Keep Pushing On

My painting project is officially finished!! Beginning on October 24 and wrapping up exactly four weeks later on November 22, I managed to complete all the jobs on my original To-Do list and then some:

• move all of our possessions out of three bedrooms, two bathrooms, four closets, upper hallway and stairs, except for beds and major pieces of furniture

• remove all upstairs baseboards, carpets, padding, tack strips and staples
• use wood filler to spackle the subfloor seams, nail marks and other holes as necessary
• sand twice using medium and fine sandpaper
• wash down each room from ceiling to floor and everything in between
• paint the floors with two coats of primer and two coats of porch and floor paint

• paint the walls and ceilings of each room
• wash ceiling fixtures, fans, and outlet switches
• clean and restore finish on all the doors
• refinish and replace baseboards

• sort through possessions and get rid of non-essentials
• move everything back into the completed rooms

As testimony to this satisfying accomplishment, I offer you this photograph of the empty paint containers in this week's trash:

Not to be a martyr, but let me point out that this is just one week's pile-up of empty cans - I threw away at least this many during the previous weeks of the project.

And it also must be noted that while I generated quite a collection of empty paint cans, there are many cans still on hand, with paint left over for future jobs and touch-ups:

Which is a great reminder that, like shoveling snow and feeding the kids, home maintenance projects are never really done. Yes, I may have finished this round of improvements, but the next set of challenges is never far away. Just gotta keep pushing on.