White primer beneath your fingernails...

...Does not a French manicure make. (In case you were wondering)

I'm going to be stuck at work super late due to close, but I thought I'd give a sneak peak at today's project. In a way, I'm grateful that I'm not there, as I'm stressed enough thinking about our roof collapsing just looking at this...

Edward Scissorhomes

This weekend was filled with fumes, namely tar. The bathroom was hot-mopped on Saturday at 7:30am. The process was quick, but the shower base was left filled with water to ensure a water tight seal. The workers came in with a bucket of steaming hot tar and literally mopped it all over the base of the shower and about one foot up the sides. They wore gas masks. We did not... We went the day without A/C so that we could properly vent with windows and doors open. We also used an industrial fan to waft the fumes outside.The rest of the fumes were from paint and primer. I finished the office walls and ceiling. Three of the walls were painted in Glidden's Classic Key Lime and the accent wall is Glidden's Soothing Green Tea. Mark thinks it looks too much like split pea soup, so we may re-evaluate the colors once the room is put together.
Following the completion of the office, Mark and I took on the living room. We decided to go lighter than we had originally planned, with Glidden's Eloquent Ivory. It's a really nice clean color that's off-whiteish, but with the light that hits the room, two of the walls look as though they're painted with a slightly darker color.

As far as paint brands go, we've bought all of our paints at Home Depot and are using both Behr and Glidden. I'm starting to prefer Glidden over Behr. Both are great, but Glidden is cheaper and I find that it spreads easier. This may be because it is thinner, but we are painting at least two coats in every room, so a little thinner is fine. If you are planning on only going with one coat, Behr may be your best bet.

We had our security system installed on Saturday as well, so don't be tryin' to break into our house or nothin'. I was surprised at how long it takes to install. The Brinks, sorry, Broadview, (they changed the name to "establish a separate identity from the armored transport division",) guy arrived at 8am and did not leave until around 2pm.

I also tried painting the closet cabinets this weekend, but even with the special primer for semi-gloss, the paint is not holding on very well. Mark purchased a paint removing solvent that we will try on them today to get rid of the 50 or so years of paint. Has anyone worked with this before? Any tips or suggestions?

After all of our hard work this weekend, Mark and I took our first bike ride around the neighborhood last night. I love where we live! It's such a nice, quiet pocket, filled with houses that probably looked identical back in the 60's but have slowly gained their own identities over the years. I told Mark that our neighborhood reminds me of the movie Edward Scissorhands. It's not all pastelly or filled with topiaries, but that's how I picture it looked back in the day.

In our Prime

So no photos of Mark with the sledgehammer, but I did sneak into the bathroom this evening to capture the aftermath of the demo. Our trashcan is too full, so we're waiting for trash collection to dump the rest that you see below.

Unlike homes built today, where waterproof backer board is used to support tile in the shower, (pardon my lack of proper terminology,) back in 1962, our shower was built with concrete and chicken wire beneath the tile, (much like what is used to support stucco). Needless to say, Dave sure got a workout swinging that hammer.

Tonight Mark and I started priming the living room and I'll tell you, it sure is nice painting over carpet you don't care about...

Okay. That's it for tonight. Too tired, must sleep!