Final Kitchen

Finished Kitchen! Yay! I did it!
 

I managed to finish preparing the apartment for the new tenants. There was a lot more painting than I had expected, so there was still quite a bit of work to do after running interference for the floor. (The interference was successful -  by the way. It's completely unnoticeable!) I had patch panting to do in every room. That means primer over the scuff that can't be washed off, and then another layer of the actual paint. Phew! I'm done - and I'm tired. 

 

But you know how you get on a roll about something? Well, I kind of did that here. I just couldn't stop! I took pictures of Swee'pea inspecting the stairs (he's not really huffin' the polyurethane - I promise), and realized - they look dreadful! I've known this for a long time, but decided here... no time like the present! 

 

So the original plan was to strip all of the white paint off. But as you can see - I gave up after the first two (top) stairs.  

And while I knew that things needed to be spruced up - I simply couldn't bear to cover up all of my hard work. The top two stairs are to remain... plain. Maybe sometime in the future I can strip some more paint off. 

As I was working on the steps I realized I had really scratched them up by walking up and down them with floor residue attached to the bottom of my flip flops. Hey - why not re-finish them?! So I did that too. First with a dull finish - totally wrong and disappointing. Then with the correct, semi-gloss finish - which would have been perfect except that I missed some spots! So tonight - last time (I sure hope) I finished four of the steps. They should be completely dry by morning. 

The Boys have been very confused and perturbed.

 

There have been a lot of strange noises from the 3rd floor including someone hammering away at chipping up the floor, a giant sander all morning, more clunking and walking up and down the stairs while I was gone, and now, more strange noises because there are perfect strangers clomping up and down the stairs and wandering around on the ceiling. The new tenants' lease starts July 1st - but I said they could move in a few days early as their lease ends June 30th. As a result of all this, there has been a lot more schmoozing and concerned discussion from The Boys about what in the world all of the commotion is about.  Can you blame them? 

The weather has change dramatically too. June was incredibly beautiful. Cool and even. Some rain, some warmth, mostly the 70°s and 80°s and relatively dry. Until this weekend. Oh boy. Mother nature sure did a 180. It has been hot and more humid than anything you can imagine. For the last three days we've had thunderstorms every afternoon. This is unusual for Philadelphia. Normally it takes a week to build up to thunderstorms. But this is actually very nice. It is hot and sweltering all day (while I am at work on someone else's dime for air conditioning), I come home during a thunderstorm and then there is a breeze cooling everything off. I'm still surviving on just open windows and haven't switched to air conditioning - yet.

Jacques new spot is on all of my un-filed paper work. It seems to be in the exact spot of the morning sunbeam.

Swea'pea has decided that the front window after the storm is THE place to be. He's got a good view of what's happening and a nice breeze to keep him cool.