed and rejuvenated, we picked up the primer, paint and requisite tools to start painting as soon as we got home. So there we were at 10:00pm on a Friday night with records playing, a beer or two in hand (Caesars for Danielle of course) and starting work taping and priming the wood. We went to bed after midnight exhausted, but pretty content with the start we had gotten. Oddly enough, I don’t think there is a better date night for Danielle and I than renovating… We were both pretty happy about it.
Almost too early on Saturday morning I was up and off to Mom & Dad’s to pick up Emelia and take her off to her swim class while Danielle got up and back at the painting. By the time I had dropped Emelia back off at Mom & Dad’s and then gotten back home, we were pretty much ready to move on from priming to painting. We spent the rest of the day working on that, while my parents entertained Emelia, fed her, and then at the end of the night even brought us dinner so we could keep at the task at hand. They were an absolute godsend, allowing us to get much further in the job than we had expected after we very quickly found out just how much damned wood trim there was in our house!
Today was a day back at work for me, and a day of usual errands for Danielle. We’ll get back at the painting after we wrap up the post for the week. And hopefully by this time next week, we’re talking about how great the walls look with the beautiful, crisp white trim and the new coat of Grey Owl paint from Benjamin Moore. But for now, there’s more trim to paint…
She said
The theme of the week is white paint, white paint, white paint and lots of it. You know you never know how much woodwork you have in your house until you have to paint it all.
A week ago after putting up some test sections of the wall colour we had chosen I spoke to John about the idea of painting out the trim. It was something I had never really strongly considered, after all we had a 100 year old house with wide original wood trim. But the problem was, the trim was not in the best of condition, it would have taken an insane amount of work to strip, repair and bring back to life. And to be honest it was heavy and dark feeling in a house that does not get the best of natural light, and it looked like crap against the colour we loved for the living room.
After looking at the grey colour against white trim that we had on the second floor and after researching other homes in our area I realized that painting it out was going to give new life to the house, modernize it while keeping the original charm that made us fall in love with this house. So sorry mom and dad I know you would be mortified that we are painting it all out but our wood trim was never as amazing as the wood in the houses I grew up in. It had to go.
And I have to say I am so happy with the results. I cannot wait until the trim is all done and the new colour is up. But it has been an insanely huge job and we haven’t even taken on the stairs and still have so much to do but it will be so worth it. Not it makes is itch to redo the entire living room with new furniture but with the daycare kids here every day it is not a real option, investing in new furniture might have to wait for a while.
The biggest hang-up at this time after the trim is done is getting the plaster repair work done so we can take on hopefully next weekends big task which will be the painting of the walls. Now Easter weekend is only a few weeks away so I know that we can get through this sizeable painting to do list over the next few weekends and for sure over Easter which is only three weeks away.
So to make the weekend more interesting is that I remembered after we started painting on Friday night is that I was hosting an Epicure tasting party at our place for Sunday afternoon—not my best timing. So after painting for 3 hours Friday night, 12 hours on Saturday we had to quickly put the house back together as best as we could and spend the later part of this morning cleaning up the house so I could have some good friends over to taste some yummy seasonings. I have fallen in love with this seasoning company because of a few things: everything is gluten free; it is low sodium; and, a whole lot of YUMMY. The party was quite but a success, I got some free products and stocked us up on some seasonings that I cannot wait to try out. Emelia even loved a few of the samples and was asking if we could order some more so she could have some more yummy chicken and veggies.
Once the party was over Emelia made our way to the mall to do a bit of shopping for me. As a thank-you for watching the cats my friend Karen gave me a gift card to Masonville so Emelia and I went off to find myself a new charm for my Pandora bracelet. I had thought I would buy one that represents the daycare kids and Emelia’s time with me in our daycare but Emelia chose one she thought was perfect for her and Daddy, a painters palete and paintbrush. How perfect for my artistic pair. It’s perfect, the lady bug charm will come but another day, and I did find a perfect one for my Emelia that I will add to the collection down the road.
That was the weekend that was, long, exhausting and still so much to do. So off to paint AGAIN. This will be the theme for the next few weeks I am sure but the results will be so worth the blisters on our hands and our sore backs.