Work on the House

February 13th - 25th, 2022

 

From February 13^th, when we returned home to Ocean Falls from our time in Mexico, until February 25^th we worked on our house every day, trying to get as much done as possible to make our place a nice home rather than a construction project. 

In the living room the dark wood-looking wall paneling got removed from the wall, every surface to be painted got cleaned and sanded, drywall repairs got fixed and faired out.  These drywall repairs included replacing some pieces in one of the ceiling corners where there were the remains of what appeared to be old water damage. 

The area had clearly been very poorly repaired in the past, and it all needed replacing and repairing again.  Once the last coat of fairing compound went on and was sanded, it was time to clean again.  With all of the dust removed we pulled up the cardboard that was covering the beautifully sanded hardwood floors, which Jason had sanded in December.  We applied four coats of Oil Modified Polyurethane.  The room was beginning to look good.  Now all it needed was paint.  

Since we had been unable to take our truck out with us on the ferry at the end of December, we were also unable to take out with us the eight gallons of pure white paint that needed to either be returned or tinted.  Therefore, we had decided, while we were in Victoria, to see if Home Depot would provide us with the correct tint for the correct number of gallons of each of the colours we desired.  After explaining our situation to a lady at the paint department in the Victoria Home Depot it was agreed that they could do that.  We provided three containers, one for each colour that we wanted, and they put in the correct recipe of tint for the number of gallons that we were going to tint.  These three containers of tint were on the list of items that were a priority for us to bring up on the ferry with us when we travelled as foot passengers.   

We were then able to mix up our own paint.  Using a five-gallon bucket we poured in three gallons of the pure white paint and then, using several spatulas, we meticulously got out every spec of tint that we could and we began to mix.  It took a very long time to get it fully mixed, and part way through we poured it back into the three single-gallon cans and mixed each of them individually in order to get any last bit of pure white mixed in.  Then, it all went back into the five-gallon bucket and was stirred again.  We wanted each one-gallon can to be exactly the same colour.  When we were satisfied, we were able to start painting, and managed to get two coats of paint on the walls and trim.   

As a result of being unable to bring a truckload of stuff home with us at the beginning of February, we chose to order the flat white paint for the ceilings online and for it to be delivered by mail.  However, when it arrived we were very disappointed to find that all of the paint was hard; seemingly somewhere along the line in the shipping process it had been frozen.  All that the living room needed in order to be finished so that we could move the furniture in was for the ceiling to be painted, but unfortunately that would have to wait until we arrived home once again. 

On February 26th we caught the ferry out to Victoria, this time with our truck, such that luckily we were able to take the frozen paint out with us to return it.  Jiji was much happier on this trip on the ferry than she had been with us as walk-on passengers.  As a walk-on, she had to go into the kennel room, and remain down on the car deck.  Poor girl.  This time, since we had our truck, she was able to stay in her carrier inside our truck, which was a much nicer environment for her.  On the drive down the island to Victoria she made a good co-pilot and was quite relaxed.