To think, I imagined I might have a hard time adjusting to the solitary life of a painter. Not the problem I'd been preparing for, at least not so far.

Plumbers, electricians and various laborers have been in and out of our basement for the past 48 hours. There's a lot of clanging around down there! When they told us we should replace the furnace in 1992, who would have thought we'd make it to 2015 before doing so? I can only imagine what it will be like as they move upstairs to start the really big jobs next week.

As for the painting, I struggled with it being somewhat bland and wishy washy. I thought about scraping it, but instead I took my palette knife and decided to lay in those dark values in a more potent way.

Live and learn.