negative one? and finally! Before and After!

 That's celsius for cold ha.  30 degrees F and snowing up north of here, with a wickedly biting wind.  brrr!  It's so cozy in here it's not even funny, because I baked cookies! 

This fine morning, after a decent night's sleep...painful, but not as bad as some of them, I didn't take any ibuprofen!  I got up and made my morning coffee...the freshly roasted stuff from the guy near the prison in the city.  I have been drinking the first cup or two just black, and it has been fine.  But no time for sitting around perusing blogs and reading news this morning, no sir, we had to go work on that yucky house.

We got there and unloaded the paint we brought from home, and oops no trim paint!  Over to the hardware store I went, one gallon of trim paint, $56 with tax, ouch.  All the bottom trim has been removed in all the rooms, the flooring under and wall behind has been cleaned, the trim was wiped down a second time, then I started painting it today.  Finding where to set it so I could sit, for the most part, and paint, was challenging.  It was propped in one room from the window sill to two crates stacked up.  I had to be creative, in one room I took a drawer from an old dresser that will go to the dump when we're done using it to keep the tools on, and laid out smaller pieces of trim across it.  

Grant came over from across the street, my seven year old grandson.  He said he was a good painter.  I asked him if he's actually painted before.  "Yes, on paper!"  Okay, I said, you're hired!  He was a good helper, and made up for the lack of talent in his extra exuberance.  Sam helped for a bit too and I just enjoyed his company.

Emily came up to help, she was priming upstairs, and Nate was helping Paul with plumbing while Evelyn washed walls.  We'll be going up during the week to paint ceilings...

Home....ahh, home.  I changed out of my paint-y clothes, and got a pound of butter and four eggs out to come to room temp for a double batch of chocolate chip cookies.  Then a package of chicken breast, cut them in halves, and put them in a lime juice marinade.  Sonja and Charlotte and Camile chopped peppers and onions and cilantro, sliced up a lime, and a mango, and made the corn tortillas (we like to put some salt on them too, mmm!).  I mixed up the cookie dough after a little rest in my chair, then baked up several sheets of cookies, with Miss Char helping take them out of the oven when it beeped.  

The chicken went into the oven to roast, and we waited impatiently for our chicken tacos.  Oscar came over with some Mexican cheese, and joined us for dinner.

Anyways, Paul put the drawer pulls on tonight!  Before:  

After: 

These two pics are of the one next to my chair.This

This is the one on the other end of the couch, the one Suri chewed on when she was a pup, the corners of the wood.  They came out just like I thought they would, when you envision something and make it happen, it's happiness.  I'll show you the color in the light of day sometime, it's really nice.  

Paul went to the Dollar General and got me some generic Voltaren to put on my knee.  I don't know that it helped yet, it can take some days before it really helps, but I'd rather use it than take the ibuprofen.  

Ah well, not too much else going on here, I'm glad to be sitting in my chair with my feet up.  The cat is meowing to come in, so I'll go let him in, and sit back down.  :). Have a good evening.