The Day After

It’s early.  Six-thirty and I’m sipping my first cup of tea.  Our house tea is Tazo’s Awake with a splash of skim milk.  The routine is a bit off, with the kitchen completely sealed up in plastic.  We are in the living room.  The woodstove is our pantry.  The dining room table, exiled to under the painting near the back door, holds the microwave and toaster.  We’re eating dinners out or pre-prepared and I’m alone at lunch, but the morning tea and breakfast are affected by this Project Week.

I survived yesterday’s session with the sander.  By the afternoon, my fingers took over the title of most sore from my arms.  Repeated fistfuls of ibuprofen kept me functioning into the night and got me a decent night’s sleep.  By the time I grabbed a much-needed shower, the entire ceiling was sanded down with no less than 27 round pads of 120-grit sandpaper. 

After that, I put our new Ridgid shop-vac through the motions for 90 minutes cleaning the floor, windows, walls, shelves and the tops of cabinets.  The sanding took a lot more time than anticipated, but I believe I can stay on schedule, and that is a good thing, because I have acquired something that I need:  a hard deadline.

I had planned to wrap up this project on Friday, as it is the end of the work and school week, so the house will get busy again on the weekend.  But if it took longer, who would care?  We would survive, right?  This is the same exact game I sometimes play with my monthly work deadlines.  I’ll tell myself that I really would like to get it done early, so I’ll plan on starting work on a certain day and set myself up accordingly.  And then I proceed to ignore the schedule, knowing full well that it is a soft deadline.  It isn’t real. 

Well, Friday just became the real deadline.  Our friends Chris and Dan are coming in from Vermont for a place to crash while attending a wedding over the weekend.  It will likely be late Friday night when they arrive, but that gives me a reason to get moving and not coyly creep into the weekend.

So, it’s Wednesday.  I think I can get all of the coats of BIN primer done today.  I am going to paint a coat on all of the knots in the wood first.  After that will be a second coat on the knots.  Finally, the whole ceiling will get a coat of BIN.  The can says it can be painted over after only 45 minutes, but experience says it should be a little closer to two hours.  Hell, it might take me two hours just to hit all of the knots.

In theory, that gives me a chance for a light sanding Thursday morning and two coats of an as-yet-undetermined paint on Thursday and Friday.  That’s the theory. 

Time for another cup of tea before I go wipe down the ceiling with a damp cloth to get the rest of the dust out.  I’m sticking to my prediction that the hardest part of this job is now past.  Besides, without all that noise, I can now pop in an audio book.  Let’s see, there's always John Keegan's The First World War, a personal favorite.  I’ve got the Lord of the Rings sitting on my desk or I recently bought Stephen King’s Stationary Bike from half.com.  Ooh, yeah.  Stationary Bike.  That will fit well after having just watched the Vuelta Espana (Tour of Spain) bike race.  It is read by actor Ron McClarty, best known to me for playing a cop on the 80s show Spenser For Hire.  And coincidentally, my friend Joel has just found a website with episodes of Spenser.  Or maybe that’s what I need. 

Off I go.

dave