It’s mid-day break time. My wife and I have been working hard since this morning trying to knock this thing out as quickly as possible. As you can see in the image, the curtains have come down (and will likely be replaced at some point with new ones).

One thing you have to understand about my wife is that if she hears me working on a project like this, she will come and help because she doesn’t like leaving me working by myself. There might be some eye-rolling and an exasperated sigh or two—both of which I deserve for doing this on my vacation—but we love working on these kinds of projects together and in the end have a great time working on them.

It also leads to some humorous tweeting on her behalf, mostly when she is wishing I had not gotten the idea to do this the week before all the kids go back to school:

My husband actually wants to paint our den on his vacation. Sigh.

— Amanda Markel (@MrsMommy) August 12, 2013

Yes, this is indeed how I chose to spend the first part of my vacation. I’m not sure what that says about me.

The entire first floor of our house is in disarray because we're painting one room this week. Can I go stay at a hotel until it's done?

— Amanda Markel (@MrsMommy) August 13, 2013

This is when I started thinking that perhaps I had made a poor decision to do this right now.

Oh good. Now I've realized we need new curtains in the room we're painting. This is never going to end, is it?

— Amanda Markel (@MrsMommy) August 13, 2013

She’s right; the current curtains are not going to match what we’re doing right now. We’re going to go look for new ones one day this week.

I'd hate painting a lot less if there wasn't so much annoying prep work involved.

— Amanda Markel (@MrsMommy) August 13, 2013

Good news! The sanding is done. The painting of the trim to mask the mistakes from last time is also done. Now there’s just putting miles and miles of tape up on the walls and ceiling and then the actual room painting left to go. :)

That’s what we managed to get done this morning: all the fixtures that need to be painted around have been removed, we’ve painted all the trim in the room white and are waiting for that to dry, and the piano has become an improvised work counter in the middle of the room. All of the sanding (most of which Amanda did while I was painting the trim) has been completed and we’re finally done with the breathing masks and safety goggles.

We’ve started taping and I have some hope that we’ll get a round of painting and get at least half the room done tonight.

When taping, I just have to remember the room painting mantra for detail-oriented people:

“There is no such thing as a true edge, wall, or corner in my home.”