Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Finished the faux-ing job! Pour the wine!

Chalk up another one! This was one bugger-of-a-job to finish. Way too detailed, and, as usual, we probably under-charged for it. 3 days of labor plus about $100 for paint, etc., and we only charged $1200.

We use these smallish paint "cups" - they are plastic and have a handle, and a smaller area (same cup) that is divided from the main cup and which holds brushes. That's really handy on a project like this, since I apply the paint-n-glaze mix with a larger brush, sometimes switch to a smaller brush, then wipe it off or wipe it down with one or more cloths, until I get the desired effect. Well, we had several of the cups and just assumed that we would replace them. Usually we clean them out (latex is good for cleanup) but we thought we would just throw out the ones that had oil paint residue in 'em. Good thing that we did not throw them out - suddenly, we could not find them anywhere. So (gotta love that Drummer) he cleaned out the cups as best he could, and we re-used them. We have been going through 2 a day (using a fresh one in the afternoon), and this got us through the 3rd day. Plus today, he showed a paint retailer this product and the guy is ordering in a case and we are buying some of them when they arrive in a couple of weeks.

Damn, I hate that I was raised Catholic! We were just too damned tired to get to church on Easter Sunday. I felt like such a heathen. And that guilt comes in, even though I now attend a Lutheran church. Knowing that we had another faux workday on Monday (this plays into my "real" work schedule, which I will explain about) made it that much sweeter to stay in bed, then do some laundry and get a real meal ready. Friday night we had a delivered pizza for dinner. Not the healthiest thing to do, but ya gotta love the convenience. Saturday we actually treated ourselves to dinner at Red Lobster (even bought a glass of inflated-in-price wine for each of us). It felt so good to have someone wait on us and then we have leftovers for one dinner this week, too.

The realtor has been so wonderful to work with. Plus she and I clicked and she is e-mailing me both a gumbo and a jambalaya recipe! She is originally from Louisiana. Late on Monday afternoon, she showed up with a bottle of red wine and we poured 3 glasses and toasted the end of the job! Oh - and she brought us some venison garlic sausage, which is one of her "secret" ingredients for her gumbo (the other one is smoked turkey legs). I like the sausage-and-chicken gumbo better than the seafood gumbo, and so does she.

I got to see the gold medal that the homeowner had received from the 2000 Olympics team that he was on. I was surprised at how large the medal was. It appears to be at least 18K gold, too. That's the closest that this uncoordinated woman will ever get to an Olympic medal!

It was so nice to have another job behind us, and something to add to our portfolio. I think we will definitely have to charge at least$2,000, if we are ever asked to bid on such a good-sized project again. This was a real bitch of a project to do, but overall it looks okay. And the realtor gets to hold her invitation-only open house (invite only those realtors who have clients that are in the market for upper-priced properties) right on time! So we did her a favor and she took a flying leap of faith and gave us the job. We were both "rewarded" in some fashion.

So it's back to my "real" job today. Did I mention that I am on those 9-80 work weeks? We work 80 hours in 9 days, which gives us every-other-Friday off. My day off last week was also a work holiday. So when that happens, you get a "bonus" day off - Thursday before or Monday after. I chose Monday, in case we needed it to finish this project.

Tonight it's leftovers for dinner (pizza, probably) and maybe get a load of laundry done. And then set my butt down on the couch and do a little vegging... (seems like that oughta be spelled "vedging") -- later, y'all.....

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