ye olde shanty: home sweet home part 4: paint it black.

daaaaang y'all. i wish i had a time machine where i could travel back to the point where i thought i'd be doing a weekly shanty update, or at the very least, a bi-monthly post, and be like HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. the truth is that i started writing this post in september and have guilted myself into finishing it prior to the turn of the year... this year has been unbelievably nuts. mostly in a good way?

if you've since forgotten what is going on here, i have somehow convinced my sweet hubster to purchase two dilapidated eyesore money pit "homes", affectionately dubbed ye olde shanty, aka #yeoldeshanty, and have made a weak effort to chronicle this project here-1, here-2 and here-3. my last shanty post was at the end of july, about a week before we moved into the back shanty, and the shit which was already bonkers got super cray rill fast. like put me in a white jacket and then a rubber room, just make it stop before i hurt myself and others CRAY.ZAY.

i started to unleash this long rant of WHAT I DID LAST SUMMER negativity, since approximately two seasons have passed since i updated you on tales from the shanty, but i've decided to spare you and instead save those stories for posts entitled Is There A Hotter Or Worse Time To Move Than August In Houston and I've Bitten Off More Than I Can Chew: A Small Business Story or possibly my favorite, I Give None Fucks About Some Treehouse You're Building For My Two Year Old Nephew Instead Of Helping Me Move, Mom And Dad.

all murderous rage aside, shanty post four covers a dark period we'll just chalk up to a learning curve. it was highly unpleasant at times (aka most of the times) but also i turned my back on my former bestie, COLOR, for a minute and painted some shit THE BLACKNESS. i'm talkin floors y'all: black like my heart and soul (and probably like the mold in the shanty walls just waiting for us to discover).

oddly enough, black floors were a tough call on my end, and I don't recall a time when i've been so design-nervous as when i told my painter to go black or go home on the back shanty floors, final answer. in contrast, the walls were painted benjamin moore's super white in flat, which is not only great but even better given the massive amounts of natural light in the back shanty. 

shantstagram? instashanty? hashtag: holy shit.

i'd read somewhere that latex exterior porch paint was the way to go on floors, so that's what happened, even when the painter showed up with some high gloss finish. 

given that we'd sold our house to some buyers who wanted to move in RIGHT NOW and thus taken up temporary lodging in a small garage apartment, we were thisclose to killing one another. so being picky about finishes wasn't an option, but also, none of us had properly calculated the amount of time necessary for the floors to dry. 

let me clarify: we hadn't properly calculated the dry time on two coats of exterior porch enamel applied in a Houston interior, late July, when daily temps equate those of the fiery furnaces of hell. so drytime given those conditions = approximately six years.

with delayed dry times, our paint phase was so far behind schedule that we went ahead and moved in before the walls were finished, before the doors were painted or sealed and while the floors were still pretty tacky, because I couldn't bear the thought of rescheduling the movers a third time. 

personally, i think the footprints in the floor paint are kind of like a time capsule or fossils, or like when there were only that one set of footprints on the beach and jesus carried us. plus those footprints add a ton of character. just kidding. massive amount of flaws and imperfections aside, these black floors are B.O.M.B. and a major improvement. they are also super durable - porch paint inside for the win, folks! i can't believe i hesitated and am totes trying to talk b-radical into black floors in the front shanty.

GOOD NEWS: we saved the original vent covers.

more good news: we saved that tile too!

this is when our painter was like get me a sprayer, paintbrushes are for homeless people.

boom shaka laka. moving in, on the other hand, was a beating (as per usual).

microwave or ottoman: you decide.

sweet new bungalow 5 chairs bought for a song!! and bring my total dining chair incarnations up to... six sets? normal.

there have been lots of upsides, though, such as we found out we live just down the street from a baller wine + beer store, stocked by sommelier to the stars justin vann, so that has kept us in steady supply: 

also bonus: this man had a smile most of the time and did not kill me. #ashantymiracle

other benefits? uh, all the crystal rock formations, skulls and spare terra cotta pots a gal could want, yo.

plus don't forget the doll collection:

see you in your nightmares!

next up: getting settled, front shanty shenanigans, more skulls and the highly anticipated OTHER THINGS THAT WERE IN THE CHEST WITH THE POLIO NIGHTMARE DOLL. #yeoldeshanty #polio