Half way through the painting or more!

Sunday afternoon and we have done the big changeover. On Friday Joel and the painting gang finished the first half (actually about 65% of the house) and headed for home. We got home and the place looked great (as great as it can with the carpet totally messed up). We love the new green on our dining room wall. And everything was unmasked and put back where it belonged except two doors that I think are still drying.

Saturday morning we moved as much as we could out of the kitchen and our bedroom and put a few things back on the walls in the living room. Then I had a major struggle with the mirror in the entry way but finally got it back where it belongs. We decided that was as much as we could do so it was off to do a little shopping and then celebrate our anniversary. We stopped by our carpet supplier to talk flooring and make sure we were on target for carpet installation as soon as the painting is done. Then off to do a little clothes shopping for Kathleen at Bellevue Square. After that was done we checked into the Bellevue Hyatt Regency for our anniversary celebration (and to just get away from the paint smell). We had a wonderful dinner at John Howie's Seastar, probably the best place in the Seattle area for seafood. Kathleen had a superb swordfish with mango and black bean salsa and I had a great crab-sweet corn risotto and we started with the most wonderful cedar-plank roasted mushrooms (so good, even Josh will eat them) and finished with a decadent white-chocolate/coconut cream pie for two, which was really enough for four.

Back to the Hyatt for a paint-fume free sleep. Not the best sleep as both of us have found that some hotel beds are just too hard for my back and Kathleen's hip. We are too used to our Temperpedic mattress. Up and home for breakfast (decided not to eat out since we will be doing a lot of that this week) and then started moving stuff around. For this coming week they will be painting the master bedroom and bathroom on the upper floor and the kitchen and breakfast nook on the central floor. Everything else is done! Yahoo! But this week we will be out of the kitchen for the week. That means I will be seeing the folks at Starbucks for breakfast and grabbing a salad at Trader Joe's for lunch each day. Then we will do dinner as either takeout or eat out. Probably some more of the wonderful Coho Cafe happy hour nibbles (a super bargain) and maybe back to Ooba or the new Indian place about three blocks away.

Josh came over this afternoon and we moved all the furniture back to the other side of the house. Our bedroom and bathroom are now empty as well as the nook and almost the kitchen. After dinner tonight we will move the countertop stuff to the dining room table and that should do it. Hopefully the painters can get in and hit it hard Monday and Tuesday and we can get them out of here by Thursday or at the latest Friday. It's not that we don't love them, we just want to get back to normal. But I think the worst is over.