Painting with the windows open is so much nicer than the alternative.

Last week, when we were painting the bedroom, it was really hot and muggy and I had to keep the windows closed and the A/C on. This morning, I painted the bathroom with the windows open and the fans going. I'm not nearly as giddy from the fumes as I was last week, and it's drying way better. Well, sort of.

It's a long story but here it is ....The people who owned the house before us did little or no maintenance on it. We figure our house is about 55 years old. We knew, moving in (in October 2000), that we'd have to replace the roof and we did this within the first 3 weeks of living here. Because the roof was way overdue to be replaced, there was some dampness in the attic and the second floor. We left the upstairs rooms alone for the first winter, not wanting to paint before the place had a chance to dry out. In the spring of 2001, we painted the guest bedroom, it was a hideous, bright yellow (it had been a child's bedroom) with teddy bears on the walls. Even the floor was painted banana yellow. Last year, we went to work on the bathroom. The toilet tank was not insulated so the floor around it had been damaged due to moisture. There was no ventilation fan so the ceiling was pretty yucky. Last summer, we had the floor and ceiling replaced in our bathroom. We did this just as the weather got really humid and didn't want to paint and finish it off during the heat of last summer. Mark's been working on the walls this spring. They needed a lot of patching and sanding. On Saturday and Sunday, he finished off the sanding and I started painting this morning.

I got all the "cutting in" done within an hour. When I started rolling the paint on the ceiling and the walls, it went pretty smoothly. We got really good paint at Home Depot. I noticed, as I was finishing up that the paint was bubbling in a couple of places. I started to feel sick to my stomach. Almost the entire bathroom had been sanded and it never occurred to me that they may have used oil based paint in there. It's looking like there are 3 or 4 spots that we'll have to sand in the morning before I can put a second coat on. I'd hoped to get it all done today but I want to really set before we sand it. All I could think at the time was that I'd have to sand the whole bathroom and prime and then repaint the whole place.

Fun stuff huh?? I had a minor melt-down last night. We were up to our eyeballs in plaster dust, it had settled through the entire house and I just could not see an end to it while I was cleaning. It seemed that the more I cleaned, the bigger the mess was. Mark was awesome though, he took down the plastic sheeting, vacuumed the stairwell and calmed me down. The dust finally started settling once the sheeting came down (we had covered the doors up stairs with it). I just could not see how the house would ever be clean again. I felt that bad about the mess.

Part of what I was feeling, I think, was because we went out yesterday and bought new living furniture. We didn't plan to do this. I had needed to get some new batteries for my camera and we went to the futureshop for them. We started out looking at stereos (we were planning to get ourselves a new DVD player with surround sounds, SACD, MP3, etc. for Christmas). Futureshop didn't have what we were looking for so we just got the batteries and headed over to the mall. We knew we couldn't do anything at home because Mark was waiting for the last of his patch work to dry in the bathroom. We parked by the Bay when we got to the mall. I don't often go to the mall but whenever I do, I usually end up looking at sofa's in the furniture department at the Bay. We desperately need a new sofa and chair. We live on an old futon sofa and a chair that belonged to the living set my parents got when they were married in 1966. Something drew me into the back corner of the department and I found myself standing in front of a beautiful Bauhaus set. A navy sofa with a coordinating navy and green chair. They were almost 1/2 price. I had no intention of buying them but we ended up doing just that (they have don't pay anything 'til June 2004 on right now). I think that my melt-down was because of the money we spent (or would do, in June 2004) and partly because I could not envision bringing brand new furniture into a filthy pig-sty house.

This morning, the dust had totally settled, I got the first coat on the bathroom and the downstairs is totally cleaned. I slugged my guts out this afternoon scrubbing and polishing everything. It looks pretty good. The guest bedroom and our freshly painted bedroom are still covered in a fine layer of plaster dust but it's not too bad. I'll probably clean them tomorrow while the second coat of paint dries.

I'm so grateful for Mark. He let me have my cry, my moment if you will. He listened to me, calmed me down and was totally rational about everything. I love that he can do that for me. I think that I do that for him too and that's why we're such a good team. On Wednesday night, we'll be a team with a new sofa and chair in our living room. Of course, now the living room needs painted but that will have to wait for the fall because I do not want to spend my entire two weeks holiday from work painting. We'll also need a new area rug and coffee table but the sofa and chair are what we needed most. The rest will have to wait until I can get up to IKEA in Nepean again (did I mention that I also need new bedside tables and lamps for our bedroom?).

All in good time. I just keep adding things to the list...the nice thing is though, that after 2.5 years, this house is finally starting to feel like our house, bubbling bathroom paint and all.