Moving Week: Day 2

First thing this morning, we headed over to the house to start working. Little did we know what was coming.

The only room we had everything we needed for was the bathroom, so I set that up right away. Nice colours, hey? We wouldn't want to be boring. :)

While I was setting up the bathroom, J was apparently discovering a lot of rather large spiders under the roof of the deck. The funny thing about this picture is that it looks really posed, but I actually had to sneak up on J to take it before he moved. This is his natural spider-looking pose.

Here is a first look at our back yard, complete with clothesline. I love how green it is!

In our bedroom, someone (we're guessing the slightly insane tenant who just moved out) did a terrible job painting one wall a terrible, oppressive colour. We were going to leave it for the moment, but then I realized that now, when there's nothing in the room yet, is the perfect time to paint. So off we went to Mitre 10 to pick out paint. On the way there, we decided to paint all four walls, instead of just the one.

We picked out a very light bluish-greyish, and I started painting. The paint was much thicker than I was expecting, and hard to spread, so it took much longer than I thought, but I was excited to cover up that red with something nice and light. Also, I was feeling pretty good about my painting skills.

Unfortunately, all of this screeched to a halt when J got back from his second trip to Mitre 10 (more on that later). His first comment was, "Oh no, it's way too bright! And why are there all these drips?" I stepped back from the wall for the first time, and noticed that as the paint dried, it turned into a much deeper colour, which is not what we wanted. In addition, the thickness of the paint had caught me by surprise, and there were several drips on the first wall I'd done. Fortunately, it was still wet enough to fix the drips, but there was nothing to be done about the colour. I actually like it, but J did not, and I can't blame him, because it looks nothing like what we'd picked. I went ahead and finished up the walls, and I'm confident that once it all dries, it will look wonderful. I am hoping so, because it took me almost 7 hours, and my arms and hands are terribly sore. But a fresh coat of paint is always good, and I managed to keep the rest of the walls drip-free from the beginning.

While I was painting away, J was putting his new tools to good use. When we opened the bedroom windows to ventilate, we discovered that the hinges on one side were so rusted and warped that once the window was open, it was impossible to close again. No good. So J bought new hinges, but when he tried to get the old ones out, the screws were so rusted that the just fell apart in the wood. He ended up having to drill them out, put putty in the holes, and redrill before he could finally get the new hinges on. After all that, when we put it back, we discovered that the window itself is also warped. J was able to wedge it back into place, but we are not opening it again until we figure out a better plan. But it is securely closed and much stronger than before, so... good job, J!