Work, Paint, Sleep, Repeat

I awoke at 4:45 this morning by my brain informing me that I had way too much to do. I tried to go back to sleep, but the battle had already been lost. It was too early to go down and get coffee and breakfast, so I decided to read, which I don't do much of and always tell myself I need to do more of.

I have been sleeping soundly, just not long enough. The days so far have been fully consumed by work and work - work at my job, and work at our new home. Tuesday seemed exactly in most all ways like Monday, and expect that the rest of this week and next will be the same. In some ways, I can't wait for our stuff to arrive so that we can move in, yet at the same time, I wish I had more time because progress just isn't happening fast enough.

It's hard to estimate time when doing projects like this and no matter how well and throrough it may have been thought out, it seems that it's always underestimated. According to "the plan" (something Dottie and I worked on before we made the trip out here), we should have wall paper down in 5 rooms and 3 rooms painted as of Wednesday. The reality is that we have 3 rooms de-papered and only 1 room painted. The closer I look, the more I find to do - for example: I just noticed last night that in 3 rooms the previous owners have painted the ENTIRE room in the same color - walls, ceiling, baseboards, crowns and windows.

I have gone about taking down all of the upstairs window dressings and hardware (which defy any sort of taste whatsoever and will end up at the end of the drive on trash day) and to my amazement, they were some of the most unusual installations. Unmatching brackets, 5 different sizes of screws and styles, crooked rods - you name it...it's there.

Sunday, I actually used the Wagner Power Roller for the first time. It's an interesting device in that it most definitely works well and saves a huge amount of time - while painting. The time saved during painting is mostly consumed during cleanup - for a single room. For a really large job like a basement or a same-color multi-room job it would be a huge time saver. For single rooms where the color is changing, I am not so sure about the savings. I had three walls painted in 1 hour - no second coat required. The paint is delivered continuously to the roller and in a heavy enough feed that one coat does it. I spent the next 2 hours cutting-in and trimming and then about an hour cleaning up.

Monday, I left the office at around 4 and got started about 4:30 at the house. I got two closets painted. What a pain. It took 3 hours to paint 2 closets. They way the interior was constructed, I couldn't get the shelves out and the top shelf was so high that I couldn't paint the shelf or the ceiling above it. Argggh. Dottie continued to rip down wallpaper and Madison managed to occupy herself for the day by watching movies on the portable DVD player, or just by roaming the house and doing whatever 3-year old girls do - make believe.

Tuesday, I again went over after work around 4:30 and met the Invisible Fence guy. We got a plot plan for the fence and an estimate and fortunately for us they had a cancellation for Wednesday, so there were able to come out and actually get it installed. The dogs have been in the doggy-resort since Thursday night and are running up a healthy hotel bill, so we need to get them home soon. We were going to do a physical fence - and we may still do that, but in this township you have to have a formal survey of the property, a plot plan, materials list, example photos and lord knows what else to get approval for a fence and it takes weeks to get the rubber stamp of the township government.

Wednesday, the Invisible Fence guy came to do the install and was there over 3 hours. Typically it takes about 1 to 2. With all the landscaping and the paver sidewalks he hand to hand-bury a significant portion of the cable. They use a ditch-witch for the open parts of the yard and can burn through 100 feet in about 10 minutes. After signing off on the work, I set off to pick up the dogs. When we returned home, they were freaked out. They have no idea where we are. Jake spent the entire evening standing on the back porch, at the bay window of the breakfast nook peering in. Everytime I passed by the window, he was standing there, on alert.

Last night, Thursday, with the hopes of actually getting some painting done, I left the office at 4:30 and discovered that I had left my bag with change of clothes for painting at the hotel. I was not happy. Not only is it rush hour, but around here, there are only two main arteries headed east/west (in and out of New Jersey) and they are pretty much a parking lot for an hour or so. On top of that, our hotel is in Bethlehem (the next town over) so the drive is east, toward NJ and takes 20 minutes on-way without traffic. I ended up not getting back to the house until after 6pm. After a quick bit for dinner, I set out to get something done.

I had the playroom stripped, spackled, sanded and ready to go (I had been doing that on the abbreviated past two nights). Once taped, I started rolling and with the Wagner I was done in just under an hour. The cleanup took half that time - another 30 minutes. All that is left is to cut-in at the trim and windows and I am going to try the accessories that came with the Wagner for that instead of an angle brush.

We are enjoying working on the place, but anxious to get in. The logistics of this are tiresome. Dottie has been getting up and heading over in the mornings and working while running errands that need to be done. She looked at a preschool on Tuesday, and it was really nice, but too far away. Then there is the hassle of getting all the services started and installed - internet, locksmith, cable, fence people, phone - PHONE - thank you Verizon for ignoring repeated requests to get us connected - another story entirely.

This weekend will undoubtedly be a painting frenzy because we need to get two more bedrooms painted and then the big rooms downstairs - Family Room and Living Room - before our stuff arrives next Thursday. At that point, all renovations cease and we go into "unpack mode" which we will have the entire holiday weekend to do.

More to come...