You might need sunglasses

It's been ages since my last update, but that's because His Grace and I have been busy.  BUSY.  

• The kitchen ceiling is done.
  
• The dirty old oatmeal glop is off the ceiling in the two bedrooms.  We bit the bullet and hired someone to do that for us.  Remember it took me two days to scrape the spackle off the tiny kitchen ceiling?  Chris got it off the two bedrooms in a couple of hours each.

• The ceilings are painted.  His Grace is my hero.  Really, he did all the ceiling painting.

• The kitchen morning glories are gone.  Paint is so neat... you'd never know they'd ever been there.  I painted the walls a pale mossy green, and it looks wonderfully clean.
  
• The vanity and linen cupboard are out of the bedroom.  His Grace and I managed to remove the vanity and to get the cupboard partly away from the wall, but we needed Chris to actually get it out of the room.  We thought of putting the cupboard in the kitchen which is why I moved the kitchen paint job up on the schedule - 'cause those morning glories had to be gone before the cupboard got moved in.  But then we decided it was too difficult to install it there and moved it out to the garage for additional storage there.

And the big news... drum roll please... the master bedroom has been painted and the bedspread has been dyed lime green using the 'recipe' I found on the Rit Dye website  - which is why you may need sunglasses.  'Cause that is one shockingly bright lime, let me tell you.  It doesn't show up that way on my monitor, but wowza!

Now for the lesson(s) learned (the hard way).

1. It's going to take longer than you thought.  No matter how conservatively we tried to estimate the time required, it always took longer.  It actually took us at least a week to paint the two rooms.  If we hadn't been renters for the past 21 years, we probably would have it figured out by now... but where's the adventure in that?
   
2. You're probably supposed to prime the gyprock on the ceiling before you paint it.  We didn't, and unfortunately the paint came off in a couple of places, especially when I taped the ceiling prior to painting the walls in the kitchen.  When it came time to paint the bedroom walls, I used a brush I used for my paintings; it was much smaller and I had much more control over where the bristles went - no need to tape. 

There's also been stuff going on out in the garage/paint shop.  I did some frames and the filing baskets for my desk a hot pink for pops of colour in the bedroom.  This was before the bright, bright, bright bedspread episode.

 

And I've got one night stand 2/3 of the way to silver.  His Grace was really not sure about this plan, but even he said that the night stand looks good.  I need to put one more coat of Krylon Bright Metallic Finish, and then I think I'll use paste wax to give some depth.  

As I said, I was doing this in the garage with the door open.  A neighbour was driving by and saw the headboard propped up against the wall and wondered if I was getting rid of it.  So I told her about my favourite thrift store mall.  Nice way to get to meet neighbours.

We're miles and miles from being finished, but it feels like we're actually making some progress.  There's office work to do for the rest of this week, but then it's finish the night stand and do the other one, paint the headboard, and strip and paint the bookshelf that sits on my desk.  On with the adventure!