Since we had a mixture of old floor and new floor and floor with patches, the sub floor needed some serious attention before we could install the finish floor on top of it.  This job required some serious attention to detail.  There is no one better at these types of jobs than Pop, and he didn’t disappoint.

Also during the week, Toby and I put the finish color on the kitchen walls.  Since most of the kitchen walls would be behind cabinets (uppers and lowers), I wanted to get 1 coat of color everywhere and then a second coat in the visible areas.  Pop had purchased a Wagner TurboRoller and it is awesome.  It makes painting the walls (and ceilings, I’m sure) a snap.  I liked it so much, I bought its little brother, the Wagner TrimIt tool.

The problem I had was in removing the plastic covering the windows.  The tape (3M blue painter’s tape) pulled up some of the paint around the edges. 🙁  So I have been watching YouTube videos on how to cut in windows and doors without taping.  We will see how that works.

 
Using the power roller while listening to Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol

After the first coat of Rogue Blue colored paint

After primer, the next step was to spray the ceiling with the finish color that Toby had selected and spray the crown moulding, doors and casement and the baseboards with high gloss bright white.

Since all the windows were still taped off from the primer painting, it was an easy start to get the first coat of ceiling finish up.  We re-assembled the sprayer (with the new filters) and suited up.  What a difference the clean filters made.  The volume of the paint being sent out was much more consistent and we could turn the pressure down.  We had far fewer runs and the paint was much more evenly applied. 

The instuctions said that we could apply the next coat after a couple of hours, which was perfect timing for a lunch break.  We were done spraying the second coat at about 3 pm.  At that point, we started preparing the baseboard.  Pop was concerned about overspray from the high gloss paint on the primered walls, so we papered and taped around the baseboard.  I really wanted to spray the crown moulding at the same time, so we began to paper and tape the crown as well.  The crown required coverage above and below.  I thought it would take a couple of hours to prepare the crown moulding and that we could be finished spraying by 6 or so.  I was wrong.  Even with Toby helping for a couple of hours with taping, it was after 9p when we fired up the sprayer.  We were so tired that some mistakes were made, like mixing in a gallon of ‘Swiss Mocha’ with the bright white.  What can you do?

Pop had bought a special, narrow spray nozzle for the paint machine.  It worked really well on the areas that we were spraying.  This time, while Pop sprayed,  I held up the worklight, so he could see what he was doing.  We sprayed for a little less than an hour.  6 hours of prep, 1 hour of spray and 1 hour of cleanup.  I was in the shower at 11:30p.  The next day, I was going to work at Salem, but Pop had floor prep on schedule.

We were blazing through so intently that I didn’t stop to take pictures as we worked.  🙁 
Below is a picture of the ‘Whisper’ colored ceiling and the finish painted crown moulding.

Kevin has generously let us borrow his power paint sprayer.  Before spraying the primer, Pop had worked all the previous day to get the moulding, baseboards and casing ready.  I was very excited to be putting the first bit of paint on the walls.  I was looking forward to sealing up the wall and eliminating / reducing the amount of dust that was downstairs.  We taped up all the windows and hung some tape in the stairwell to block out any overspray.  
Spraying was fun.  Pop got to wear the Tyvek paint suit.  He also had a sock on his head that had an opening for his eyes.  

Pop’s glasses would get so sprayed that he had to clean the lenses about half a dozen times.  I just wrapped a couple of tshirts around my face and head.  At the end of the day, both of us had reverse racoon eyes.  We had stripes of white where we weren’t covered.
In a couple of places, we saw that there were some splatters coming from the paint sprayer, but since it was our first time using the sprayer, we figured it was normal.  During cleanup, we were very surprised to find that the filters in the paint sprayer were completely clogged.  Pop described them as like pumice stones.  One was so brittle, that it broke when it was removed.  
Once the primer was on, the next step was painting the ceiling and crown moulding.

The last couple of weeks have been crazy busy for the house project.  Pop has been here extra days during the week and I have taken a couple of vacation days to work on the house.  The reason for the push is that the kitchen cabinets are being installed on Saturday, 9 October.  
The floors have to be installed before the cabinets can go in.  The subfloor needs to be prepared before the finish floor can be installed.  The walls should be painted before the floors, to eliminate the impact of drips and spills.  The ceiling, crown molding, door casing and baseboards have to be painted (with a sprayer) before the walls can be painted.  The primer has to be on the walls before the finish paint can be applied.  The joints have to caulked and the nail holes filled before the primer can be sprayed on.  The crown moulding, door casings and baseboards have to be installed before they can be caulked and prepped.  Whew!
So Kevin, Pop and I got all the crown moulding, door casing and baseboards installed in 2 Saturdays.  Then Pop was over to prep for paint.  He worked a long time getting the caulking and nail setting finished.  At this point, since there was so much work, we decided to just go for the minimums.  Knowing that we had to have the kitchen floor installed for the cabinetry to sit atop thus only the main area (family room, kitchen, living room) needed to be completed, we abandoned the side rooms that could be closed off, and focused on our primary area.  I was ready to take an extra vacation day and we were ready to spray the primer.
Below are some pictures before we started this sprint.

The drywall has been completed.  I shot this video to show the new construction downstairs.  The camera video card was almost full, and I had just a bit more than a minute and a half to get the whole tour done.  It may seem like I am rushing.  I am.