Okay, the guest/media room -- henceforth to be known as "the green room" -- is complete and we have a lot more room in our bedroom, the nursery (a.k.a, "the red room"), and the living room.
Friday night, after seeing Fahrenheit 9/11, I peeled off the tape, causing a few tears where the paint adhered more to the tape than the wall. It wasn't too bad, but it did mean some further touchups were needed.
Instead of focusing on the walls right away, however, I did a little touch up painting on the ceiling, which lead to the only disaster of the job. Stepping off the stool I was using to reach the ceiling, I put a foot down on the radio and took a spill -- and I was holding a half-full gallon of bright white ceiling paint. Luckily, the paint ended up on the floor and my torso and not the walls; so there was a mess, but nothing too bad.
Saturday, I scraped and sanded the baseboards, doors, and molding. A lot of old paint (and I'm sure lead dust) came off the doors: some of it in big sheets of latex. A few hours (and two coats of paint) later, the woodwork was done. After a quick touch up at the top of the wall where the tape had torn the paint the previous night, I could call the job 99% finished.
While I'd been inside, Evelin staked the rest of the tomatoes, planted some more corn, and took care of general maintenance on the garden beds.
To celebrate, Evelin I and I went out to Woodlands for some South Indian vegetarian cuisine, and we topped off the meal with some ice cream.
Sunday was fairly busy with a lot of small tasks.
First it was off to the landfill to drop off a bunch of old, half-empty paint cans the previous owners had left in the basement and/or that we had leftover from previous projects. The county has a household hazardous waste drop-off point there that's open on Sunday mornings.
Then I had to deal with the grass/ögas, which was way overdue for a cut. I also trimmed some trees, did some weeding, and tried to wrestle the pickerelweed back into a pot. (One of the two pickerelweeds had outgrown its pot and was flopping over on top of the dwarf lotus.)
After that, it was off to the zoo to watch the pandas for a few hours. I arrived early because on a nice day it can be impossible to find parking near the zoo, which gave me a chance to walk through and see things. The new Kid’s Farm is pretty cute, and construction on Asia Trail has a fairly large part of the zoo torn up. The first phase isn't due to be finished until 2006, so it's going to be a while before the main entrance to the zoo really looks like a zoo again.
I was early enough to catch the "Wings of America" presentation by the American Eagle Foundation. They basically brought out a bunch of raptors -- from owls and kestrels to hawks and eagles -- to give people a chance to see them up close and personal. After last weekend, I was really keen to see the red-tailed hawk. They actually let him fly over the audience and I was near the release point for him, which was really cool.
After the zoo, it was another stop at the hardware store for new electrical hardware. The old, beige sockets and light switch didn't work with the new paint, so I had to replace everything with white hardware and plates.
Throughout the day, between other tasks, I helped Evelin move the big pieces of furniture out of the various places we'd been storing it and back into the green room. The old iron bed came out of the red room and is now being stored in various places (the mattress is under our bed, the springs are in the basement, and the head and footboards are in my closet). The Ikea chair from early in June went up to the red room and is now in place. As soon as I finish this entry, I'm off to Babies "Я" Us to see if they have the crib we want in stock.
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