Today, of course, was very busy.
Jeff, James, and Amanda showed up around 9, and got to work. I was very busy making coffee, trying to keep the kitchen straight, making lunches, and doing a few little house things. It was a pleasant cacophony of a house full of friends getting things done. We mixed the paint for the ceiling by eye on the porch to start.
I wanted to recycle an old Christopher Lowell trick. We mixed a bit of the wall paint into the ceiling paint; just enough to make it a very, very pale reflection of the walls. What I wanted was for it to change the color of the light in there. When they started putting the Georgia Queen up it looked very pink next to the purple walls. I was calling the color ‘palest, palest baby’s breath of shrimp’, but Amanda hit the nail on the head and named the color Georgia Queen. That was about perfect.
When they started priming the walls, I was surprised to see that that primer was dark gray – almost as gray as the purple. Jeff explained to me that the Sherwin-Williams man had explained to them that to cover such a dark color they would have to use a dark primer. We covered the bedroom with no such affectations, but I wasn’t going to argue with a professional.
The primer coat was finished shortly before I left for lunch. Jeff refused to put a lick of the color on the walls until I left the house, so they could do a ‘reveal’ later. I was happy enough to comply.
Lunch went well. Ava was in a good mood, and Eve had laid a very nice table in the dining room. Lisa’s family had left right from church, so everyone was more dressed up than I was, but oh well. We ate and visited for a while. Lisa was telling us about her recent problems with Ava’s separation anxiety now that she’s in pre-school; and of her own job search, which is proving to be arduous.
I was as patient as I could possibly be, and of course I enjoyed seeing Ava and Cole (despite the fact that he spent most of the visit comatose in the floor, covered by a blanket to the top of his head – we couldn’t even see him), but I was dying to get home to see what was going on.
After three hours I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I excused myself and scrambled home, where painting was still in progress. They were beginning the fifth coat of paint on the walls when I got there. The coverage over that dark gray primer had been a problem. Paint people at the store always act like you’re trying to cross the Sierras on foot or something if you use a dark color, but if you just use primer its fine. The tinted primer is fantastic, but I think the guys got some bad advice from that SW guy.
Anyway, they went on painting, and the fifth coat did the trick. The color came true, and was gorgeous. We had planned to have people to my place tonight for Sunday supper, but Russ and Billy were of course late getting back from Savannah and begged off. Morgan and Matthew cancelled too, so it was just the four of us.
I went and picked up some Chinese food for everyone, and we ate on the porch. It was a gorgeous night. They started on the trim, but it was getting late, and they had been at it all day. Eventually, James called it a day, and said they would have to finish tomorrow, which was pretty much what I had figured.
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