The painters are finally done

It took a week and a half; several days longer than originally promised, but at least it wasn’t several weeks longer. I’m so done with workers in the house! (For now. There’s more this house needs, unfortunately.) But I’m meanwhile excited to get my house back!

The painters even worked on Saturday. They took Sunday off, and we used that as a chance to have John’s brother Dan, his wife Dawn, and their kids over to play in the pool before they head back to Minnesota for the summer.

They were our first guests! We’ve all had at least one vaccination shot, and we visited outdoors. They considerately arrived in masks, but we all felt safe enough without them outdoors.

Now we’re getting set up for Emily’s visit tonight! She’s shipped us a crib, a carseat, a stroller, some pool floaties and a few other baby items. And we’ve bought a variety of toys, since we didn’t have any children’s items at the house at all.

We barely have time to put the house back together after painting before Emily gets here. And Emily won’t mind if there’s still a few piles of things here and there. And we’re not going manage to get all the pictures on the walls. They won’t care!

Here’s how it looks (without pictures on the walls yet). It’s a nice, neutral blank slate:

It looks cleaner, newer, and lighter.

The painters did a good job in most of the house, but they did a rushed and sloppy job on the last day. Unfortunately, they painted my fireplace the wrong color, and had to redo it at the last minute and made a huge mess of it, slopping paint onto the hearth and over the edges of the brick.

They weren’t even supposed to have painted the fireplace at all; I had done a much better job myself when we first moved in. I took a lot of time with it and did a very careful job, keeping the paint off the brick. They just slopped over it all, first with our off-white color and then with brown, both of their coats of paint slopping onto the brick and the hearth.

I was not happy about that! At some point I’ll try to minimize the damage. They’re not going to fix it because they don’t see any issue, and all they do is paint – they’re not in the business of removing paint from brick. Grrrr.

They also did a rushed job in the pool bathroom. It accesses from the back patio instead of from inside the house, so I guess they figured it didn’t matter. But it’s a regular 3/4 bath. There were paint drips on the toilet, the floor, the shower curtain, etc.

I wouldn’t hire them again. But overall we’re glad it’s done and it’s mostly not awful.

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