Painted the kitchen on Saturday. The kitchen is probably the most interesting of the rooms that need painting. It has the most nooks and crannies and it also is probably the most remodeled room of my 80 year old house. On one hand the event went well--there were no radical surprises (like the time I pulled up carpet and found tile glued to the hardwood floor) and at one point we had all four of us painting away. There were a couple of hiccups--like forgetting to paint along the baseboard in one section--but we were able to finish the painting itself by 8:30. Cleanup and kitchen reassembly took a bit longer. (Mainly because we had to celebrate a couple of family birthdays on Sunday.) Probably the worst part about it all was the necessity to compromise. While the overall construction of my house is rock solid, some of the previous remodeling attempts have been sloppy. For years I've been telling myself that when I get around to fixing up this or that part of the domicile, I will do the job right. Well... I've grown to be a bit more understanding of my predecessors. I don't think we ended up doing a bad job, but we certainly cut corners in order to accommodate or time and money constraints. It's a galling thing to dwell upon. But then again, I also have to realize that it's unlikely that I would ever put forth the effort and investment needed to do a "perfect" job. A house, after all, is just a tool to enable one to have a life. And there's only so much of my life I'm willing to forgo in order to have a nice place for my stuff.

(P.S. Go to the Weblogger's meetup tonight on the Eastside. I can't make it, but you should.)