FINALLY FINISHED!?

The painters today finally touched up the areas of my bathrooms, living room, and master bedroom where drywall had been replaced.

It took them less than a half hour (no work had been done since last Friday) and they wrote "Done" on the work order that had been attached to my door since mid-May, allowing me to replace my personal items back into the bathrooms and re-hang my paintings on the walls.  I'd been removing my mats and shower curtain/liner in my office bathroom each morning in anticipation of the work; I hadn't been using the master bathroom at all but I'm happy I can finally redecorate in there.

I'll also be able to move the bed in that bedroom back against the wall; it had been pushed into the middle of the room — and only partially covered during the drywall work so half of it has a coating of plaster dust.  In fact, the master bedroom is a real mess since they didn't bother to put a plastic sheet anywhere except over 3/4 of the bed — I'm particularly unhappy about about all the plaster dust on the book shelves (it would have been very easy to tape one large plastic sheet stretching across the front of the large bookcases).  I'll have to individually dust each of the 800 or so books affected — I'm certain the dust has crept between pages and dust covers.  Hopefully, this won't permanently destroy the value of the signed first editions and other collectible volumes.  I'm planning to consult with a professional restoration expert in Santa Fe this weekend on how best to clean these books.

I actually spent much of my Memorial Day this past week putting the living room and dining room back in order — removing hundreds of CD's and DVD's off of shelves so I could scrub away the plaster dust.  Still, the dust crept in certain fabric-based things such as my black sofa, carpeting (mingling with the paint spots), and some speaker covers.  I've managed to scrub most of those things to a point where I'm comfortable.  But the carpet is going to need some serious steam cleaning — the workers added to some previous damage.

I think I'll do some painting of my own in the next couple of weeks so the walls will match once again.  The back of my front door also needs some serious touching-up (the constant opening and closing by numerous workers with dirty hands certainly didn't do much for the white door!).  I'll also call maintenance and see if they can repaint the outside of that door — it's supposed to be a forest green, but got rather dirty during this repiping in addition to the usual New Mexico dust blowing (and sticking) against it.

With a family visit coming in just over two months, I really want to do a lot of work here so I'm not embarrassed by little things nobody else will probably notice but which seem glaringly obvious to me.