And the hangover?

No prizes for guessing what the next logical step for us was to be after our ceilings (and the top little section of each wall as well) got plastered.

Painting! But for crazies like us, that not only includes three coats on the lounge and bedroom ceilings, but an undercoat on all of the walls as well. In a single weekend, of course!

Needless to say, my brother Daniel nearly lost his head at the prospect of all that work.

OK sorry, that was a really bad one.

So on that long loooong weekend, here's what happened. The lounge room ceiling got an undercoat, and immediately looked like a million bucks.

And then the bedroom ceiling got the same treatment. Let me tell you, all those corners make for a really fun cutting in job!!! But of course it was worth it. That first coat of undercoat made an immediate improvement, although it was obvious that a few more coats would be required. The walls got the same undercoating treatment (except the bits that were already painted in Dulux's Dieskau grey), as you can see from the patchiness on the right wall in this photo.

Then the walls in the lounge got a little undercoating treatment too...

This one...

And this one, that leads straight towards the master bedroom.

Which was the only bedroom that we weren't constantly tramping in and out of to paint, making it an obvious choice for Allie. What can I say, a girl needs her rest! And painting isn't a very exciting spectator sport.

With or without Allie dog's help, we got it done, and can proudly say that at the close of the weekend we have at least undercoated EVERY. SINGLE. WALL (including the 5th wall in each room - i.e. the ceiling) downstairs.

And the ceilings were more than undercoated, they were fully complete! Man that feels good! After so many weekends of trying to occupy ourselves with useful painting work while we waited for the re-plastering to happen, we're finally there!

And they do look pretty good, if I say so myself. Especially the second bedroom ceiling, which fulfilled its hint of a promise when the plaster went up that it would turn into a really unique and interesting architectural feature! Hooray for getting extra special results when the initial goal was just to try to mask the unsightly asymmetrical steel beams all over the place.

So with that giant weekend of painting under our belt, we still have a lot more to look forward to. All of the door frames (and doors themselves) need painting, the second bedroom walls need a couple of coats of wall colour, the lounge room walls all need a coat, and don't even get me started on the outside of the house, which still looks like this!

Ugly, huh? It's certainly an effective daily reminder that there's still a lot of work to be done!