Hooray for Slave Labor!

I'm admittedly not the best in the world when it comes to asking for help, even if I know I need help. And with this monstrous home improvement project, I need help. Seriously. Fortunately, my former roommate is always willing to lend a hand, and this morning drove up from North Carolina with his teenaged sons to help.

For the price of lunch at McD's and a home-cooked spaghetti dinner, the following was accomplished today:

• Emptied out my storage unit and closed my account.
• Took ALL the carpet, pad, tack strips, and various other pieces of debris from the last week or two, plus all the empty boxes and shit from my storage unit to the dump.
• Bought moulding, a panel to fix the wall in the bathroom, and caulk. Yes, more caulk. God, how I love caulk.
• Patched all the holes in the wall and staircase (nails, staples, etc)
• Painted the dining room (which included removing a shitload of masking tape from a painting project I never finished and painting over the DARK grey paint)
• Finished sanding the floor in the master bedroom and applied the first coat of poly.
• Started painting the living room
• Discussed caulk. Discussed how good caulk is, and how much everyone needs caulk. Decided we didn't have nearly enough caulk.
• Started cutting moulding for the dining room and living room.
• Fixed the loose tiles on the fireplace
• Did NOT change the color of a cat (well, except with a fine layer of sawdust, which turned my tuxedo cat into a sophisticated brownish-grey) or preserve a cat in poly.

In celebration of our productive day, we are now lounging around the house getting high on poly fumes.

Tomorrow, the festivities continue. Matt and I are fixing the bathroom wall, and the boys will continue slaving away with paint rollers until the living room is sparkling white (it is currently blue). Much painting and sanding will continue, and we will all get even higher on poly fumes as we continue to slather the vile oily substance all over my meticulously sanded floors. With any luck, we will have another equally productive day, and will again complete our tasks without painting a cat.

So, great strides were strode today, and it's all thanks to a former roommate who is always willing to help and his two sons, who had to help whether they liked it or not.

Off to bed with me for now. A new day is about to dawn, and I'm curious to see how the sunrise looks when I'm fucking loopy as hell from huffing polyurethane all night...