If you think we've been ignoring you lately... you're probably right. But it's not for the reasons you might think.

Since Saturday, Kirsten and I have been working on the upstairs. The two guys who lived in our house before us were smokers. As a result, the ceilings upstairs was a horrible, sickly yellow. So, we decided to prime and paint the ceiling. At the same time, we decided to put wainscoting in the staircase leading upstairs.

So, on Saturday, we ran to the Home Depot (who now owns more of our money than we do), grabbed some stain blocking primer, ceiling paint (sadly, not the kind that goes on pink and changes to white), and some wainscoting and got to work.

Kirsten worked her little butt off painting the ceiling, while I struggled getting the wainscoting on.

Neither of us had a fun time.

It turns out that painting a heavily textured ceiling is back-breaking work... and our stairs are not at a handy 45° angle.

Kirsten finally finished painting the ceiling on Sunday evening (and it looks fantastic). I managed to get the wainscoting panels on the wall by Saturday night.

Since then, I've been trying to get the moulding cut to the right angle, so that it meets up nicely. In fact, I have wasted 4' of moulding trying to get the right angle -- for one side. At $1.34 per foot, this doesn't make me a happy camper.

In fact, at about 9pm last night, I snapped and nearly had a fit, I was so frustrated at my inability to find the correct angle. Kirsten came to give me a hand and together, we were able to get an angle that was "good enough". Of course, we couldn't finish last night, because we'd run out of material!

When we haven't been working on the house, I've been spending my "spare" time working on two clients' projects. The first is some back-end work for an institutional site, which a friend of mine (Hi Christie) is doing the design for. With luck, I'll be done that code this week and I can ship it off.

The other project is going to be a big one, but it's with a great client that has a great product. I'll let you guys know more about it as it develops. I've partnered with Amanda on this one; she'll be doing the illustration, identity, and print work, as well as collaborating with me on the site design. I'll be doing all the backend work, which looks to be challenging and fun.