Hambone and I have been going back and forth about the trim in our house. As Piers will attest, there's probably a half-inch of solid paint layered over what used to be bee-yootiful trim in this place.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't be such an issue, except that in this case the bonehead who lived here before us did things like paint the trim "congealed blood red" and other ghastly hues. So there have been some places in the joint we simply don't like going.

I took the tack that we should strip all the trim, and we tried a chemical stripper without much luck. We then went to work with a heat gun which does amazing work, except for the fact that it releases noxious paint fumes as it melts all that old paint, requiring a respirator for each of us, and creating a pile of messy paint scraping. Still, it's the way to go.

Except that it's sloooooooooooowwww work, and tedious.

In two months of using the heat gun, I've stripped most of one doorway, and part of one window in the bathroom. We have a boatload of trim.

So Hambone came up with the idea of painting the rest of the trim, so as to make it inoffensive in the meanwhile. After all, it could be a year or more before I make it around to the trim we paint.

And that's what we're doing this weekend -- covering up all the pig's-blood-colored trim with semi-gloss white. It's already making a huge difference in the way the entryway and hall feel.

That is, they feel inviting now, instead of like rooms in the hotel in The Shining.

I'll post before-and-after pics once we have an "after" to post.