The Perks of Painting

Don't get too excited, we haven't painted a room yet.  We are learning to have patience with the house and all the little things that come with it, including each other.  The biggest lesson we are learning is that this is a journey, not a destination.  (Well... technically it's a destination because you can arrive at our house and all, but we're referring to the analogy here.)  We have had some, what we thought were reasonable, goals for the past couple weeks.  These goals being: clean the apartment from top to bottom, repaint the kitchen cabinets, paint the family room, redo the floors, decorate the Christmas tree (only Ashley's goal), and begin moving some boxes in.  Well, we cleaned the apartment and began moving in boxes, but the rest... well that's just a pipe dream right now.  We've learned that what takes the professionals a day or two to do, takes us triple, if not quadruple, the amount of time.  And between work and packing, working on the house has fallen to the back burner.  (ha... house pun intended)


What we have done is celebrate this house and enjoy the work it requires of us. 

Toasting to the American Dream, our first house!

Brendan has added frequent driving miles to and from Home Depot and Walmart for various items.  He has researched millions of "how to's" and "crap, now what's."  He is still trying hard to remove the stripped screws from the large shelf/table in the family room.  
Stripped Screws - 3   Brendan - 0


Ashley is doing what she loves, painting!  

Caution: Perfectionist at work!

She is adding another white coat to all of kitchen cupboards and painting all of the wooden drawers to match.  She, also, is battling the stripped screws and can often be heard muttering, "to hell with this... I'll just paint around it."  She believes she found her inner zen.  Painting, a monotonous, mindless, yet soothing motion.  Ahhh... right up her alley!  3 hours may seem excessive for just painting the backs of these, but there was some special detailing needed around the hardware and windows. 

That crack you see was caused by hammering out a stripped screw,
except we still couldn't get the screw out.
*See Lessons Learned.

Before paint

After paint, much fresher!

Lessons Learned this week:

• Estimated time for project, always multiply by 3.
• Nothing goes as planned (a regular lesson)
• Sickness is not an excuse to stop working. You can do something that requires you to sit on your butt.
• Stripped screws... still failing that lesson.  (Any AIS classes for this!?!)
• Blog - a great way to procrastinate packing, err... we mean, a great way to document the life of a new homeowner!