The joy of painting...

Well, I'm back, and flush with house transformation success. I took a full day off from work yesterday to paint, and I tell you, I was a maniac. Aside from a lunch break (ok, and a break to randomly scarf down some chocolate chips) I painted for the entire day. When I was finished with a coat, and I needed to wait to re-coat, I painted something else. When I finished my goal for the day, but still had a couple hours left, I painted something else. I so rarely get uninterrupted time for projects like this, that I refused to let even a moment go to waste. If it wasn't moving and looked in need of some brightening, I painted it.

My day started out at Home Depot, because naturally, despite my careful planning, I needed another supply. It's just written in the stars or something, like the DMV. No matter how much prep work you do, you need something else, and have to make another trip. I was already clad in my ratty painting clothes. This is a lesson I learned early on, and all other eternal optimists heed this warning: I don't care how much you assure yourself "I'm going to be SOOOO careful!" do NOT wear your cute new yoga pants and a shirt you paid more than $3 for. You *will* get paint on them. You just *will*. I did this only one time, and after managing to put two full imprints of my butt onto the freshly painted wall and ruining my pants, I succumbed to having ugly "paint clothes" specifically for this butt-imprinting purpose. It's just the way it goes.

So, I got home, and got to work. And I tell you, I was a machine. I put 2 coats on the living room archway, a radiator cover, the downstairs hallway, and trim work on the entire second floor of our house. I suppose I should mention that when we bought our house, it was uglier than sin. The entire house, aside from the 2 bathrooms, were painted the same color. And by "the entire house" I mean:

Walls

Trim

Windows. Yes, the sills, but also...the *windows*. Why would you do this?!

Plugs and covers

Light switches and covers

*Inside* all of the closets

The fireplace hearth

And most unforgivably, the fireplace *brick*.

How long does it take to remove a light switch cover, people? Oh, I don't know, a full 30 seconds? What on earth were they thinking?! And the fireplace...this should just be a crime. I've spent weeks of my life inhaling paint stripper that peels the skin off my hands and is illegal in 20 states to try and rescue the brick, but that's another story altogether.

Anyway, if we were blessed with such a quantity of this paint, what color is it, you ask? I like bright colors. My kitchen is Afternoon, dining room Fine Wine, living room Artichoke, and the newly painted hallway is Lemongrass. The old color on every surface in our house can only be described as Oppressive Gloom - a dingy, ugly ass off-white variant. Oppressive Gloom flat edition on the walls, attracting every fingerprint and bit of filth accumulated for the past 50 years or so. And Oppressive Gloom Semi-Gloss for the trim. It felt *so good* to cover the heavy-handed depressiveness with brighter colors.

Ah, but then there's the bathrooms. I will grant, they were painted something other than OG. However, they have no other redeemable characteristics. The downstairs bath was painted the *exact same* shade (aquamarine) as the wall tile, complete with a matching (and filthy) heavy drapery over the cute old house window. It was like stepping into a rain storm every time you went in there. That's long since been painted white and the adorable window stripped and stained. Upstairs, above the wall tile, the walls are inexplicably pink. I like pink, I do. But not this pink. It's a drabby, crappy-looking pink that lots its bloom sometime in the mid 60's, and it covers the entirety of the walls, trim, and once again, window. Not just the sill, this bears repeating. Yes, they took the time to paint all of the individual woodwork on the window itself.

So, about mid-afternoon, when I had really worked myself into a frenzy, and was poised with my brush, just looking for something to paint, it came to me: The pink. The pink WILL BE ERADICATED. I'm going to paint the walls mocha, but I tackled the trim and the window with white semi-gloss, and I was downright gleeful about it. I actually have a wound on my hand from painting so much yesterday. Yes, I have Painters Palm. Affects mostly crazy people. Like me.

Anyway, here's the hallway, before:

And here it is, after:

Hank included, extra :)

Let me see if I can dig up our living room, and the infamous fireplace...Ah, here it is, the front mostly stripped by your resident crazy person. But note the wall-to-wall gold carpet. They even had *extra pieces* of this thing throughout the house, for use as mats. Welcoming? I think not.

And, thank merciful God, the after:

So, I'm scheduled to take some more time off in a few weeks to finish the hallway, and then tackle Hank's room and the upstairs bathroom. I'm looking forward to it, rubbing my palms together in a devilish fashion...