I adore my husband. He’s brilliant and capable (and other awesome things that a husband should be ) .But he can’t create time, and there are too many projects that need to be done around here, NOW, before the house starts falling into the abyss. We talk about them and talk about how “we’ll start doing them next week”, but again, the time creation thing has us stumped.

So since it’s currently the “off season” I thought I’d catch up on a few of the projects that have been neglected because others have priority. Last week, I moved some stuff off the kitchen counters and started to paint the ceiling.

The ceilings have not been painted since the house was purchased in 2000. Every year since then, I’ve said, “We’ll paint the ceilings this year.” The ceilings are high, and they’re that awful T-1-11 crap (don’t know how to convey that exactly…..tee one eleven), which is parallel 3 inch slats with ½ inch grooves between each one. And the grooves, when they get to the walls and the structural beams, make little holes, which must be filled in with paint. The grooves must also be filled in with paint.

Anyway, it is an awful job. It took me two hours to do a small hallway and a tiny part of the kitchen. I was a mess. My back was killing me and my neck was killing me and I was covered with paint and grouchy. So I decided that I’d be much happier writing while others who are much younger and more qualified than I were painting.

So I called my old buddy, Frank. I met Frank when I first moved here and worked for a construction company. Frank left island for a while, but he’s been back and is once again in the painting business. Frank was available to look at the job just a few hours after my call. It was great to see him and his foreman, Luis.

That same day, after Frank and Luis came by, Frank called with an estimate. Michael and I nearly keeled over when we heard the numbers! It was three times what I expected! So Michael started promising me that he’d do it and blah blah blah. But I stood firm.

If Michael tried to do this, it would not be pretty. He’s still working on Land Rover engines, moving parts to proper storage containers, getting a biodiesel system together, etc. etc., and I’d rather have him doing those and other nice husbandy things, thank you very much. Besides, the grass will need to be cut now that it has started raining again.

So we spent the week-end pressure washing the porch ceilings and moving stuff around and out to get things out of the way of the painting guys. Just pressure washing one of the porches was enough work to convince Michael that it’s a good idea to spend the money to have others come in to paint.

So, they’re here now, and going like gangbusters getting the ceilings painted. They were supposed to start outside, but it’s been raining on and off all morning. I cleaned out a couple of rooms and they’ve already gone through them. Now I need to move more stuff out of the way……

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 2:28 pm and is filed under St. Croix, Terry Talk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.