Watching Paint Dry...

As I write this, it’s about 6:30 in the morning, a little late if I were to be rising to go to work, but not by much. The smell of paint fumes no longer registers, as it’s all I’ve smelled the past few days. The ground is saturated with rain from a sky that has been relentless the past few days. And I am sore in places I didn’t know existed.

Compared to next weekend, where I have work a special event for work on Saturday from 8am to sometime past midnight, the past few days have been almost relaxing.

And no, I’m not living for the weekend of the 7th, where I plan on doing nothing – why do you ask?

Barry and I have been wanting to paint our dining room for months. Maybe even months upon months. But there were a couple of stumbling blocks. Namely, time was a factor. We wanted to knock the room out and not work at it over the course of a few weekends. But there was also the fact that my Mother had put in a small extension wall in an attempt to enclose the kitchen. All it did was create a bottleneck when we had people over and cause delivery persons to curse us when anything had to be brought into the basement. The wall had to go. No sense painting the wall, only to tear it out later.

I tore out the drywall in the extension wall last weekend. Okay, so Barry helped. But I figured, enough talk. But the light switches – and the terrible wiring that went with it – proved to be more than either of us could handle, so we had to wait until this past Friday when Barry’s dad could help. He ever helped Barry take the wall frame out.

Let me back up a little and say that sometimes it’s cool to live in the house I grew up in. Sometimes it’s not. And sometimes it’s trippier than Hell. Coming home Friday and seeing the wall gone – the wall that I have known for about 20 years – with the original linoleum showing… Well, it dawned on me that having super short hair was appropriate because that’s the look I sported before the wall was put in. The more things change and all that.

Saturday came me painting the ceiling and Barry repairing the drywall. I hate painting ceilings, but who doesn’t? But the room is large and connects with the kitchen, so I had to add that to my painting dance card. Thank God, I wasn’t painting the kitchen walls, too!

I now have blisters on my hands and my wrists are still throbbing. Barry couldn’t paint the ceiling because he had neck surgery last September, but I think I have undiagnosed Carpel Tunnel. Barry suggested several times that we should invest in a sprayer, but despite my bitching, there’s something primal about painting. How often do I do physical labor of any real magnitude? While I won’t go so far as to say that I wear the blisters and blanket of soreness across my shoulders as a badge of honor, I will say that it’s satisfying to know that I can see the fruits of my labor every day. So yeah, worth it.

The dining room is now a soft grey. The kitchen, royal blue. The family room, brown, red and rose. The office, green and purple. The bedroom, aqua. I feel like I somehow am going in a new direction.

But the reason for the muted color choice was two-fold for me. I wanted something soothing while I was eating and we were also wanting to do something more architectural with the room. Sleek and mod and all that.

The grey looks amazing.

It’s also kinda cool to have an actual dining room. The house is a three bedroom ranch with a kitchen and two rooms that I grew up with as a living room and family room. Now, I see no difference between a family room and living room except the level of formalness. So not formal. The front room has a chandelier in it and our dining table always sat beneath it, used only when I did homework. It was designated a living room and had dated custom drapes that my Border Collier ate and dated green carpet that I tore out on a whim, only to discover gorgeous hardwood floors beneath. Not so gorgeous now with two dogs, but that’s not the point.

The point is that I got rid of the dining table and after many, many, many furniture arrangements, we now have a very comfortable family room where a room that was barely used once sat. The room that used to be the family room left us with a bit of a conundrum. I got rid of my dining table because I never grew up using it. Now, it seemed like a good idea to get one. To eat at. To have friends over to eat with us. To have friends over to play board games. To set things down on and walk away.

And a dining table would be perfect in the room that now had no purpose. Well, I guess it now had a purpose, huh?

So a little trim work today and some rearranging and we’re in business.

We’re just trying to figure out why the largest room in the house, give or take, has no ceiling light. So almost in business, but that’s a project for another weekend.

Until then, floor lamps are our friend.