A busy weekend

The painting in the stair is finished. I put another coat of "Honey Moth" on the ceiling and two coats on the adjacent wall. It looks pretty good - a major improvement over what was there.

Oh, and no room is complete in the Tiny Bungalow anymore unless I can spray-paint something in it with faux hammered metal. I did the light switch plate here. Very classy but it kind of clashes with the fixture the PO installed.
Since today was incredible outside, I decided to get the rain barrels in place. I changed out the screens and put in new ones. I also got some CMU and have each barrel lifted higher than they were last year. Hopefully this will improve the water pressure. It makes them a little more obtrusive but I don't really care.

The flowers look nice and I cleared two areas to start some more perennials from seed. I don't have a lot of hope for them but I guess we'll see. The tulips (the white ones) are going a little wacky.
I don't think I've seen a tulip open up like these - too funny. Its like they are jealous because they seemed plain next to the purple ones so they thought they'd yell out a little cry for attention. They really fill up the yard. We cut a few and brought them indoors and they really went nuts.

Stairway painting

The painting was going fine, until I ran out of paint. Now I'm not sure what to do. I don't want to buy another can of "Adventure Orange" just to finish this area. I have several cans of misc. paint and maybe I'll just paint the remaining wall a different color. The color was really only critical as seen from the basement anyway. I may just use the same color that I have on the ceiling and paint that on the remaining walls. It might be nice to brighten up the space a bit anyway. I'll do that tonight and then tackle the final trim this weekend.

Stairway primed and ready to go

The stairway is cleaned and primed. I will start painting later tonight. There is still the question of how to deal with the trim - hopefully I'll have some bright ideas in a couple of days.

Making things nice for friends

Actually, the goal is to make things nice for us. I am just using the excuse that my friend Tim and and his family will be staying with us in a couple weeks so that I can finish some loose ends in the basement. After several hours of scrubbing, I was able to remove all of the glue from the vinyl wall coverings from the walls at the basement stairs. I can now prime and paint. I have a bunch of areas where I need to figure out how to add trim but I'll cross that bridge when I get to it. Once I am finished with the stairs, I can begin tackling the basement bathroom.
Since all of the scrubbing has gotten me dwelling on the things that I hate about restoring, I thought I'd add some pics from the garden to help cheer things up. The flowers look nice. The ones in the front are a bit sparse but also look nice. The rabbits didn't eat the crocus this year so even they look good.

Doing two, or three, things at once

I have my head in about three different places in the house right now. We are having guests in a couple weeks and this means that the more the house looks like a home, rather than a construction zone, the better.

One project is to (finally) finish the basement stairway and put in a new handrail and light. I installed blocking for the rail and stained it the same color as the rest of the basement woodwork. I also finished the plaster repair in the stairway. I should be painting this week. All I will have left is to finish the soffit at the bottom of the stair but I consider that an entirely separate projectThe second task is to get the basement bathroom in shape. I had to cut out a few feet of drywall in the basement when we moved in because of "the M word". I am doing the taping on the bathroom drywall and this should be paint-ready this week also.
Thanks everyone for the advice on the door to the bathroom. The good part is that this is a crappy door so if I screw something up, I can get a new one. I think I know what to do now. Unfortunately, the PO that made this bathroom was a bit design-challenged. I am sure there are reasons why they did what they did but with a closet behind the toilet, door swinging into the basement, cramped fixtures, etc. the room just doesn't function very well. I don't want to put too much into this project so I will end up just making a few modifications and call it a day.

As for the master bedroom, I think that I stripped the last of the paint yesterday. I am pretty excited because, much to my wife's satisfaction, the room will soon start looking like something. The fan and light also arrived last week and though we went for the mission style knock off fixture, as opposed to the $700 "real thing", I think it is going to look good. With any luck, we'll see some color in that room next weekend.