Thanks to a well-timed call from Rick last night I was able to sneak out before Karen got home from class and get some emergency St. Nick’s day supplies… The time constraints – pizza dough rising, Karen coming home soon – and Bruno’s need for attention quickly made the night into a comedy of errors: I ran downstairs with the goodies intent on wrapping some of them, but of course all the available surfaces were full of crap or homebrew equipment. So I started working on the washer, setting the rest on the dryer, and within a minute SMASH went a glass container of pistachios. Bruno was immediately curious and I about exploded with a big "Bruno, NO!" trying to keep him away before he sliced his little paws to pieces. Got him upstairs, swept up the glass, wrapped some pieces, turned to pick something else up and SMASH went several precariously stacked beer bottles I’d been drying. Holy. Crap. Decided to abort the mission until more favorable conditions arose, so I wasn’t able to do the midnight stocking fill…

Finally this morning while Karen took Bruno for a walk I was able to finish the wrapping and stocking prep. I’d just blown the surprise by accident so the only surprise left was to hide the stockings. Bruno found his in no time, and quickly destroyed his now-ex-favorite squeaky toy. I wish Kong made squeaky toys, anyone know? Then Karen found mine and finally hers, and St. Nick’s day was a roaring success! Thanks for the warning, Rick!

To make this post a bit more visually interesting, here’s a really cool item we saw on Saturday but couldn’t document at the time – and I didn’t find out what it was until yesterday: light pillars. Apparently in the right conditions ice crystals can align in the sky in such a way that urban lights are reflected upwards in a really amazing pillar of light. It was incredible to see, and there are some great shots at that link. Check it out (click the slideshow link for more).

There seems to be a direct relationship between the amount of light in a room and the amount of dirt in the room – that is, the more light, the more dirt. Some would argue that the dirt was already there, but empirical evidence at this point leads me to believe that the extra light somehow created the dirt. Stranger things have happened.

But as you can see from the pictures, good news! I finally got the last (planned) recessed light in place, a Halo H27RICT (Remodel Insulation Contact air-Tight). It was a struggle – the plaster and lath once again put up a fight and the wire I’d left in place was just 6" too short. Crap. But I got it all in place, fired it up, and stood back in awe of how amazingly dirty our kitchen had gotten. Maybe these lights weren’t such a good idea… (just kidding)

Anyway, isn’t that wall just crying out for something? I’m thinking some floating shelves, hopefully ones that will match the existing cabinets. That oughta keep me busy… (after I finish the insulation work in the attic and do all the paint touchup)

Ahh, beer. Four cases of beer. (I know you can see some empties there, but there are a few bombers and swing-tops out of sight that make up the difference.) That’s about 10 gallons of deliciousness. Two cases of a jalapeno cream ale and two of an experimental apple/caramel/cinnamon Belgian Dubbel. Holy night, indeed!

I got the tape off the walls pretty cleanly Wednesday morning. I did end up using an exacto knife to help – I was having almost the opposite problem as Tuesday night, the tape was tearing because the paint was sticking so well to the wall and tape. But that ended up being easier to deal with and created very few spots needing touchup.

In response to the comments on the last post: Yeah, I think I knew I should be taking the tape off between coats but that really seemed like a huge pain because of all the edges involved… But now there’s a different pain, so maybe it would have been worth it.

I think if I had to do it over again I would leave the tape on like this time but paint the edges with an edging brush and try to keep the paint off the tape as much as I could. That’s really where the issue was, too much paint bridging between the wall and the tape…

As for images in the RSS, I’ll have to dig in a bit and see – it’s a bug in Blogger or Feedburner if they’re not showing up. Or your aggregator? Weird.

We’re off! Bruno’s crate is bigger than Karen’s car…

So there’s the awesome red. It’s really hard to get the full effect from that picture, it’s actually much cooler in person. Really "dramatic," although I hate to use that word in talking about a space or physical feature…

I wasn’t going to post – I have a million things I need to do before we leave tomorrow – but I wanted to show off the color and bitch about the tape. That wad of blue tape on the right side? That about sums up how I feel about it. See, it’s sticking to the paint a bit harder than I’d like, to the point of pulling up little edges as I start to take it off. And it’s a clean break that it’s peeling up, so it looks like if I tried I could peel off everything I’ve done including the primer. Which means… maybe nothing, but maybe that I screwed up and somehow should have prepped the original surface better? Has it not bonded well, or does it just need time? I don’t know. I’ve stopped messing for the evening since my current best hope is that I’m maybe trying to take the tape off too soon and the paint is too soft. That’s definitely possible, but tomorrow morning is the last chance I’ll get to take it off – the tape is rated for about a week of contact before it starts to permanently stick (to the wood trim), so I can’t leave it while we’re out of town.

Grr. So, I’m really happy with the color and the paint job itself is awesome. This latest development… not so awesome. No matter what tomorrow holds I’ve already got a good bit of really small annoying touchup work to do, and to blend in it’s going to need sanding. And from what I’ve read, you can’t / shouldn’t sand paint until it’s well and truly cured, which can be from 10 to 30(!!!) days! Son of a…

So enough with the geek posts! What’s happening to the kitchen?! Well, let me tell you: good things. Very good things. I was sick (still recovering, stupid tickly cough and stubby node) this last weekend, down and out Saturday, but together enough on Sunday to head with Karen to the Home Despot to buckle down and make some serious decisions about paint. And we did – not what we originally planned, but in the same family. (That grayish-blue on the walls is primer)

Why prime? The jury’s sort of out on this, since it was a previously painted surface we probably could have gotten away without primer, but I was a bit worried since from what I’d read kitchens can be tricky. Lots of gross buildup on the walls from cooking and general wear and tear can make it hard for paint to stick properly. So I washed the walls and opted for a primer, more specifically a gray primer. Despite a demonstration placard sitting right on the counter, the HD paint guys were sort of out of the loop on gray primer – and I didn’t know enough to insist on getting it mixed accurately. It’s close enough, though, and definitely helping. The final paint shows up WAY different on the few small spots that got missed with primer – the color over the primer is just awesome, rich and deep and warm.

So what is the color? Well, until I get a second and possibly third coat down, I’m not going to post any pictures, since it will change with each coat. I will say, however, that’s it’s bold. And looks great!!

One last picture showing the gas hookup to the stove. Nice and big copper loop so we were able to get good clearance from the wall without stressing any pipes.

Still look for that RSS aggregator to use on your machine? Want to know when we update our blog? Look no further: RSS Owl. It’s head and shoulders above any other free solution I’ve tried, is written in Java so it’s cross-platform, and allows imported bloglists in OPML format so you don’t have to re-subscribe to everything. (Looks like you still have to tell it to auto update feeds) It also features:

• tabbed feed panes!
• Allows you to use any browser internally, so you don’t have to view links in stupid IE
• Tons of smart options to configure
• Good filtering and searching
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So. If any of that makes you excited, or if you understand it at all, you’ll know you need to check this thing out.