Operation Primer!

It was a really good weekend.

I mean, a really good weekend. How could it not be? We closed. We'd been dreaming that particular event since May, and it was so good to finally live it.

The idea of what we're doing, and the desire, has been with us since the start of our relationship. This long, deep, sustaining dream-- a place in the country, land for a garden, just us, making it our own-- that has been something we've looked towards together pretty much since the day we met. And now, we are here. And wow.

We've been dreaming this for so long, and this weekend we finally got to begin living it.

Writing it that way sounds so nice and idyllic. The reality was, the previous renters had a rather obnoxious sense of color, and we were charged with the heady task of priming four orange-green-mustard-yellow rooms.

The crazy colors were only in the upstairs, fortunately. The story is, the upstairs was converted into a separate apartment, (and we're converting it back just as soon as we can!), the tenants adopted a child from Asia and wanted to make it feel welcome, hence the tropical color scheme.

And, I'm sorry, it's really none of my business, but what part of this seemed like a good idea to those people?! They nailed bamboo to the walls. They used army green and pumpkin orange in the same room! They painted windows and doors to simulate bamboo, committing some pretty blatant crimes against the character of this old farmhouse.

It was wonderful to spread snowy white primer over the walls and ceilings, erasing all traces of the colorful Jungle Book exorcism.

We primed four rooms. That's sixteen walls, three ceilings, seven windows, five doors, and twenty-seven yards of baseboard molding.

Applying the first creamy dollop. Inaugurating the long road of house projects, the journey, the process.

This room, incidentally, is my future craft room/office. It gets terrific afternoon sunlight. Especially in November, with the leaves off the trees and the frosty fields slanting away in the distance.

We drove to Morris (eight miles away) for pizza. It's important, you know, to test out local pizzas. This one got points for fresh mushrooms, but the crust was a little on the rubbery side. Not bad, though, for a podunk upstate NY town.

This was our eating-and-relaxing room upstairs, the one that was already painted when we bought the house. Apparently, the same tenants who'd painted the greens and oranges in the other bedrooms had painted a mural in here so offensive the seller had it covered up before we even saw the place. Sheesh.

Then it was back to painting. We spent Saturday evening at the local bar, drinking Butternuts beer and getting to know our neighbors. It's a friendly town.

We slept on an air mattress with three sleeping bags and a space heater for warmth. Sunday morning, back to painting.

We took our first thrilling steps, and made a dent in the work. Heading back to Binghamton Sunday evening, my head was swimming with projects and ideas, already scheming up the next job to tackle. I'm sore everywhere, and there's paint under all ten fingernails, but I can't wait for what's next. It's begun, it's finally finally begun!