Painting!

So we finally painted a room, which really feels like an accomplishment since it is actually moving the house toward a finished state. Its really hard when most of the work done is a band aid to just make living here more tolerable. We have some pretty grand ideas but most of the work on the interior of the house has not moved much toward our end goals. The yard work has always felt more productive to me from an end result standpoint.

Stripping and staining the redwood, and painting the office however is an actual step toward how we want the house to look and is quite refreshing. Big thanks to MaGyver for laying down some primer and to our old neighbors J&N for painting assistance. In fact our team of 5 got quite a bit done:

I continued to work on adventures in romex wire. We want to move the Koi pond to the front porch so I installed an outdoor outlet which is substantially more difficult than running non conduit indoor wiring. In addition to installing the outdoor outlet I replaced the sketchy open air connections with actual junction boxes that were *gasp* protected from rain. Sometimes the world rewards you in very convenient ways, in this case the extra conduit I had left over was a perfect fit to cover the exposed wires on the roof that powers the knob and tube. Did not need to cut it at all, and was very pleased by that fact.

While MaGyver cleaned the office then laid down a layer of primer, Belle, J, and N planted the frankentree. This thing is cool, its actually 5 trees grafted onto a single root stalk. It has 2 kinds of peaches, apricots, nectarines and plums. Water one tree, get 5 fruits.

Afterward, J and I continued to paint the office, in the bronze yellow color and Belle and N were patching cracks in the bedroom plaster.

Meanwhile Kai and Toby, J&N's corgi played in the yard and tired each other out. Kai has learned "inside voice" barking where she will bark extremely quietly while inside with us then run outside and bark at full volume. Together her and Toby whipped all the neighborhood dogs into a chorus as they discussed the intricacies of their lives.