Managing to Plan

The title is an expression used in the project management world. It means that you are able to manage the project to where it stays on track the way you have planned despite roadblocks that come up. I find that I am challenged in this area. I think my problem is two-fold - I overestimate the amount of things I/we can do in a given period of time, and I underestimate the amount of time a certain thing takes to complete. But this is a learning experience after all. So there are still quite a few things left to be done on the living room. I finally have some pictures. To the left is the living room in it's before state...rather bland.

The lathe and plaster walls and ceiling had an amazing amount of cracks and holes in it. It took *forever* to patch everything and sand it all down, and try to make it match the texture of the rest of the plaster. When all was said and done it actually looks pretty good, and though the large/long patches are visible, they aren't terribly so - and the smaller ones you can't see at all.

I tried to freehand the corner where the wall color and the ceiling color met, but that was disasterous. So I added the task of taping the ceiling off when I painted the walls. That worked out better then I thought, and actually created a fine, if not entirely perfect line. I can't say the same for around the windows, where the tape pulled some of the recently applied paint from the walls. Also the trim paint seemed to seep under the tape in spots as well creating more errors. I took a tiny little craft paintbrush and touched up the spots in question and it turned out better - no one would ever know! (except that I just told you).

DH finished installing the baseboard, but just installing it. We have not yet caulked it, patched the nail head marks nor painted it. I refer back to the first paragraph here...I didn't realize how time consuming it would be to install it. He did a wonderful job! I really like the way it turned out. Unfortunately I emailed myself the wrong picture so you can't see it up close, but I'll post another picture once it's painted and done. I do think the paint color turned out lovely! And the white baseboard really sets it off. I included a full room shot, pre-baseboard so you could see the overall color and the basic idea of the new furniture set up.

So if you remember, I was concerned about the way the curtains would look against the new wall color. We hung the first of the curtains last night, and I must say my concerns have been confirmed...I don't like it. The curtains weren't my favorite to begin with. They are a little too heavy and old fashioned for my tastes. And DH doesn't like how full they are, he'd prefer something a little less "bunchy". But there are many windows, large ones at that - so from my window shopping I estimate buying even cheap curtains would cost about 200 bucks, and probably more. Even making them would be very expensive, unless I got the fabric on uber-clearance. We have alot of improvements to make on this house, and a certain amount of money we socked away for it. So spending a bunch on curtains when we have some that will do and are practically new seems not the wisest. I think we'll wait and budget for that later. They do look kind of pinkish, and consequently almost make the walls look greenish - but they did look a little better in the natural morning light today. /sigh. What do you think?

So anyhow. That's where we are at. Over the next week we'll be painting the baseboard, touching up the spots around the windows, hanging the rest of the curtains, and painting the rest of the trim. I'm tempted to leave the mantle as is, as it will be a BITCH to prep and paint properly. Oh and we simply MUST hang the pot rack in the kitchen! I'm tired of it sitting next to my desk.

On a completely different subject, why is it that I'm the only one that complains about the user interface of blogspot? I mean, it's a total f'n bitch to upload pictures on this thing. They all go to the top and you have to drag them where you want them - and then by the time you are done, there are huge gaps everywhere. When you try to delete the spaces between the paragraphs etc, then if you hit backspace one too many times...*bam* your picture is gone and you have to start over. Then after you publish the post it doesn't even look like what you expected. I HATE it. It's why I don't post pictures more often. Perhaps I'm missing something, some trick or tool - as no one else seems to complain. But whatever. Maybe I'll just start writing the posts on the HTML tab, because that might work better.

Bah. Time for working...and stuff.