The Saga of the Bookcase

Fair warning: this really isn't a saga. I admit nothing and promise less. (But you should all be used to that by now...)

Anyway, as I've mentioned before, the War Department's office is also our guest room (as our friend from Toronto* found out over the Labor Day weekend). This means that in addition to her desk and files and whatnot, the War Department has to share the room with a rather large bed. There are also two large windows and a closet - meaning there is precious little floor space against the walls she can use to put a bookcase or even a chair. As a matter of fact, there aren't even that many walls on which to hang pictures or artwork.

The solution was to find a bookcase to hang on the wall beside the bed to give her a little extra storage and display space. The problem with the solution (oh, you knew this was coming) is that bookcases just simply don't come in the precise dimensions we wanted. Which meant that, if we wanted something that was nice and would fit where we wanted it to go, we would have to build it ourselves.

Fortunately, I actually have built bookcases (well, one) before, so once we had the overall size of the thing figured out, it was off to Home Despot to pick up the lumber.

Now, I COULD (and probably should) bore the crap out of you with all the little details about making the bookcase. In fact, maybe I will. After all, making it was something of an endurance test for me, so why shouldn't reading about it be just as much of an endurance test for you, hmm? Only without the distinct possibility of sawing off one of your fingertips on the table saw. Unless, you know, you were trying to stay awake.

Right, so, as always, the issues started with buying materials. In fact, there were several mistakes made when selecting the materials. First, I bought the wrong plywood. No seriously. I mean, I blame the War Department, at least partially, because she was with me and didn't notice that we were buying good-one-side plywood, rather than the good-two-sides that we actually needed. Not that it was THAT big a deal, really, it just meant more sanding, but what really compounded the mistake was buying twice as much as we actually needed. (Looks like I'll be building another bookcase at some point, I guess.)

Anyway, along with the plywood we bought some trim to finish off the face of the bookcase to hide the edges of the plywood. We bought the right stuff, at least... and too much of it. (So I guess the next bookcase will likely have the same trim? Yeah. That's it.) Again, I blame Amy - she knows I'm not so good at math.

Then we took all the materials home, put them in the garage, and left them there for a couple of weeks. You know, to acclimatize. Or something.

When I finally got off my ass long enough to get started, I drew a careful diagram of the pieces I'd need, realized we'd bought too much plywood, swore, and then set about marking out the pieces on the plywood. I made all my markings, set up the fence for the circular saw, double-checked the width of the saw guide, locked everything down, and cut the first piece (the largest piece) approximately 3/32 of an inch too short.

When I finished swearing, I double-checked to make sure the War Department hadn't heard me, and quickly checked all my other measurements to make sure that it would all still work. Fortunately, I had cut it too short - too long, and I would have had to start over with the back-up piece of plywood. So, good thing we had it, right? Right?

Anyway, the rest of the cuts went okay, although I had a devil of a time figuring out the placement of the shelves and had to measure everything about eight times before I got it right. You see, the design called for a 3-foot by 6-foot unit, 7 inches deep, with 9 little cubby holes. I really wanted everything to line up nicely, but because I had cut the first pieces too short, I had to recalculate the placement of the center shelves. (Heh, the best part is that I don't think Amy actually knows any of this yet. She thinks the shelf is 6" x 3", but it's actually closer to 71 5/8" by 35 7/8". Hee hee!)

Then I got to start putting it together:

Once the initial pieces were good and bonded, I could start adding trim:

And yes, the trim overlaps on the bottom of the bookcase so you can slide books off the shelves without having to lift them, It also helps to conceal the wood we attached to the wall to help hold the whole thing in place. I also added edge trim to cover up the faces of the interior shelves. Which, of course, was slightly bigger than the plywood and thus had to be sanded down.

Somehow I completely failed to take a picture of the sanding and painting process. Which is particularly weird considering how unbelievable tedious and lengthy the process was. I had to sand the whole thing with three grits of sandpaper, fill the holes, sand again, prime, sand the grain down again, fill the cracks and holes I missed the first time, sand again, paint, sand the grain down again, and then paint AGAIN. And then, of course, we had to figure out how to attach it to the wall.

But, and I say this with all due humility, I think it looks pretty damn good:

Yes, we probably overdid it with the brackets, but there will be people sleeping there some day. And not just friends from Toronto, damn it. People we actually like.**


*Hi Gillian!

** I kid. Gill's the absolute bomb, and the best house guest you could ask for. Seriously - I'll send her over. You'll like her. She's awesome.

It might be Broadmead, but it's still Victoria

It turns out that this neighborhood of ours, as awesomely fantastic as it is, isn't quite so far removed from the rest of this city as you might think. Oh, sure, we're perched up on the sunny side of Broadmead, with a view of Mount Doug and the Blenkinsop Valley. We've got a Garry Oak in the backyard and a few resident wildlife species:



On any given day, more people pass our house while walking their dogs than they do driving in their cars, and the neighbors have all, to a soul, been wonderful.

But it's still Victoria. Case in point:

We finally finished the War Department's office, which looks spectacular, thanks to all our hard work and some fantastic seamstressnessing (totally a real word) on the curtains by my mom:





Looks awesome, eh? Here they are closed, so you can revel in the majesty;



Anyway, finishing the office meant we could finally start moving stuff out of the garage, and putting it in the rooms it was all supposed to inhabit. Fortunately, nothing else had been damaged beyond repair by the mice (leave it to those little bastards to destroy the most expensive thing in the garage) and we got the last of our furniture out. This left nothing in the garage except tools, proper garage stuff, and a whole schwack of things that we wanted to get rid of anyway, but couldn't actually get to with all the other crap in the way. For example, this thing:





That's a canoe with a large, ugly patch, several small holes, and a completely rotten keel. (It also may or may not have smelled strongly of mouse pee. Maybe.) We were originally going to try to get it fixed, but the guy who was going to fix it inexplicably disappeared. Like, not answering his phone, and he doesn't appear to live/work at the address he gave us. Which, again, if you've ever tried to hire a contractor in Victoria, isn't actually all THAT uncommon in this town...

At any rate, the War Department finally decided that storing the damn thing in the (probably vain) hope that we'd eventually find someone who could fix it for less than the cost of a new one was, well, hopeless. We picked a fine Saturday morning, and started hauling all the stuff out of the garage and stacking it in the driveway so we could clean it off, identify the stuff we wanted to get rid off, and reorganize the remainder.

As it so happens, that particular Saturday happened to be the day that our neighbors two doors down decided to have a garage sale. This proved something of a distraction when I had to inform an elderly couple picking over our old hockey sticks, paddles, and a roll of carpet underlay that we weren't actually selling anything. To reduce the amount of embarrassment this misunderstanding could cause, I made up a sign that said "NOT a garage sale - sorry!" and, after holding it up to ward off another couple that had stopped their car in front of the house, propped it up at the end of the driveway.

It was right about then that it occurred to us that maybe we could take advantage of the garage sale's proximity and the increased traffic to get rid of a few things and save ourselves the trouble of loading up the truck. After all, in the old house, we had often disposed of unwanted furniture and electronics by simply putting it out on the curb with a "Free" sign attached.It's actually something of a local and well-known tradition in Victoria. Hell, before Amy and I moved in together, she got rid of a hideous, orange plaid couch using this exact method. A hideous, orange plaid PULL-OUT couch that smelled like cat pee. Students - what are you gonna do?

Anyway, we decided to test our luck, and dragged the canoe down to the end of the driveway, positioning it between the Not a Garage Sale sign and the end of the driveway. I stuck a free sign on it, and went back to organizing the garage.

Now, before I say anything else, let me say this: I am not going to use any hyperbole, exaggeration, or overstatement. This is absolutely, positively, 100% true:

The canoe was gone - GONE - in less than twenty minutes. I didn't even have to help load it.

This town, I swear.

So... wanna buy a house?

No, not our house. Well, not our current house.

This one is on the market again.

Doesn't look like they've done much to it, aside from destroying the exterior with a whole bunch of ugly landscaping, and wasting a lot of perfectly good cedar turning the downstairs workshop into a laundry room. And given that what they're asking isn't a whole lot more than what they paid US for it, I don't think they're being motivated by any potential capital gains, if you know what I mean.

I'm tempted to go and take a tour if they have an open house, but the War Department has no interest in it at all. Something about preferring the memories over whatever travesty has been foisted upon it since we gave it up. Actually, I can see her point.

But anyway, I'm sure nobody comes here for updates on the old shed. You want to know what's up with the new digs, right? Well, we're mired in that unbelievably interminable stretch of paint, fill, sand, paint, fill, sand, sand, vacuum, beer, sand, fill, paint, etc. Which is a pretty accurate summary of doing the trim in the War Department's office/our new guest room.

I would give you a preview of what it looks like but a) it looks a lot like my office, only slightly bigger and slightly brighter, and b) I just painted the window sills and had to erect a cat barricade to keep the little bastards from jumping up onto the fresh paint:



And before some smart-ass (Dad) asks why I didn't just close the door to keep them out, it's because the door frame is also wet, and I haven't hung the door yet.

But the floor is done, the new curtains should arrive sometime this week (thanks, Mom!), the trim is almost, almost, almost finished, and with a little luck and some more work, we should be moving furniture in this weekend and getting our respective rooms together.

Oh, and speaking of flooring, we've got about 150 sq. ft. or so left of Elements by Kentwood Maple Saffron engineered hardwood flooring - anyone want some? Cheap?

A little bit of catching up...

We're mired in that seemingly interminable process of painting, installing, filling, sanding, filling, sanding, painting, and painting the trim in my office, and none of it looks all that impressive. It also, as I may have intimated, takes FOREVER.

So I thought I'd use this post to catch up on a mixture of things that have been going on around the house and in the neighbourhood. Not really sure what I'll wind up including, but hey - you get what you pay for with this blog.

Let's get started, eh?


Timer switch



That little beauty is the awesomest invention ever. I know it just looks like a light switch with a clock in it, but check it out:



It glows! Hahahahahaha!

Uh... too excited? Yeah? Thought so...

Anyway, the point of that particular switch is that, here in the wilds of BC, the sun goes down awfully early in the day in the winter. This meant that the War Department was getting home from work in the dark, and trying to unlock the door in the already darkened doorway. We needed a way to make the outside lights come on before she got home - preferably a way that didn't involve leaving the damn things on all day, sucking up power.

Unfortunately, the outside lights are on a three-way switch (there's another switch for them inside the garage), and we really didn't want to start tearing out drywall and rewiring them for a timer or light sensor.

Fortunately, we found these on the inter-tubage, and what with the War Department's prowess as an electrician, we now have outside lights that come on automatically when the sun goes down - and yes, the switch calculates sundown for us, without the use of an exterior light sensor. It even compensated for Daylight Savings Time. Gotta be right up there in terms of the best 60 bucks we've spent on the place.

New Arrival
I had to transfer some money from one of my investment accounts to another, and some of it "accidentally" made its way into an entirely different account. One that promptly signed over the contents to Sears:



What's in the box, you ask?

One of these beauties:



No, you can't see the front yet. Not until it gets installed on Wednesday.

Finishing Up Old Chores AND This Week In Mayonnaise
Way back when, we fixed this monstrosity on the front wall of the living room. As I explained at the time, it was a piece of old extension cord spliced into an electrical wire that ran through sprinkler piping out through the wall, and underground to the lamp beside the driveway - the fake wrought-iron Canadian Tire special visible on the right side of this picture.

Anyway, we were out puttering around in the nice weather on Saturday (seriously - what the ever-lovin' Jebus is up with the weather this spring? It's almost April and we haven't even mowed our lawn yet! Sheesh!) and Amy asked if I thought I could just push the lamp over, and get it out of the way. Turns out it wasn't nearly strong enough to support the weight of the slab of concrete in which it was based, and the lamp snapped neatly in half. Which, I suppose, made it easier to carry into the garage where it will sit until our next trip to the recycling depot. Once that was out of the way, though, we took a closer look at the base:



Yeah - looks like the electrical was equally as crappy on both ends of that installation. It's not even outdoor wire - just regular old Romex. They just fed it right up through the form and poured the concrete over it. And then they set the lamp down into the concrete, essentially ensuring that the wire would ALWAYS be passing directly through whatever water had accumulated in the base.

Oh, and those little round marks around the outside of the footing? Coins. From the eighties. Oh, and I just KNOW you're wondering how (because "why?" would be unanswerable) the coins were attached to the concrete. Go ahead, ask me.



Mayonnaise, of course.

Finished!
Anyway, in the five days or so that it's taken me to get around to actually finishing this post... we finished the office! Whoo!











Of course, I can't actually use it as my office yet. See, we kinda need it as a spare bedroom and to store all the crap we've been storing in Amy's office.

Three guesses what the next project is, and the first two don't count....

An Anniversary
Before I go, I'm not sure how this affects what I'm sure are a number of various and varying pools and betting circles out there, but this was exactly a year ago today:



So there. Nyaaah!

Happy birthday to meee

I hate to admit it, but I just might have found the one renovation task that, well, I actually enjoy. I've certainly expounded at length on how much drywalling or insulating or digging sucks, but there have been precious few tasks that I've admitted to not hating.

Flooring, on the other hand... well, I actually LIKE it. I mean, if I didn't enjoy it, why would I spend the entire day - on my birthday of all days - looking forward to leaving work so I could get home and do some more of the flooring in my office? I even considered bailing out early so I'd have more time to work on it and maybe even get it all done before bed, instead of having to finish it later in the week. (As it turns out, I didn't leave early, and I therefore had to finish it later in the week, but hey - I actually looked forward to that part, too.)

Anyway, I thought that maybe the best way to explain why I like it would be to try and document the process. So, without further ado, this is how to lay an engineered hardwood floor - the Don and Amy's Broadmead Reno way.

The first step is to clean, scrape, sweep, patch, fill, and prep the subfloor. This may, as in our case, include a half-box of coated floor screws driven in every eight inches or so along the joists to tighten up any warped boards and reduce the amount of squeaking. If you have a War Department, get her to to do it: she's really good at it. Also, get her to patch the floor if you can, because that stuff is hard to work with and she's probably already got the knee pads on from putting in the screws anyway.

So, once the patching compound is dry, give the room a good sweep and a quick vacuum, and you should have something like this:



Nice colour, eh? It's yet another Restoration Hardware-inspired choice, called "butter". (We used the "saffron" from the same collection in our bedroom, and the "butter cream" in the downstairs hallway.)

The next step is to gather all your tools. If you're like us (and who isn't?) you probably keep all of your tools in the garage, which requires several hundred trips up and down the stairs because of course you're working on the room that is the furthest you can possibly get from the garage and still be in the same house. Once you've gathered everything you think you will possibly need, organize them on the opposite side of the room from where you intend to start putting down your floor:



From left to right (mostly), the assembled tools are:

• Work light: used to mess up your sense of time so you can keep working long after it gets dark and you should have stopped for something to eat.


• Ear protection: almost everything you're working with is LOUD. Especially the compressor.


• Hammer: used for pounding things, like staples that didn't go in quite far enough.


• Nail set: (hidden behind the hammer) used to keep the hammer from hitting the flooring and wrecking the edges when a staple didn't go in quite far enough.


• Screwdriver: not required, actually, unless you left it downstairs, in which case you WOULD need it and have to go downstairs (again) to get it.


• Box cutter: used for cutting the underpad and (sometimes) fingers, and opening the boxes.


• Safety gogglers: like the screwdriver, completely unnecessary unless you don't have them, in which case a freak, never-happen-again-in-a-million-years accident will send a staple directly into your eye socket. (I wore mine.)


• Pencil: used to make pencil marks.


• Tape measure: used to determine where the pencil marks should go.


• Brad nailer: not actually the ideal tool for this. We really should be using 16-gauge nails, but our little nailer only takes 18-gauge. Given that the flooring is really light, however, and I can make up for the weaker nails by using more of them, I figure we can get away with it.


• Stapler: used to pin down the underpad to the subfloor so it doesn't move around while you're trying to work on it.


• Floor stapler: I love this thing. It's my second favourite tool, behind the reciprocating saw (of course).


• Big-ass box of staples: surprisingly economical, given how much the smaller packs cost. I'll never use these up - not in this house, anyway - but it was still cheaper than trying to buy a bunch of smaller boxes.


• Way-too-long air hose: seriously - WAY too long.


• The Incredible Hulk: our Kawasaki air compressor that we bought for a ridiculous price at Costco. This thing is loud, large, and in charge, baby. And really hard to get up the stairs. I actually filled it up while it was still in the garage because it's REALLY loud, and I figured the cats would appreciate not having the Hulk roaring away on a bare wooden floor for half-an-hour.


• Big roll of underpad: there should be lots left over to do the War Room.

Also required, but not shown (and therefore most likely requiring a separate trip back downstairs to fetch them when you realize you've forgotten them):

• Flooring blocks: used to brace against the lip/edges of the flooring so you can whack them into place with the hammer without having to whale directly on the floor. Still can't believe I forgot about these things when I was prepping - you literally can't do flooring without them.


• Scrap blocks: used to ensure you have adequate space around the edges of the floor to allow for expansion.


• Broom: to make sure there aren't any little bits of wood or other debris underneath the underpad before you staple it all down.


• Magic bar: to pry up the first row after you screw it up (I'll get to that in a minute).


• Pliers: to pull out staples that didn't go in anywhere close to far enough.


• Knee pads: cause, otherwise, your back is going to burn like the fire. Oh, and your knees, too.


• Chalk line: trust me on this one.

So, once all of the necessary tools and materials have been gathered (the actual flooring itself - Elements by Kentwood Maple Saffron - has been sitting in the upstairs hallways and bedroom closets for more than a year; it's the one thing I DIDN'T have to bring up from downstairs), it's time to get busy.

I started by measuring the width of the room to make sure that the last row wouldn't wind up being an inch thick or anything. Luckily, the room size and the width of the planks match up fairly well, and the final row should be about four inches - close enough for government work! Let's get started!

The first step is to lay down a piece of underpad. The stuff we're using is supposedly designed for maximum noise reduction under engineered hardwood, and we got a big roll of it when we got the floor. Next, I grabbed a few likely pieces of our fine flooring and started laying them out.

Now, when working that close to the wall, you can't use the flooring stapler because the handle and the magazine for the staples stick out the back - you simply can't get the tool close enough to the wall to place it over the tongue of the flooring (unless you've got 12" wide planks, which... we don't). So you have to use either a hammer and nails, or - like me - a brad nailer held at just the right angle. It also means you have to be extra careful putting in the first few pieces - which I certainly THOUGHT I was.

Uh, not so much. The first row I put it looked okay, but once I started laying out the second row, I realized I didn't quite have it perfectly straight - the next pieces were not fitting anywhere near tightly enough. So I pulled them all up and tried again.

The next attempt seemed to go in quite a bit better, and I even got the floor stapler going to snug up the second row. Unfortunately, once I took a closer look, I realized that I had followed the wall a little too closely - because the wall was curved.

You can't see it in this picture, but trust me, this is not good enough:



So I ripped it all up again, and did what I should have done the first time: asked the War Department what I was doing wrong. She suggested that we get the chalk line out, and measure equal points from the far wall - that way the flooring would stay straight as it came across the room. We did, and snapped a nice clean line that I could use to line up the first row of planks.

Much as I hate to admit it (any more than I absolutely have to, anyway), she was totally right, and the third try produced a nice, tight, straight first row that only looked better once the second and third rows were installed. (It's a good thing we've got extra wood!)



Once I got to the fourth row, however, I had to deal with the first finicky bit; the closet opening:



Fortunately, I had actually planned ahead (shocker, I know) and aside from having to make a couple of extra trips up and down the damn stairs to trim up the inside piece on the table saw, I managed to wrap the wood around without any problems, and got in a couple more rows before I ran out of working hours and had to call it a night:





The next night was actually my birthday, and with the War Department out at the opera (gettin' sum kulcher), I was free to keep plugging away at it to my heart's content. Which I did. Got a fair bit done, too; I was doing so well, I had to stop and remind myself to take a picture so as not to let it all get away from me (I had to move the compressor and work light to the other side of the room anyway):



And here's where I stopped for the night and treated myself to one of the excellent Scottish beers my Crazy Neighbour™ left on the front steps for me in honour of my birthday (seriously, is there anything in this world better than free surprise beer? I doubt it...)



It was actually about 10:30 at that point, and I had reached the limit of what I could do with the floor stapler. See, you need a fair amount of room on the front side of the stapler too, what with having to swing the big-ass mallet around to drive in the staples. From that point on, it would be mostly the nail gun and a lot of finicky work around the door opening and up against the wall, and I was utterly gassed.

I couldn't work on it Tuesday night, but on Wednesday I geared up again and, after a quick jaunt over to Home Despot to pick up some more nails for the nailer, I got right back at it and finished it all off:





Even tidied up a really narrow bit tight up against the wall inside the closet, too:



All in all, I'm quite pleased. It looks really good, and the War Department did a great job of locking down the subfloor, so it's really solid and doesn't squeak a bit. So now, it's off to Rona to get some trim, and then the fiddly stuff REALLY gets going.

While you're all here, though, it's been a while, so here's another edition of everyone's favorite feature,

The Injury Report

The good news is that I didn't hurt myself while doing the floor and therefore avoided splashing blood all over the new hardwood. No, it was actually a couple of weeks ago that I smashed my left hand with a hammer and walked around with a bit of a bruise for a few days.

Why did I smash my hand?
See, I was fixing an axe, and trying to knock the old handle out of the axe head. I was holding the axe head on a stump while swinging at it with a hammer. I missed the piece of metal I was using to drive out the handle, and whacked myself a good one right on the base of my thumb.

Why was I fixing my axe?
It's not my axe, it's Amy's.

Why was I fixing Amy's axe?
Because I broke it. Again.

What do I mean, again?
Well, TECHNICALLY, it's the first time I've broken THIS axe. Which is actually her splitting wedge. The other axe, well...

Did I break Amy's other axe?
Yes.

How many times?
Twice.

How many times?
TWICE. (And no, despite what Amy says, I really only broke it twice. She says three times, but the "third" time I broke it, I hadn't fixed it from the second time yet, and I just, well, I finished breaking it - totally doesn't count as a separate break.)

Did I fix that other axe?
Yes.

How many times?
Twice, now. After I finished fixing the splitting wedge, I fixed the other one. Again. So I fixed two axes that day I hurt my hand.



Am I going to break her axe again?
No.

Why not?
Because she won't let me use her axes anymore. I had to go and buy my own. Ones with fiberglass handles.

Why do I break so many axes?
Cause I'm good with tools.



In my defence, I've never broken her hatchet, and I've used it plenty of times.



Yes, I know it has a metal handle.

Shut up.

Enough lollygagging - let's do some renos!

Skip: "You lollygag the ball around the infield! You lollygag your way down to first! You lollygag your way in and out of the dugout! Do you know what that makes you? Larry!"

Larry: "Lollygaggers!"

Skip: "Lollygaggers!"

Sorry, but pitchers and catchers reported on Monday, and Spring Training begins for real this weekend. Whooo! Go Jays! Lollygaggers!


Ahem... moving on...

First of all, thank you everyone for your kinds words both here and on Facebook as we mourned the loss of our dear friend. I couldn't help but notice that nobody sent any money to help us replace it, but hey: it's the thought that counts and we appreciate the sentiment.

Now that the maudlin is out of the way, we can focus on what everyone really comes here to hear: me hurting myself! Well, I didn't this week (yet) so how about I just post some pictures or something and stop prattling on about baseball, hmm?

Sadly - man, this post is turning out just disappointment top to bottom, isn't it? - the pictures I have aren't all that interesting. Well, they're interesting to us, and seeing the changes in person is pretty impressive (our drywall guy is an absolute artiste), but the pictures are kinda sorta mostly blah. It's white on white again, I'm afraid.

So, the backstory first: for our next project, we had planned to tackle the remaining two bedrooms upstairs - my office and the War Department's office-slash-guest-room (I think I'll start calling it the War Room - ooh, I like that). After some long discussions and due consideration given to schedules, plans, and the turning of the seasons, we decided to just do one room at a time, instead of both together. We didn't want to have to find storage for all of the bookshelves, books, beds, desks, and other assorted crap - not to mention setting up an office downstairs in the living room or something - and then having our lives all disrupted and shit for three months or however long it was going to take us.

Instead, we packed up all of the books and other detritus in my office, and set up a temporary desk in the War Room for me (the War Department is using her netbook instead of her desktop machine until this round of renos is over, so full props to her for making that sacrifice). Once all the crap was out of the way, we cut back the valance in front of the windows, scraped the popcorn off the ceiling, and called in Tony, the Master Mudder, to work his magic.

Now, somehow, in my multitude of pictures, I have absolutely none showing my office in its "before" phase - like, prior to us doing anything. All I have is a few shots of the office after we took everything out, and cut back the drywall in preparation for Tony. I don't even have any pictures of it before we took the carpet out - well, except for the one from the original real estate listing:



Looks... a lot bigger than it really is, actually. Must be the lens, obviously, as it looked a lot smaller when we finished prepping for Tony:



It took Tony four trips (and a broken ignition switch - don't ask), but he worked his usual magic, and now it looks freaking amazing.



I took a lot more pictures than that, but like I said, it's white on white, and hard to make out any details anyway.

So that's where the project stands now. This weekend we'll get started priming the ceiling, cleaning the walls, and filling and sanding a few minor holes.

Oh, speaking of which, it's time yet again for...

This Week In Mayonnaise

I don't have any pictures to share right now, but I thought it worth mentioning that Tony noticed the mayonnaise on the walls of my soon-to-be-office. Well, considering he IS the professional, and probably more familiar with all the different types of wall patches available, I asked him what it was.

He had absolutely no freaking clue. None.


He did like the fact that we called it mayonnaise, though. And so the mystery deepens...