Painting - Become the Flowmeister

The painting continues unabated. My Dad has been painting the woodwork (baseboards, molding, etc) while we’re at work and thank God for that because painting that trim is extremely time consuming and aggravating. So far we’ve gotten the living room and dining room completely painted and the kitchen is almost done. With the new colors on the walls, this place looks like a totally different house. It’s starting to look like our house…and it’s actually “in the middle of our street”, so the song by Madness actually applies somewhat.

The painting actually started on Saturday, thanks to some friends that agreed to put in a grueling day of work for pizza and soda (and beer, but we didn’t actually drink any…we were tired enough as it was). However, my digital camera decided not to work that day (as is often its wont), so I took some video with John McGarvey’s Digital8 camera. I converted it to Flash Video, and I’ll attempt to post it here:

If it’s not working, make sure you have the latest version of Flash installed. It’s about 19 MB, so as long as you have a broadband internet connection it should play fine. The subtle differences in the white & off-white colors are tough to make out, but you get the general gist of it.

My family helped paint on Sunday and were an incredible help. We prepped the kitchen and got the first coat of yellow on it while my brother & my Dad painted the ceilings in the 3 bedrooms. I was feeling under the weather yesterday, so I settled for making sure the washer & dryer were hooked up and functioning instead of finishing the kitchen. I tested the washer and though there were a few snags at first, there were no catastrophic water-related errors in my washer installation. …which is always good.

I also was able to take some pictures yesterday. I banged on my digital camera until the battery compartment popped open and when I turned it back on, it actually started taking pictures!

Maybe you can see the difference in color between the ceiling and left wall here, but maybe not. Still, it shows off the nice shiny woodwork my Dad painted yesterday. This living room is now totally complete (though I may go through with a Q-tip and make every edge between colors perfectly straight).

You can definitely see the difference between the light wall and the white ceiling here. The brick red also turned out very nice.

Here’s my Dad washing out some brushes. The kitchen only has one coat of yellow on it here, but it still looks good. The plan is to lightly rag-on a caramel color to give the walls an aged look. We’ll test it behind the fridge or oven first, though.

This is the cold water line my brother helped put in for the ice maker in the fridge. It went really well and the ice maker works like a charm. These pipes leave a little to be desired…they’re not really mounted to anything as they travel down through the infamous crawlspace and into the basement. They may get replaced at some point, but that’s pretty far down the road.

I attempted to give you an idea of how the three colors on the first floor look next to each other here in these three pictures. However, the flash kind of ruins the effect. The last picture is done without a flash…and obviously without focus as well.

My wife Jenn and my sister Jen took some time on Sunday and painted this pantry/closet/thing using the colors from the living room. Looks pretty darn good if you ask me!

My Dad has offered to continue painting throughout the week, which will be an indescribable help. It’s very possible that the painting will be done by the end of the week and we can start moving stuff into the house over the 3-day weekend!