04.21.04

Spring arrives to find us painting, painting.

Things are moving swimmingly. This will probably end if Justin ends up getting a real job, but until then...

The painting is just about finished, which means it's time to put in the floor. We've decided on real red oak wood, rather than that Pergo crap that's all over the place these days. Of course, one of those premanufactured floors is easier to install and probably cheaper on the whole, but easy and cheap are not the Austerity Program way. And you can save that cheap joke for your buddies in third grade, smart guy.

We'll be nailing the thing in this weekend, so we're praying that it doesn't rain as it would be nice to store all of the extra junk outside while we're doing the install. Justin spent the better part of yesterday getting the wood from the supplier into the building. This involved going to lots of stores, renting a flatbed trailer and carrying about an entire tree all over the place. Hey, to all of you parents of young children: don't let your kids run around unsupervised in the Home Depot. They will get mowed down by people like me hauling 800 pounds of wood on a broken cart with no control of the inertia of the thing.

Here's a tedious way to paint!

Step 1: Cover your rough design with masking tape, and then cut out all of the borders with an exact-o knife.

Step 2: Use a small roller to put on a bunch of thin coats of your border color.

Step 3: Kill a few hours by peeling off all of the layers and layers of masking tape.

Step 4: Swear a lot, because even though you did all of that you'll still have to go back and touch up a lot.