Painting Away in Margarettaville

In January when our plans to retire during the first half  2010 began to take shape, Neal and I started to think about how we'd like to spend that first summer as retirees. We've worked every summer for more than 45 years and wanted to do something we'd never really had the opportunity to do. We thought about spending the summer driving cross-country, or bareboating around the BVI's, or buying a Euro-pass and training-it around Europe, or maybe just getting in the car and heading out with no schedule, agenda or destination. All we knew is that we wanted to relax and spend some time together. After all, we weren't sure how this 24/7/365 togetherness-thing was going to work! In the end, we decided to go to KW and clean up the condo. If you've been to our place, you know how small it is. We figured we'd have the 2 bathrooms redone and paint the place. It would take 3 - maybe 4 - weeks? Then we'd kick-back, ride our bikes, relax, stay through Hemingway Days, and head back up north. Well today is Sunday, July 25, the construction isn't done yet and Neal is upstairs painting - again. But, I think we'll be wrapping it up. I'll post pictures when we're all done. Think of this as a progress report. The project started in the guest room. We emptied the room of the furniture and Neal organized all the stuff that we had been storing in the drawers and closets.

Then the contractors arrived and set up to begin work on the guest room bath.

And so the demolition began...

Away with door into the bathroom(currently in the back corner of the bedroom).

They moved the door forward by about 30 inches and made it a 'pocket door'. It's now easier to get in and out of the bathroom. And, the door doesn't take up any wall space.

Away with the old vanity, sink, mirror and toilet.

Away with the old 28" square shower stall.

The new sink, vanity and mirrored medicine cabinet are in the space where the old shower stall used to be. Can you believe this use to be the shower?

The new shower is along the back wall where the toilet and vanity used to be.

The new toilet is in the corner where the old door used to open into. The pocket door is in the center of the wall and slides into the right-side wall.

The bathroom in the master bedroom looks pretty much the same. We swapped out the fixtures and tiles for newer, cleaner ones but the layout is the same.

We found some decorative hardware for the drawers and cabinet doors - sea horses, star fish, conch shell, etc.

We stayed with the contractors every day but we couldn't really start our painting until they completed each bathroom. So, that put us begin schedule a little bit. Also, the condo needed much, much more cleaning, prep and repair than we had anticipated. For example, when they were putting new pipes in the guest bathroom, the plumber had to cut into the dining room ceiling to reach some of them. Not anticipated......

But Neal did a really, really nice job sanding and painting this part of the ceiling. It's not always possible to completely repair something that is in such a visible location as the middle of the room. But, he did.

When we bought the condo 10+ years ago, we had it all painted a cream color. Neal refers to the color as "institutional hospital white". Back then we were working so we hired someone to paint it. When we came down the next time, we saw they painted over everything - hinges, covers of recessed lights, wooden nobs, door lock & striker edges. As you can imagine, it took much more time to remove all of these and put on new ones. Neal couldn't even find the right hinges for the louvered closet doors so he had to order them online - from California - and have them shipped to Key West. But, we started our painting in the guest room anyway.  As you might have noticed in some of the earlier pictures, we painted the walls a tropical blue with white trim around all the windows and doors.

The bathroom walls are the same blue but a lighter shade.

Next, we got ready to paint the master bedroom. We had to move all the furniture to the hallway and the guest room to make room to walk around.

And then we moved our paint, ladders, brushes, etc into the master bedroom.

 

I prepped ....

and Neal painted.

We chose a mango color for the master bedroom. The bath is a lighter shade of the same color. I don't have a picture of that. 

For the upstairs hallway, we chose a light yellow. The stairway has a very, very steep ceiling that reachs up 2 stories. Neal painted that ceiling and the top of the long wall by standing on the banister railing and leaning across the open staircase. I don't have a picture of him painting it because I was too busy being sick and couldn't even watch. This is the newly painted ceiling and stairway. And I'm very pleased to report there were no injuries (though this particular activity did challange that 24/7/365 togetherness thing I referred to earlier!).

We had very light colored wall-to-wall carpeting up the stairs, down the hall and into the bedrooms. We had it installed 10+ years ago - and it looked it. So, we decided to bite the bullet and put bamboo flooring up the stairs, along the hallway and into the second floor bedrooms. They started it last week and have finished most of the upstairs. The inside of the guest room closet and down the stairs are all that are left .

We painted the living/dining room area yellow. For the wall with the sun, we used a dark yellow. We used a lighter shade of the same base color for the wall with the french doors and windows as well as the long solid wall. The yellow in stairway and hall is a lighter shade of these same yellow colors.

As I mentioned earlier, the hinges on the doors had all been painted over. So, Neal gave each door a new set of shiney hinges.

 

And a new door knob. 

Neal put the hinges and new door knob sets on each door.

The last time we were in KW, we ordered a new couch and chair for the living room. They was suppose to ship on or before June 30. "Perfect" we thought because it fit in our schedule. So, we made arrangements to donate our existing furniture to Habitat for Humanity in early July. Of course Habitat picked up our donation on schedule - but we're still waiting for our new couch & chair. So, we've been sitting on the white plastic patio chairs to watch TV - believe me there is no snoozing on those! We've been working pretty much all day since we got here. No breaks and no days off (and this is retirement???).

We converted the first floor bathroom into our 'work and wash room' and used it to wash out our paint brushes, store our paints, dry our paint rollers and trays, etc. We ran out of time and won't be able to do this room before we head back. But, we'll surely get to it when we get back!

 But, we have gone out for a few really nice dinners and on July 4th we went to the Casa Marina for the picnic and fireworks and had great time!

 

We should be finished with our painting this week. If they finish the stairs and our furniture gets delivered, we'll be back up north next week. A week later than we had thought when we got here last month but not too bad.When I think back to the things Neal and considered for our first summer of retirement, I'm really glad we decided to come to KW. We've had a really nice time together. I think I'm going to like that 24/7/365 thing. We're looking forward to spending the dog-days of of August around the pool. We both really hope to see you all soon.