Avoiding the fumes

[sal_amanda]

Well, the baby's room is painted.  John wanted to do it before we left for Vermont until I pointed out that leaving the room all shut up with the fumes for several days was maybe not such a great idea.  So he wanted to at least have it primed and ready to go for when we got back.

However, first he moved all the furniture out of the way and remembered there was a crack behind the bed that needed fixing.  So he ran to Lowe's to get some drywall and read in his home improvement book about how to do that.  

So that was done and he wanted to open the window.  Except the window was stuck, probably from when he had just painted the windows outside.  He had been careful to keep windows open while drying to prevent such a situation, but he finished that project just as that stupid October storm came up so the windows all absolutely had to be shut.  So in trying to get the window open, he broke the mechanism that cranks it open and closed.  He drove in the less crowded direction to the Home Depot, but they didn't have the right part for our windows.  They thought Lowe's might have it, though.  He drove back in the opposite direction to Lowe's, for the second time that day.  We're not sure what brand our windows are, but he didn't think they had it either, though if he can't find it online, he thinks they do have something that will probably work.  In the meanwhile, we can manually push it open if we take the screen out and we can still lock it when it's closed.  But that set him back on what he wanted to do.

Yesterday being his last day off, John got up before me and started washing the walls, sadly the one thing I could have helped with had I known he was doing it.  Then he primed the spots that needed priming.  They needed two hours to dry and then my parents came over to help with the painting.  They finished that pretty quick, minus a few touch ups.  John finally opted to take of those later in the evening.  He says there's one spot he noticed he missed when he looked at it this morning, but other than that, it's done.

I put on a SARS mask to check it out so I wouldn't get fumed out.  We've got the window open and two fans running, with a towel stuffed at the crack under the bottom of the door, so I'm totally not noticeing anything toxic.  I just can't wait for it to be okay for me to get in there and start putting stuff away.