Must vent. Sorry, no picture.

I think today gets the fail-whale when it comes to my goal of having the trim stripped/sanded/painted. We tried, really we did. I'll share the process, but do NOT repeat it at home, as I'm pretty sure it was incorrect. Mistake #1 was painting the walls before the trim. I got antsy to be rid of the yellow with gold metallic accent swooshes. When we started on the trim we realized that the stripper and the sander were buggering up the wall paint. Oh well, nothing a few little touch ups won't fix. #2 was the whole stripping process. Messy, fumey, and maybe not even entirely necessary. Yuck. It went on ok with a paintbrush but once we started scraping it off, it was just a gooey mess. Mistake #3 was the scraping of the stripping agent. Mom and I spent all day scraping. Still not done. However, in comes dad and saves the day by suggesting we use steel wool pads with mineral spirits. It looks like that will do the trick and remove the varnish from all the wood trim, widow sills, doors, etc. We have given up for the night though and will get at it again tomorrow afternoon. Brad fell asleep on Willa's floor doing the hand holding that she requests every night and I ate cold leftover Chinese food by myself in the dark. Painting trim makes me crabby. Fingers crossed for success tomorrow!