yep, this is the weekend during which i wear black and channel hildi santo-tomas. i won't be wearing kitten heels for the occasion, though i do love my kitten heels. i'm just not made of the same matter as she is.
instead, we spend much of the day tomorrow shuffling between our house and hundreds of other houses in the neighborhood: it is the regent square civic association yard sale! every year, the saturday after mother's day, we find treasures large and small and end the day exhausted and smug. what better way is there to be? :)
and thanks to jack, don, tom, and whatever other plasterers have traipsed through our house, we now have rooms in which to put them! actually, it isn't all jack and the plasterers--they're just putting the gorgeous finishing touches on. first came destruction--starting months ago, crews of men came through every day, tearing out walls, sistering joists, framing studs and walls that had been torn out (including a load-bearing one--fun!), insulating, adding air conditioning, rewiring, plumbing, and probably other things that i'm not even remembering. but the past few weeks have been all about the pretty. plasterers came in and sanded down the texture (ugly, uneven, bleh) and made the walls and ceilings smooth, white, and soothing.
one room, the front entry, is ready for priming and painting. so today i bought two gallons of untinted primer for that room, a gallon of ceiling paint, and a gallon of paint for the walls. all of this is from freshaire choice, a no-voc (not even after the pigment is added) paint easily available from home depot. primer was about $25 per gallon, and the paints were in the neighborhood of $35 per gallon.
i also bought primer (though we have to take it back to get it tinted, because i forgot to request it and the woman helping me didn't think to offer it) and paints for the bedroom, which is our highest-priority room to finish. all the colors are inspired by fallingwater colors (really, by pittsburgh paint's collection of fallingwater colors). i wish i could post images of the colors from freshaire's web site, but it stupidly scripty and i can't even get a screen shot. grr! but you can see them here if you want. the ceilings in both rooms (all, maybe) are going to be a pale blue called nightfall (from the earth collection). the walls in the entry room will be canyon pebble (also from the earth collection), a cool beige. not my normal color, but i think that it will showcase andrew's framed photos beautifully, as well as setting off the white-with-crimson wedding certificate that will hang in there. best of all, i'm planning to put a slate-tile floor in there, and the walls should pick that up, too. the blue ceiling will provide cool contrast.
the walls of the bedroom will be a deep chocolaty brown called wildwood trail (from, you guessed it, the earth collection), which will be gorgeous contrasting with the pale blue on the ceiling. as an accent, i'm hoping to be brave enough to paint a way-oversized flower (think blown-up photo silhouette, not realistic or cartooned) in a lovely red called rhythm of red (from the botanical collection). i haven't quite figured out where or how to do this--i wanted to put it on the bed wall originally, but i also need an accent for the wall that you see when you're coming up the stairs. i'm still planning that.
and next weekend is memorial day, which means that we should be able to find a decent deal on a mattress (we already have a bed). yay!
the other rooms should be ready for painting by sunday as well, but i thought i'd start with two rooms to make sure that we love this paint. and, well, because i couldn't stomach paying that much all at once at home depot. :)
in landscaping news, i have a brown thumb and can never grow anything. this year, i used a white flower farm gift certificate from jen to buy four little plants. i planted them in the fall, and a couple of them were actually growing! i know! but then kimicata brothers, our lawn-mowing and sort of landscaping company, came and MOWED OVER THEM. i am so pissed! this is not the first time--it happened with a hydrangea a few years ago, too--but this time i put big rings of mulch around them. i thought surely they'd know to avoid that. duh!
last, i think that smartboy wants the contractors to finish more of the second-floor bathroom than i'd realized--we meet with the foreman (karl) and the general (sal) monday morning to go over the plan. they've framed and roughed in everything, but i think that he wants to have them do more, such as putting in the shower pan. not sure what else. we already had the electrician put in the light fixtures (except for sconces, which i haven't chosen yet) and exhaust fan. it'll be swell when it's finished.
so that's our weekend. i promise not to put any hay on the walls.
Ok, since you promised no hay on the walls, I'll allow you to channel Hildi, but I really thought you more of a Vern Yip (can you tell I used to watch back in the day?). You have quite a weekend ahead of you! I blame Trading Spaces for making me think painting is way more fun than it is:)
Posted by: Michelle | May 16, 2008 at 07:14 PM
Sounds like awesome progress! I love to paint, and your color selections are beautiful!! Have fun this weekend!!
Posted by: Beth | May 17, 2008 at 01:15 PM