Spindles and Paint, paint, paint

Would you believe that we've painted every single surface in our house minus a few ceilings, closets and a couple of areas of trim? I mean every heat vent (the Victorian ones that are situated vertically), uneven baseboard, 3 coats on the living room ceilings (and still yellow), every door, every rosette, and I'm going to throw in that I have changed my mind 3 times in some rooms so those got an extra layer or two (shameful).

We never finished our staircase. We started to strip it, and well, it looks half-stripped. Much less sexy than that term might suggest in another context. It looks like peeling paint that maybe you could just grab a hold of and the whole thing would come off, but it never does. You get a tiny bit, laden with some lead dust probaby, and then you're standing there addicted to getting a bigger piece. Sadly it's as productive as picking at a scab, so yeah, not productive at all, and likely dangerous.

On to the spindles. We installed a few or 50 right before the furniture came, Justin threw (it looked like he threw) some nails in them, and they have sat for 9ish months. So I convinced him to punch the nails in so I could wood-fill them. Tonight I tried to sand my putty down and got back on the addictive peeling paint train. After finding myself covered in (lead?) dust I finally threw in the towel. I've managed so well to ignore the ugly thing so long. Now it should take at least 3 weeks to figure out how to ignore something I don't think I'll ever finish again.

Got to give a shout-out to J's mom, who spent about 25 hours on that railing on a hot August weekend with me. She had bronchitis. Which basically sums up the whole reno in one description. Sick, cranky and desperate to finish something, anything.