We’re Painting Dragonfly

Okay, so we’re working on Dragonfly. That’s the house in SW Portland, you see. Strictly speaking, it needs some new flooring and some wall paint. That’s about it. The carpet is all the original contractor-grade from 2002, so it’s time to upgrade at any rate; a surprising number of the rooms are still painted the original eggshell white dating back to construction as well. So, while we may feel overwhelmed with the work - what with everything else going on - there isn’t that much to do in the big picture.

Outside, for example, about two hours of work covers the must-do items:

• Mow the lawn a couple times over the next week to get it even and under-control
• Take out the dead ornamental tree next to the backyard tree house
• Cut the Wisteria back to size

Over the weekend, we got to following rooms under way:

• Office:  the dark colors covered with primer, ready for a lighter shade of paint
• M’s room: painted with some background colors, ready for a mural to emerge over the next few months
• R’s room: from off white to a color called ‘Glass’, which looks grey but with a hint of blue/purple
• Kitchen/Nook: the same ‘maple’ color we used in the Stark Street kitchen
• Guest Room:  prepared and taped for painting. C deliberated on the color for  a while. She finalized that today. Paint starts tomorrow

Other painting projects on the list:

• Epoxy on the garage floor
• Living Room (first time repaint)
• Stairwells
• Entry
• Dining Room
• New color in the office
• Woodwork repaint with enamel.

In other words, we knocked off 3.5 items from the 11 item list just this last weekend. That’s something like 30% complete already!

The kids helped. I taught R the basics of roller painting. M helped in her own way. Both kids did great service wiping down the woodwork and getting surfaces prepped for paint. They also got their homework done Sunday morning, leaving them at-ease for the rest of Sunday and painting.

There are a number of other things to do – mostly in the form of replacing door hardware that got changed out in a haphazard way.