Out With the Old

Now that I'm living the life of leisure, and making no worldly contribution, it made sense to start chipping away at the boatloads of projects that have accumulated of recent. Over the past six seasons that we have been racing bikes in earnest, we or moreover, I have devoted lots of time to riding and racing and less and less time to house related work. Most of the little stuff would get done but there is a hefty backlog of things that I've wanted to do.

So, this week was my birthday and we spent some time up in Maine, briefly and then came back home to take advantage of the continued spring like weather. While in Maine we did go skate ski at Black Mountain, which was able to make snow and had excellent cover. Unfortunately they don't have a lot of terrain and what they do have tends to be either up or down. For my birthday we made an excellent dinner of pizza with caramelized onion, salmon, olive oil and ricotta and mozzarella cheeses. This coupled with a great big salad was awesome. Then Cathy got me a spiffy birthday cake from Concord Teacakes, which has come to be our tradition.

I've finally started getting after some more of the projects. Last week was primarily consumed with smaller tasks but I did manage to get a fresh coat of paint on the bathroom walls and trim. It looks much cleaner, which is good. What I've discovered is that the bathroom detail is the most highly visible and scrutinized in the whole house. This is particularly true of the wall directly opposing the toilet. You really notice everything there. Not sure why.

This week was a bunch more small chores and bike work coupled with more paint. The skylights that we put in about 4 years ago never got the wood trim painted. It's a cumbersome job spend perched on a stepladder but not all that involved. Check it off, it's done.

That does not say Happy Birthday Opie!

Yesterday I went and picked out some paint to redo the master bedroom. It was last painted in 2007 and the color choice wasn't exactly what was expected. It seemed bright and cool and in reality it was. It was also very reminiscent of Smurf blue as it went on the wall. We've lived with it long enough and so it will be replaced with Apple Tart, an earthy tone that is much warmer. We are kind of on an earth tone kick so the whole house has varying bold, at least for us, color choices.

We'll see what it looks like when it's done though honestly, it has to be an improvement. I think that crap was responsible for a bunch of bad dreams. I forgot or selectively blocked out what a massive PitA it is to paint a room full of big, heavy furniture. After an hour and a half I finally got the stuff moved to the center of the room and the floors, walls and trim all cleaned up.

Out with the Powder Blue, in with the Apple Tart.

It's amazing how much dust and fur ends up under and behind all of that big heavy furniture in the course of a hand full of years. It's not like we (Cathy) never cleans or anything. I'm thinking it might be time for the cats to get a little haircut.