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Dropped spouse at the airport this morning. He's been in a really good mood lately - super cuddly and gushy (for spouse). We've been gaming on fridays (savage worlds deadlands) and every other saturday (d&d fifth ed) and he makes googly eyes at me all session long. We've been remembering how much we enjoy each other's rpg groove. We like the roleplaying and then we like gossiping about the roleplaying in the car ride home. The deadlands group is a bunch of gunbunny power gamers - they are fun and cooperative gunbunnies, not "win the game" sorts, they just love combat & dealing massive damage - but they have some seriously OP characters and the gm is letting them run amok in combat and do crazy stunts without proper repercussions. "They've lost the fear," spouse muses. Breaking down the game critically afterward is almost as much fun as playing. So he's been really happy lately. He ran a one shot the other night when the regular deadlands gm couldn't make it and it was quite successful. Sort of a pandorum/event horizon space horror with zombies.

So he's gone for the next 3 months, and in the meantime, i get to fix up the house. The painters should be starting on tuesday. $7k for professional painters, woo. But the more i look at the paint job the worse it gets. The whole house is full of wonky bad paint decisions from people who obvs were not detail oriented. Everytime i look at the walls, some new bad decision presents itself. Why three different colors of white on the door frame? Why the weird light grey on the ceiling that looks dirty? Why the crap blobby spackling in random places? Why leave the original beige in the closets, but with a hodge podge of roller marks at the edges so it looks like someone forgot? Mike's gonna fix us up. Which means i need to do wallpaper today, yay. I think i got it figured out.

Well, wallpaper is done and we're into paint. I'm a bit peeved because the painters are not done, after 4 whole days. There was some personal stuff with their family that kept them from being fully available (which shit happens, i get it), but it kinda seems like i leave and come back and they don't get to half the things they said they would do that day. I could paint at this pace myself, for fuck's sake. (But, putting the wallpaper up kinda wiped me out and i would be seriously sore and exhausted if i had to paint the whole house immediately after.) So they just barely got to the accent colors on friday (the fun part). The dark blue in the guest bedroom is very nice, the burnt orange in the office is AMAZING, and the retro minty blue-green in the closet is fantastic. BUT. The accent wall in the main bedroom isn't started, nor the 1/2 bath or the utility room or the hall or the dining/kitchen. There is no room that is doesn't need a second coat of something, and we're talking 3 small bedrooms in a small house. 4 whole days into the job. One painter seems to work 6-7 hour days max, and the other does maybe 3-4 hours (and he's the one getting shit done). The movers are coming wednesday and i want the paint to dry properly so it doesn't get scuffed to hell. They're not going to magically finish on monday, and i don't really want them to slap paint on quickly in an attempt to try, you know? Ugh. So i'm going to have to get serious with mike and figure out if we can triage the job and finish the less critical areas after the move. But i'm kinda sick of breathing paint fumes, and the kitties hate being put in the garage all day. So there's that.

The wallpaper was both easier and more difficult than i thought. First it took a good 6 hours to prep the wall, wash it, sand down the worst blobs, semi-patch the uneven areas at the bottom where they'd removed the old tall baseboard and just didn't care about the crusty edges and uneven texture. I watched a couple youtube videos and got the gist for applying paper by pasting the wall. The first mistake i made was i dumped in the powdered wallpaper paste without thinking and got crazy lumps, so that took extra time (i ordered the powder because i could only find thin premade paste for lightweight paper sold in town - the powder can be mixed to suit the paper, and it's less likely to get busted open in shipping). Then i tried to apply the paste with a roller like in the youtube video, except that made the leftover lumps fling themselves off the roller and everywhere like fleas off a dog. If you have lumpy paste, paintbrush is best. Then figuring out how much paste to get on the wall and where to put the tools for good workflow. There was a slow start but by the third strip i was getting into a groove. At first i thought the paper needed to overlap (because i have only seen wallpaper overlapped) - it doesn't, it lays neatly side-by-side to match perfectly. So my first strip has a visible overlap line (i started in a less obvious area). Anyway, i'm happy with how it came out. Not perfect, but pretty good. There's a lot of "get up on ladder, climb down, kneel on the floor, stand up, get back on the ladder". It would be a lot easier and go faster with someone helping. The youtube guy is all, "you can wallpaper an entire room in an afternoon, so easy", but in reality it took two solid days to prep & wallpaper the one long wall and the end of the hall, maybe 25' total. Outlets are a pain. Working around doors/windows/odd features is a pain. Four rolls of paper. I had to measure everything out and calculate the length of the strips to make sure i knew what to get out of each roll. A larger print repeat will mean more paper waste, etc. There's only scraps left over. But damn, it does make the wall look classy!

I keep not having time/energy to finish this entry. Typing on the phone sucks. So it's the day before the movers and progress has been made with painting but i am betting they will not be 100% done today. I'm hoping they'll finish the bedrooms and closets completely today so we won't have to worry about working around stacks of boxes. The rest of the house will be less of a problem. All the paint colors are looking awesome. They did the first coat of burnt orange on the hall ("the HALL of FIRE") and it's fantastic. I had the light on in the bathroom and the reflected light bouncing back to the bedroom is like warm firelight. It takes four coats of the orange to be solid! Four coats! But damn it looks good. It's such a power color. Like a tiger.

Really the house looks amazing with the new paint. They patched up some unevenness where molding got ripped away and you can't even tell it happened. It's looking more like a proper little house, less shabby. Just the new ceiling paint makes such a difference. The paint on the wallpaper looks exactly how i wanted - like i spread plaster on the wall and then pressed a stamp texture into it while wet. You can't really see it until you get 12' or closer, so it's subtle and gets more interesting the closer one gets. I do wish we had painted it a more matte finish. The eggshell is a bit too shiny, i think, but i don't care enough to repaint it now. A lesson if i do more later.

I have a guy coming by at noon to talk about making a wood mantelpiece for the fireplace. Right now it's got a very generic modest stick-on fireplace surround painted white. It's very bland and sort of "dollar store" fireplace, zero wow factor. This guy makes cool custom wood and resin tables and such - beautiful wood with colored resin used to accent and fill in gaps. Live edge, etc. Gorgeous stuff. Anyway he has a leftover smallish piece of wood that might work great for a mantle addition. Like a thick wood slab that will sit on top of this generic white fireplace and dress it up. I'm trying to figure out how i can make it look not-stupid, maybe add some wood cladding to the column legs on each side to tie it in, etc. Guy quoted me $350 for the mantelpiece which i think is pretty reasonable, considering the work and how beautiful the wood is. It has a cool starburst crack in it he's going to fill with dark blue epoxy. It should be a real showstopper.

I got a hvlp paint sprayer thing to work on the cabinets and exterior doors and whatever else i can think up. I got the fuji spray semi pro 2. It's not expensive as a full professional machine but it supposedly gives a pro quality finish and it can even handle automotive paint. Anything from watery dyes to latex, assuming you have the right tip and thin down the thicker paints properly. It's better for small jobs, not a whole car or a whole house, but generally reviews say it is excellent and reliable and easy to clean, etc. I'm excited to work with it, but i can't get going on anything until after painting/move in is done.

I got enamoured with that blue pine siding and some jerk bought all the good boards in anchorage before i could, so i had to go to wasilla and kenai to pick through their supply. Like a good 2/3 of the boards are unusable - you have to hand pick them in person (one of the painters says that's because alaska already gets the crummy cast off boards). But i was able to get enough good ones between the two locations. I called kenai to confirm they had it and he said, "better get here quick, it goes fast". Can't rely on restocks these days so i hopped in the car to get what i need. The blue pine is a few dollars cheaper than regular pine, plus it's beautiful, so i am not surprised it is being snatched up. I have enough to do the accent wall above the fireplace, the accent wall in the corner where the tv will get mounted, to line the top and bottom of the bay window, and enough to make headboards for the main & guest bedrooms. I got some dye based stain finishes and i'm going to play around and see if i can preserve the grey coloring while darkening the light pine to a medium brown.

It was a lovely drive to kenai. I got a green chile burger at the burger bus. Good times.

Hopefully things will settle down by the end of the week. The kitties are unhappy because their living areas keep being disturbed. I have been putting them in the garage. They are sick of this bullshit, can't blame them. I try to make myself scarce while the painters are working, plus the house reeks of various fumes. Soon ... soon ...