All in a Garden Green

We has a roof! Rubber went down today! Yaaaaay! They should be done by Friday, and then... well... that's about it, for a while. After the electrician finishes up his bit of stuff on Thursday, anyway. We has a generator hookup, and non-crispy wiring, with promises of fixing the spaghetti in the main panel. Then more painting. Getting the guest room ready. Finally sewing a shirt for my brother, which I've been poking at since JULY. Doing some fencing. Having a whole buncha people over for Thanksgiving. Should be good.

Played sport fencing tonight at practice. Foil. Am TIRED. Hoping it will help with my parries, but it's not a whole lot of fun right now. I'm thinking too much, and feel like I'm just kinda flailing around, and I was kinda tired tonight. I also suck at drills, always have... Ah well, it'll come along. Hoping to have a good time at the event this weekend, there will at least be lots of folks to fence with. :)

Am also trying to convince my boss it would be a good idea for me to work 4-day weeks this winter (but still get 40 hours, so loong days), so I don't have to slog through snow (or potential snow) quite as much. Saves on gas too. And having a 3rd day off, even if it's not in line with weekends, would be lovely... Not ready to think about snow yet, though... no thanks.

I have kicked Max out of my bedroom...

And I made sure to take a photo (will be taking more tomorrow, in daylight), because it will never, ever be this clean or organized again.

The last of the trim and the windowsills went in tonight, after a month of work, we are DONE, save for the door threshold. What a difference. There is no sign anymore of the disaster that was there when we bought the house, thank goodness.

It is beautiful. The wood in the windows even matches the trim pretty well, color-wise, so I don't think we'll be doing anything further to them except plugging the nail holes in the vinyl from where the old windowframes were nailed through... (dumb dumb dumb) Just a little bit of sawdust to vacuum up still, and a lot of dusting of dressertops and door creases, then the rugs can go down, the clothes can move to their respective dressers, and we can move in and move on to redoing the upstairs room! Later. Not just yet. But before Thanksgiving, so if folks need to stay, we'll have an official Guest Room. Yay!

A thought I had too. Will have to figure out how to attach curtain rods, both for curtains and to hang small plants off of them, since those are the two sunniest windows (hence the beautiful, 6" wide windowsills! Hooray!) in the house. NO WAY did I even consider attaching brackets to that oak. For one thing, I'd have to drill if I even wanted a chance of getting a screw through that, and for another, it's too darn pretty to mar up with brackets. I will figure something else out. We've got those softwood window frames that will probably work out just fine.

Happy. Now, to figure out where we want to poke holes in the walls and hang stuff on them! Yay! (tomorrow. sleep now, actually...)

Finished repainting the little upstairs bathroom Wednesday afternoon. It is so much nicer than the turquoise that was there before. Beautiful springy green walls (and ceiling. I still hate hate hate painting textured ceilings), and painting the woodwork white was the best thing I could have done, and so glad I did, even though it took 4 coats to get good coverage on that awful wood. It is bright and clean, and there is no longer an obvious mirror on the inside of the door, now that I've hung the extra fern curtain. Who seriously thought that was a good idea, hmmm? Full length mirror, right on the inside of the door, so that when one sits on the only seat in the room and closes the door... yeah... good morning... There's a curtain, now. Much better. I'd have taken it off, but it is apparently liquid-nailed to the door, along with the little clips. Grr. One modification left to the little table; going to add a towel bar (or two) to the top, and a botanical print or two to the walls, and it will be perfect.

Edit: hm... that glowing turquoise thing at the top is actually the vanity light... not sure why it's decided to be turquoise, but it's not in reality... ah well.

But a good one. This is not the best photo, but it gives a pretty good idea of what I've done for the last couple days... When are my weekends going to be relaxing again, I wonder...

Yesterday started semi-early, but it was good to be up. Had to go buy paint! But first, had to clear away stuff from the walls in what would become my library.... that took a little while, as did taping and prepping. Took off parts of the door molding, since they weren't exactly securely attached to the walls anyway. Made for easier painting. First, bought compost for the garden (and two new Pasque flowers, to be planted soonish... I hope), and then paint, brushes, and rollers, and then home.

Did yellow first, to finish the main column which is part of the same visual space as the dining area... Max and I debated about painting it or not, and after not, it turns out it definitely needed to be done. Better now. Then onto blue, ceiling first. A beautiful, pale blue. Almost white. Pale enough that it was a little bit difficult to see where I'd painted, plus it being a textured ceiling (haaaaate.), coupled with the dawning realization of 'uh oh... I'm using a LOT of paint (dang super-fluffy roller)... perhaps two cans would have been better?' made for a semi-frustrating time. I think I used every single drop of paint in the can. Should do a second coat at some point, but it's done enough for now... got one pretty even coat over the whole ceiling.

Walls went quick, thank goodness. They are perfect, forget-me-not blue. I love it. Only a few little touch-up spots that I find every now and then, and they're easy enough to hit with a brush. Now the only thing left is to figure out what to do with the horrible white door... I'm thinking mural, but not sure of what yet. I should just paint it and get a clean coat of *something* on it.

After paint, went to visit Max, and we finished up edging the last of the oak molding for the bedroom. Hoping to get it over here sometime this week, and will stain, and then hopefully put it up soon. Can't wait to move into the downstairs bedroom...

Max and I then met anna_mickel, ninian_vesalius, and alexsaintpierre at the movies, and saw Robin Hood. Oh. My. So good. EEEEEEE. Fun movie, different take on the legend. Forget everything you know, enjoy the pretty, and listen to the wonderful Alan Doyle sing. :)

Speaking of which... Alan, Bob, Sean, and Murray have a new album coming out. Just in time to completely miss GNEW, but it will give me something to look forward to after it's over. Three tracks are available for listening (and if anybody can figure out how to get actual copies of them off the flash player, it would make me a very happy kitty), and I am so looking forward to hearing the rest of the album... Eeee!

Painted the library yesterday in preparation for E, Mom, Dad, Mom-in-law, and Dad-in-law, who all came to visit today. Mom and dad brought boxes of books, great-grandma's sewing machine, and some random other STUFF. MiL and DiL brought a rocking chair that was J's great grandmother's, and came to help put more stuff away. E came to visit, and was shanghaied into helping reassemble my house... I've promised her a better visit soon... The library is assembled, my sewing room is more organized, almost usable, and I'm exhausted. My plans for today (since it was kinda rainy) had included getting the library and sewing room organized, whether everybody had come visiting or not, but it certainly went quicker with more help.

This week at work will be interesting... tiring, I suspect. Open house/Customer appreciation day on Saturday will be zooey, and it's prep for that that will be taking over my work week. Aieee. Hoping to get in my garden on Friday, the sumac is starting to wake up, and since I've taken away the big feeder trees, root suckers are popping up everywhere. I think I'll have to buy a wheelbarrow this week, start hauling stuff out of the garden and into the trailer so we can take it to the brush pile. Hope to clean up the boxwood, rip out more roots, and get those 6 bags of compost spread on the cleared part of the garden soon.