If you're going to paint, man, then do it

...those are Patrick's famous words, commenting on our color selection. Yes, we have started to paint the house. The first room was painted late Friday night and after finding some yummy quiche on our doorsteps on Saturday (homemade from our neighbors a few houses down the road to welcome us to the neighborhood), we were ready to put some color on number two. Two down, two to go. Luckily, the last two rooms are relatively small (bedroom and office/guest bedroom). We took the day off from painting today and went on an 8 mile hike in the Smokies. It was beautiful - we were alone on the trail the whole time and climbing up to a waterfall along the river was just right on a hot day like today. On the way back we saw something I totally want to do now: tubing. Probably the kiddy version of white water rafting, but it still looks like lots of fun. Seems like a great thing to do in a larger group...so maybe we can get some folks together some time and be silly (might have to wait a summer, till we know some people).

Before we get to the pictures, I feel I just have to share this story that just happened: The house to our left is an older duplex that is being rented out. Apparently, everybody just moved and now the whole house is back up for rent. To our surprise, tons of people have stopped to look at it in the week the sign has been up (it's not like this is the hottest spot in town). Tonight was showing-people-around-night and so it happened that the owner came over when I watered the plants to introduce herself. May I quote from hereon: "I'm soandso and I will find you some good neighbors. Now, don't worry, I'm pretty discriminating." This was as a family of 8 Hispanics was looking at the house... need I say anything else? I almost dropped. I don't think I have been confronted with such outright racism before, especially in a tone of voice so sure of itself, so righteous and "normal". Wow...

While I let that set, here are some before-and-after pictures of the two rooms that are done. Again... the choice of colors is somewhat drastic, but be reminded of Patrick's quote here ;-) And...the other two rooms will even be more daring...I think... stay tuned!

Number one, the living room:

and number two, the dining room:

(I should add that these were taken at dawn and turned out very dark...it doesn't really look like a dungeon in the living room ;-))