Paint Fumes

Jen and I have been on a painting rampage this last week. As I think I said earlier, we got our new furniture in and have now begun to paint. Well, last night we finished up the kitchen. This concludes our breathing in green paint fumes. Thank goodness. I guess we do have to do a little bit of touch-up work still, but that's nothing big.

A word to the wise, good painter's tape is worth its weight in gold. We bought some nice tape this time made by 3M. It was twice the cost as the cheap stuff but it made a huge difference. The other stuff (which we used in the fireplace room) didn't stick down well and let some paint slip in underneath it. The 3M stuff layed down perfectly and left an practically flawless paint line after we pealed it off. It was quite amazing. I don't think we're going to have to do any touch-up work at all in the kitchen. Awesome!

So now we need to start decorating & sprucing up the kitchen and fireplace room. Paul (Jen's dad) brought us some firewood for the fireplace. It looks really nice in the little firewood holder. He also helped me figure out how to work all of the different parts of the fireplace. We got a wine rack for the kitchen that doubles as book-ends for our cookbooks. We also have that Monet painting that I bought Jen for her birthday. So far that's all we really have in the way of decorations. I think we're going to go with an Italian-ish theme in the kitchen. We also need to buy some endtables for the fireplace room. We found some stuff we like, we just have to decide if we want to get a coffee-table as well. There's not a whole lot of room to fit it in.

Oh, by the way, if you ever get soot on a piece of fabric don't use water or cleaner to get it out. Instead, use a high-quality white eraser to rub out the carbon. We tried it and it worked great. We got a couple small smudges on the couch (oops) after working with the fireplace. We called our stain protection company, StainSafe, and asked them what to do but they wouldn't help. Apparently "soot" wasn't specifically covered by our warranty and they couldn't give us cleaning tips because they would then be liable for any damage those tips might cause. What a load of crap. I sure am glad we gave them $200 to "protect" our furniture. It's okay though, because I registered my complaints with the Better Business Bureau and am now starting a handy little internet campaign to trash them on every rating and furniture sight I can think of. Let that be a lesson, do not scorn a computer science guy! :^)