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last night

this morning
i woke up in the guest bedroom of my parents' house, my nokia cell phone ringing me awake. i started to clear out more stuff from my old bedroom, driving out to staples to get some cardboard boxes. the more i cleaned, the less the room resembled my old room. my father and i moved the large desk and rolled up the carpet to be thrown away come next trash day. before i left, i also helped him take down the air conditioner in the living room. i got a chance to finally remove the wasp nest that had been building on the window pane, now completely devoid of wasp life. if i count the number of cells, does that mean this particular nest was home for that number of wasps? that must've been a lot of wasps then, probably 100. thank god for cold insect killing new england weather. if they're all dead, where are the bodies then? kind of mysterious, you'd think they maybe die inside the cells, or maybe dead and scattered about the nest, but i didn't see a single dead wasp anywhere.

back at the house with a suv load of stuff, i unpacked and started detaping the bathroom, revealing nicely painted walls. my father and i put the tank back onto the toilet (oh wonderous flushing mechanism, how i've missed you so!) and reinstalled the large bathroom mirror. after adding some plants (Dracaena sanderana aka lucky bamboo, spider plant, roses), the bathroom looks very finished now.


taping

primer

first coat

final coat

my father left to go to work while my sister came by to take over his place as my renovation assistant. together we painted the second coat of autumn red in the kitchen, she worked the roller, i edged with the brush and multiple up and downs on the stepladder. this end of daylight saving's time kind of puts a weird twist on my painting schedule because i'm used to painting only during daylight hours, but now it gets dark much earlier, and we painted to 6:30pm, the sun having set hours ago. i didn't even really notice, i was too engrossed in just trying to finish my part of the painting. taping the ceiling idea definitely helps. if i was to paint the ceiling edges freehand, it would've taken me 3 backbreaking hours just to do it, and it wouldn't be a very clean job. my sister and i discussed my concept of maybe striping the kitchen walls with horizontal bands of salsa red. she didn't care much for the idea.

while she was leaving, i started preparing the coat closet for salsa red. my sister told me to paint just one wall of the closet, when i wanted to paint the whole thing red. i figured i'd just do what she wanted just to appease her, and besides, i'm not the one with a degree in interior design. it's easier to paint just one wall and see the result than to paint everything and discover later i only want one of the walls painted. she left, i painted, and after about 15 minutes (while listening to the news on the television) it was done. i kind of like it this way, the foyer all orange, the inside of the closet flanked by two yellow walls then a red wall. the double coloring definitely adds depth to the small closet, my sister was right. it would've been a shame to completely lose the yellow in the closet, my original color choice. this way, i can have the best of both worlds, keeping the yellow, yet at the same time introducing the salsa red that i love so much but can't bear to use in the kitchen.