21 days to go

Hola from the passenger seat of our beloved work horse, Ricks truck. (While jamming to Beck of course!) 

We have an incredible feeling of accomplishment and "holy shit we're never going to finish". Like, literally 50/50 of both of those feelings. It sucks. Plus add lack of sleep thanks to a squirmy hungry 5 month old. Oye. 

I ran around the house and took pictures of current conditions before we hopped in the car to head to Menards. Oh! That's why I'm writing to you from the truck! Our master bathroom vanity arrived and we need more boards to finish our mudroom ceiling and all of that is our at Menards in st.joe Missouri. (45 minute drive for us)

Ricks mom went back to Erie, PA a week ago on Tuesday after her three week visit and on Thursday my mom arrived for two weeks to help us take care of Peggy while we work on the house.   This weekend is going to be a bit of a nightmare. Ricks dad and step mom are coming for the weekend. So we're juggling their visit, my mom and doing our best not to be assholes to any of them  as we explain, "thanks for visiting, great to see you, but we got less than three weeks to finish all of this!" (Insert both of us stretching out our arms to point out the lack of walls in the mudroom, third floor and a master bathroom with nothing in it.  Plus all the other little crap we have to do!) 

we have a tile guy coming Saturday to start building a custom shower for our master bathroom. So Rick is under pressure to build the box the shower will be housed in. Now that we will soon have our vanity we will be on a mission to finish the master bathroom we have never had in the three plus years of living in the house! Rick is almost done setting up the pex plumbing for the bathroom. 

We also had a guy come reinstall our heat and a/c duct work for the second floor. We had to rearrange them to have a big open master bathroom. So! So! Thankful we paid someone to do that! He was the first person we paid to do something on the house. Well with the exception of paying someone to work on our original tile roof that is 3-4 stories high. We said hell no to that last year haha.  We could have done the vents but it would have taken us a week probably instead it took this guy two days. 

My plan today when we get home is to paint part of our upstairs hallway and then clean up that part of the hallway floor so I can get a coat of polyurethane on the floor. We're putting one last coat of polyurethane on all the floors as we finish each room. Holy crap what a difference it makes! I keep thinking the floors are wet! What shine! And we are using satin finish! I'm also optimistic to get really close to having the sunroom emptied out so we can sand the floors and get that room finished by early next week. Which with the exception of the master bathroom and maybe replacing the floor in the guest bathroom the second floor will be finished! Hot dog! 

So, don't mind the mess in the pictures. I really just snapped pictures and hopped into th truck!

Master bedroom. We bought stuff to decorate the fire place to take a picture and then return it haha. Oh staging you're a funny thing. We're buying blinds for the Windows, waiting for paint to dry on the door to the bathroom so we can rehang it and shut the door to hide the wreck the bathroom is for pictures and we have a fancy bed spread besides those few things it's ready for pictures! 

Master bathroom. Wreck! And Henry! 

We just have a few staging things to do in the dinning room and it's ready for pictures! 

Library is done besides final staging things too! (Ps. I hate those ceiling fans, but it isn't worth the head ache to replace them. My dream was to put a set of old fashion (looking) fans that ran with a belt between them!) 

HVAC ducts that have been installed!they run up from the basement through the mudroom. We have to build a closet to hide them. The HVAC has been the thing holding us up moving forward in the mudroom and the master bathroom. 

29 days to go, the paint sprayer

Immaybe a rare human, in the fact I like to paint. Painting rooms isn't something I fear or dislike. Well, recently it's getting a little boring. When I started to paint the woodwork in our master bedroom, I couldn't believe how long it took me to do just one window. So, the lure of a paint sprayer finally won me over. I spent a few days trying to figure out how I felt about using a paint sprayer.

From my experiences paint sprayers are for very specific jobs. 

DON'T buy a paint sprayer to paint a room to just freshen up the color. 

DO buy a paint sprayer to stain decks, fences, and other outdoor wood things.

DO buy a paint sprayer if you're going to paint anything large outside with latex paint, like the entire exterior of your house.

DON'T be cheap with taping things off when you use your paint sprayer. 

DON'T waste your money on a detail sprayer.

The best use for a paint sprayer indoors is for a house you're totally redoing, or is new construction and doesn't have floors and carpet you could ruin. Over spray is serious, very serious. Like, wear a mask/respirator, goggles, old clothes and a hat serious. Tape, paper and plastic everything you don't want paint on. Tape it so well you feel a little redundant doing so, because you'll still miss a tiny part and paint will sneak in somehow. If you're painting woodwork, a door, tape a lip that over laps the back side of the door around the whole door so over spray doesn't sneak in to cover your closet full of clothes. 

I didn't make a tape flap on the back of this door and should have and should have expended my tape and paper further under the door. That is unwanted over spray all over the floor leading from the bedroom to the hall. 

Over spray after math. I was totally covered. Shoes, hair, teeth, nose hairs, everything. 

Be prepared to use a lot of paint. There is a paint volume control setting on my sprayer and it still blasted through paint with alarming speed. 

Do your research on your sprayer to make sure you don't need to cut your paint. That just is a pain in the ass. But beware too you're sprayer may not be able to handle thick paint like paint plus primer or oil based paints. 

I used the sprayer to paint the woodwork in our master bedroom and some of the ceiling in the master bedroom.

Would I use the sprayer again for an indoor project ever again? likely not. 

Things I liked about the sprayer....

. It was relatively easy to clean. 

. Painting the woodwork was super fast compared to painting it by hand with a brush.

. Using it to paint the edge of the ceiling where it meets the wall, was a breeze. (Note, I didn't care about white ceiling paint over spraying to the walls. The time it would have taken me to tape, paper and plastic off the walls to avoid over spray would have been just as long as edging the ceiling by hand.

. About as loud as a blow dryer

. Relatively light weight

Things I did not like about the sprayer

. The time it takes to cover everything you don't want over spray to get on.

. The amount of paint that lingers in the air during and after spraying

. Lack of precision 

. The excess paint it used

I will love this thing if we ever need to paint the exterior of a house or need to stain a fence or deck. But for indoors a paint sprayer is a waste of your money for the mostly typical home owner. Good old fashion roller and edging brush is much more manageable, time saving and cost efficient compaired to a sprayer. The amount of time you save spraying a room is a joke compared to the amount of time you spend prepping the room to not get drizzled in over spray. 

I'll try and update later the brand and model we bought for sprayer. I know it's a Wagner that we bought from Home Depot. We got a kit with regular spray nozzle and a detail nozzle. The detail nozzle wasn't even used because it isn't recommended for paint plus primer paints and requires you to cut your paint to use it. Peggy is currently sleeping on my hand, it's been a difficult falling asleep night for her, so she can keep it all night if she needs. 

I hope this helps you realize you totally do or do not need a handheld paint sprayer in your life. 

Master bedroom before Rick slapped a quick coat of polyurethane on the floor. 

I am finally getting really sad to leave this house. I knew it would happen as rooms became finished. The house is becoming what I dreamt it to be and I will never get to live and enjoy it.