Notes to Self

Self,

Here are a few things I've learned over the past day or so....

• leaving the house at 8:30 am and returning at 10:00 pm is hard on little children too, not just adults
• sometimes its better just to rent/buy new equipment, rather than spend an hour or so cleaning old stuff, only to discover you need a crucial part, and end up buying the equipment (in frustration) anyway (we now own a paint sprayer!)
• time reserved for "paint prep" should be used wisely
• there are always more things to prep than you realized
• ...or even prepped!
• ceilings don't have to be sparkling clean (kitchen and bathrooms are my exceptions) in order to prime, they just need to be swept free of cobwebs
• car buffers and a tsp/bleach mixture work well to clean ceilings
• so does the Daniel-son "wax-on / wax-off" method
• children who claim they're bored may not be having a great un-scheduled summer, they may actually be bored playing in the yard of an empty house
• you know you've got good friends when they come over to help, get high off of the paint fumes, and take all your children back to their house for the rest of the day
• THANK YOU!!! (Can't be said enough.)
• One five-gallon bucket of kilz oil-based primer isn't enough to cover the entire interior of a house and all the doors
• four buckets is just about enough
• they need to be shaken before you leave the paint store
• kids don't like necco candy - apparently it's an acquired taste
• getting high on paint fumes is possible even with a carbon filter breathing mask
• and with a little dust mask
• it's not fun--just pretty much annoying
• but if you wait long enough, you can still drive a vehicle
• you just can't park very well
• melted ice (water) is the best stuff ever
• having white trim/doorways/doors is amazing (we came from 70s brown)
• walking through a freshly primed house, all in white, is amazing
• it's like walking through a cloud

We've felt like all of the work we've been putting in hasn't shown up very well. Things are finally all coming together. We primed the entire interior of the house yesterday. (As was pointed out, it's one of those jobs you have to finish once you start, because the thought of having to come back and do it again makes you want to vomit.) This is a huge change from all the dark interior wood trim and dingy walls. It's going to be sooo great when it's finished, and we're preparing for the home stretch now. This consumes so much of our lives right now, it's insane. But now we're getting into cool stuff, like paint, tiles and flooring, so the results are more rewarding. All that prep is paying off, and it's nice.

We just might make it afterall....