Woo-hoo! We bought da house!

I am covered in paint speckles--they're caught in my arm hair, my eyebrows, even on my tear ducts. Painting ceilings is hard. Tomorrow, we bring safety goggles.

The closing was at 9 this morning, and we were out of there by 10:15. No hitches, no weirdness. Such a relief. We met the seller--seemed like a very nice man--offered to give us a sort of orientation to the house, if we liked. We also learned that the next door neighbor has been living there all his life and will know a lot of local history, if we're interested in that sort of thing. Which we are.

So it was all very amicable and uneventful, and who can ask for more than that?

So we had lunch in downtown Elgin, made another Lowe's run, and then spent the next 8 hours painting and caulking and wrapping things in plastics and ripping out baseboards.

Things we learned:
1) The baseboards were actually covering giants gaps between the floor and walls that open right up to the crawlspace below the house. Very creepy, very vermin-potentially. Unfortunately, the baseboards are also of variable quality, durability, size, style, and age, and some of them shred as we pull them away from the walls. So add new baseboards to the list of future purchases. Unfortunately, this isn't something we can defer till later because of those distressing gaps.

2) In some places the hardwoods were varnished, in some painted. The boards in the master closet have a little rot near the walls. So that is a wrinkle in the whole refinish-the-floors plan. I don't know that Matt & I have the skills to replace floorboards--will have to hire someone for the repairs, I suppose. Bother.

3) The kitchen floor remains a menacing enigma.

4) I apparently have an insatiable passion for yellow. All of my paints (nearly), which I thought were in a wide range of colors, turned out to be yellow when we opened the cans. The living room's not green; it's yellow. The hall's not white; it's yellow. The study's not brown; it's yellow. So the paint scheme is going to need a little tweaking. I don't mind a little yellow, but it's trying to colonize my house.

We are now utterly, utterly drained. And nothing at the house is done--2-1/2 ceilings have 1 coat of paint, part of the wooden kitchen ceiling is caulked, and that's really about it. Maybe tomorrow night will be a little more efficient. We'll know the ropes and all. I don't suppose we'll get around to painting the walls, sadly--all focus will be on ceilings. Am looking forward to some color (especially yellow). By Friday, though.