I knew this wouldn't be easy. . .

. . . and I was right! Nothing has gone wrong, per se, but as we are painting and cleaning up and stuff, the goods are being delivered. I've gotten the two biggest, heaviest orders in (Melissa and Doug wooden toys--18 boxes & Mrs. Meyer's cleaning products--6 50+ pound boxes), and the storage room is full already! This will just make me work faster and harder at getting the shelves and walls painted so I have a place to put stuff! Here's that "before" picture of one of the shelves we picked up on Monday:



My friend Lisa and her daughter, Paloma, came over yesterday to help me paint. We got one of the shelves almost done, and the other two are prepped and ready to paint. It's a little hard to be productive with a three year old around, but she kept us entertained, and she helped us "paint" stuff (like the shop vac) with her own bucket of water and a brush. Lisa has done a lot of professional painting jobs, so it was good to have someone with more knowledge about surface prepping to work with.

I got the low VOC paint, and man, is it great! There is absolutely no smell. It covers well, and dries fast, too! The paint lady at Home Depot was so excited that I bought it, and lots of customers were there and got the speech about how great it is. Hopefully they considered it for their own use! They color it by putting a little baggie of pigment into the can, bag and all, and putting it on the paint shaker/mixer thing. The bag dissolves, and the paint comes out perfectly smooth--you know I was looking for that baggie when I was stirring it!