The Friends and Family Plan

I love my yuppie iPhone, but AT&T has crappy service. You know who provides great service? Our friends and family. My mom met me for lunch and brought us a pressure washer to clean off our deck and house, which she has also offered her services in doing for us (so long as I get on the extension ladder to get the siding up high, because she doesn't do ladders anymore....probably a good policy). Of course, she came with more prizes, like the Sully-approved magic-paint-roller-mabob, which will be used quite a bit since we're painting everything in the house (she even offered to paint too (don't worry mom, you will)). But aside from the labor which we pay for in beer and food, it's really just getting time to hang out with people doing something awesome.

Awesome, while not a relative term, is subjective. For example, Jane and Daniel came over the other night to install a new air return register and filters. Well, Jane was already here, painting and drinking margaritas with Jessie most of the day. Then Daniel brought over some parts with a "neighborly discount" from his job. Now, getting to the home improvement related parts of this post, we pulled off the previous metal filter prison to find that the previous owners had simply painted over wallpaper. And what sweet, sweet wallpaper it is.

Awesome, now we have to paint over it again...or remove it.......I'm not sure. Either way, we were switching out to (A) get rid of the washable filter that is really old and can develop mold easily and (2) put in an easy-to-open version that's not rusting.

While Daniel and I were messing with that, the girls got bored, so they continued stripping paint, because there's always paint to strip in this house. At this point it seems that every inch of trim will have to be stripped. To Jessie, this is awesome. Subjectively, I disagree.

Then we have Doug and Rhonda who came down for the weekend to help us with stuff and hang out (since it had been over a year since we had seen them = way too long) and they brought a playmate for Optimus. Despite the huge space and high ceilings, it feels decidedly full with all that is going on. As soon as Doug showed up he started in rewiring (the next post will cover stage one of this in detail, because it's a big job). Since half the fans are supported in the ceilings only by the plaster, we started taking them all down to fix that. Well, since they're down and they're all different and all ugly brass or white, why not paint them? Naturally, now all our fans are disassembled.

The picnic table has become the paint table, mainly because it's in sad shape and just makes the process easier. Breaking out the low/no-VOC paint (as well as a little bit of other paint we're less proud of), now all our fans will be a textured brown. Overall this will match the paint theme throughout the house, make them look more consistent, less gaudy, etc etc. Next, we'll delve into the wonderful world of replacing 87-yr-old hacked up wiring. This is going to be a full day.

Tom

Currently listening to "Would?" by Alice In Chains