Got no writing done yesterday. Just too much going on. Painting primer on the library ceiling, realising we hadn’t bought enough. Spending hours at Lowe’s (which we’ve discovered we like much more than Home Despot), but finally buying the panelling, baseboards, chair rail, coving, stain, etc. Buying more primer, and glue, and nails, and a circular saw (it’s amazing how many different saws one needs to do home improvement). I made pandemonium tacos for dinner; by the time we ate it was quite late. We went to bed early—I wanted to write, but my brain was mush—and I finished Charles de Lint’s Forests of the Heart, rolled over, and despite all sorts of weird dreams, didn’t come back to consciousness for 10 hours.

But now we’re up and breakfasted, and I must perform my morning ablutions and get ready for a day of painting and staining.

Oh! We came up with a brilliant plan! Very much a “when life hands you lemons, make lemonade” situation. If you’ll recall, originally the plan was to scrape the walls and paint them white. Well, we couldn’t scrape them, so we had to rip off the disgusting 70s panelling down to the plaster and start over. Then the plan evolved that behind the bookshelves, we would stain the wood panelling so it looked like the back of the shelves, and elsewhere we would paint white. Then we started waffling about what accents (baseboards, coving, window/door edges would be stained—would it look too broken up (stained floor—white wall—stained shelf—white wall—stained coving—blue ceiling). Or did we want to stain everything—or would that be too dark?

Then we hit upon it: stain the lower half of the wood, then paint the upper half white. Terribly historic, keeps the room bright and bigger-seeming with the white, but ties in the stained walls behind the bookcases.

We’re terribly excited about this.