Karen, Erik and Jack

This was our first weekend of work at the new home. I write this to you from the comfort of our sofa, with the Packers-Giants game on in front of me. We are stiff and covered in little flecks of paint. We are homeowners.

Upon arriving at the new home, the first order of business was removing the yucky fluorescent lighting in the kitchen. Fluorescent lighting gives me the wiggins (a cousin of the heebie jeebies), and my wonderful husband took it down for me. Unfortunately, we discovered that the wiring was not centered over the island (not even close, actually) and there were black heat marks on the ceiling from the light bulbs. We filled in the holes from the fixture and realized we were going to have to paint the ceiling. That, and installing the new kitchen lighting (which was different from the one we originally picked up because of the centering issue) took us the entire first day. We left tired but wishing we had made more progress. We still had the entire downstairs to paint.

Today, we arrived and got to work right away. The ceiling now looked great – nice bright white ceiling that lightened up the dark looking room significantly. We began painting the walls of the family room and connecting kitchen. It’s a very light creamy yellow color – much better than the previous color, a grayish-purple that looked like a bruise. Because of the surfaces we had to cut around – like the fireplace and windows, cabinets and counters, and more – this took us most of the day. During that time, we pulled bacl the refrigerator and found a toxic waste dump that had to be cleaned by hand, and I made runs to pick up supplies. By the time we left in the early evening, the first coat of paint was on the walls. We decided to let it dry overnight before even attempting anything else.

Since we are behind now and are considering painting the ceiling in the other rooms (it looks great and the ceiling is currently dingy and had old paint marks on it), we’re trying to reassess our schedule. We only have two more weekends to finish the work, then an “unavailable” weekend for a friend’s wedding that Erik is standing up in, and then moving weekend. So we are working out options such as scheduling time during the week to do work. Keep in mind that we had scheduled to do our packing during the week, so any work at the new place during the week is time away from packing. We might also take our friends who have offered to help up on their generosity. So, we’ll see.

And now the part Fitz everybody wants – pictures!

The old living room color, right as we started to cut in on the trim.

Erik used to take jobs paint during the summers when he was in school. He’s very good at it, and my house painting has improved a lot thanks to him.

Here we see the new kitchen lighting, with 2 of 5 lamps attached. All 5 are now installed.

What happened to the old fluorescent fixture? Erik took an extension cord, cut it open and wired it to the flourescent wiring, and turned it into a work light for us.

Behind the refrigerator, we found a shard of painter’s tape showing the original color of the kitchen. See, this house was on the market, then taken off for a couple of months and put back on. It seems that while it was off the market, they painted the place in more neutral colors to appeal to buyers. It was a good plan – the painter’s tape shows that the kitchen was originally Pepto Bismol pink (the color on the photo is a bit off). Other discoveries – the dining room and living room were a deep raspberry red, and the downstairs half bath was bright metallic purple. I can see how that would scare away some buyers.

More later – time to get ready for bed.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 20th, 2008 at 9:04 pm and is filed under Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.