in two hours, i will be at the airport picking up my wife who was gone way too long. eight days would have been unbearable except for not really having a break since she left.

days 7 and 8 were all about finishing up everything. saturday was spent mostly doing the baseboards in the hallway, the stairs, and in the two rooms. i chickened out and decided to not do the master bedroom. the stairs wound up being a lot of work because we had the carpet ripped up and replaced with hardwood, so it required some hole pluggin’, some sandin’, and a couple of coats of paint. while not a professional job by any means, it does look way better than it did. i also wound up repainting the corner of the baby’s room. i was going to try to sponge from light to dark, since we wanted the corner to be part of a night scene. but the sponging just didn’t look right, so i repainted over everything and tried something different. hopefully it’ll get the thumbs up!

today was my last day to get everything done. unfortunately, last night i opened a can of ceiling paint and tried to touch up the ceiling on the baby’s room. this morning, it was pretty apparent that it was not the same ceiling paint that was actually on the ceiling. so in addition to another coat on the baseboards, hanging the shelves in the den, and finishing all the painting in the baby’s room, i wound up painting the ceiling, as well. (it turns out i missed a small spot, too, so i’ll have to do the touch up this week).  the shelves look nice, but i’ll need some extra screws to secure the boards. they have a slight warp to them, but between a few screws and the weight of the books, i think we’ll be fine.

there was a lot of cleanup to do. i basically threw everything away, and there was a lot of paper, tape, brushes, and empty paint cans to toss out. oh, and clothes:

here are some final shots: