DIY weekend

This weekend was filled with the normal weekend types of activities - swimming lessons and grocery shopping and long-overdue haircuts - but it was also filled with 4 gallons of primer and 2 gallons of ceiling paint that Chad and I put up in the basement, and if I ever see a paintbrush again, it will be too soon. I never realized just how much one's eyes could cross until I tried applying white ceiling paint over top of white primer in a basement at 11 p.m. It's completely understandable that we missed a few spots on the first go-round.

Of course, all that we have now is a white basement. We still need to paint the walls. While I think the worst of it is behind us (the primer that soaks into drywall like nobody's business, the splatters and paint in the hair and shoulder strain from painting overhead, the constant moving of furniture and shifting of drop cloths to protect all the junk we keep in the basement), we still have a lot of work ahead of us that we are trying to finish up before the kids' birthday party, which is just a little over a month away. This isn't limited to painting the walls; we also have to paint a bunch of shelves, do the baseboards and trim, find and hang light fixtures, figure out how to arrange the furniture and where to hang things on the walls, etc.

Wish us luck.

(Mallory starts swimming lessons at the end of the month - wish us luck with that, too!)