Day 7

We're a day late with this post (sorry to the late-night readers in Montana!) because Anthony and I got home from the house at almost 11 last night, and we were too tired to write.  Why so late, you ask?  This:

It's a really pretty window, and it's in our living room.  We learned something yesterday: the previous owners, tho very careful about maintenance, were terrible painters.  All of the trim all over the house, including on this window, had been painted with some kind of oil-based thing, and then latex over that, and it was rejecting all of the nice glossy super white we'd put on the day before.  Poor Anthony spent hours scraping down that window, priming it (twice?), and painting it again.

Lesson of the week, which we will share with you: prime EVERYTHING before you paint, even if you think it doesn't need priming.  Primer is cheap, dries in an hour, and covers a multitude of sins.

In more cheerful news, here's what we saw when we arrived at the house yesterday (including Tony's car; as many of you know, he is a very early riser).  Isn't it pretty?

It was lovely to look out the windows at our little dusting of snow.

We did a lot of trim painting.  I feel sorry for people with houses that have a lot of trim.  Ours is comparatively light in this area, and it was still a huge project!  My favorite part is the work Dad did in our bedroom; he re-painted the trim on our closets so now it's a fabulous glossy white (as opposed to the sort of streaky cream before).  Here's the guest room having its trim done (and by "done," we mean the full works, like a pedicure - sanded, washed, primed, painted):

Dad's the trim-painting champion of the day; he also made little signs to tell us what not to touch.

Tony put a final layer of spackle on the yellow bathroom's wall and them primed it a million times, and now it looks like this.  Much more normal, right?

We re-installed the chandelier in the dining room, which I hate, and I promptly crashed my head into it.  We are getting a new light fixture soon, just have to pick one out.  This throws a lot of light but it's malevolent.  Anyway, underneath it, this happened:

We are actually starting to move in!  Will and Andrew were amazing, loading so many boxes into the suburban and one of the station wagons and making many trips between the houses.  What champs.  Strong, too.

We'll let you know how today goes.  We're unveiling most of the house, so you should finally get to see it without blue tape and dropcloths everywhere.

Some last pretty pictures: