The task for last weekend was to make sure I painted the entire room and bathroom on Saturday. After doing some final sanding near the stairs the area had to be primed and the beam painted with ceiling paint. While that was drying, I went around and cut in with the brush so that I could start on the other walls. I had put up the tape the previous few days so that I could make sure that the painting got done on Saturday. We got some help in choosing the paint color for the basement walls from Debra who is an Interior Designer. She really helped us in choosing the other colors that we painted the rest of the house. Again, it was a catch 22 situation as you are looking at colors and materials for a room. Do you start with the carpet and match the paint or vice versa? In this case, since it was a basement we didn't want to go too dark but we still wanted to avoid the opposite effect of just white-bombing the entire room. Blah. When I first put on the paint, I though "Well, it is pretty much yellow and it will match the walls in the main room of the house", but I found that when it dried it had a more grassy green color than I had originally thought that really looked good so far, with the limited amount of lighting that is put out by the single clamp lamp I am moving around the room. Once I get the recessed halogen lights in (which is this week's task) you will really get a sense of the color. [In fact the color looks much, much greener in these photos than what it actually looks like in real life, probably part of the effect of the flash on the camera.] The west wall (which also goes up the side of the stairs) used to have awful stucco on the surface which was applied in the 70s. It was actually on every surface in the room, except the floor before I gutted the room. This wall was the last holdout. I was thinking about drywalling over the stucco, but more sanding and taping didn't seem appealing. So I tried something else; I knocked down the surface of the stucco with a scraper to smooth it out somewhat. Then I applied a skim coat of drywall compound with a 7" drywall knife which took rather a long time. After all this dried I lightly sanded it to take off the high points and primed and painted it. It looks lightly textured, but not like those fussy 'faux-finish' treatments that can be kind of cheesy. All told it probably took less time than putting up new sheets of drywall on the wall and actually looks pretty good. Now along with installing the lighting, I have to rip out all the ugly carpet on the stairs and get all the stuff out of the room so the carpet installers can come on Saturday and do the carpet. I bought about 75 feet of baseboard that has to be painted as well, but I might do that after in the back room if I can find some space back there. [PS for those who can stand it I have put up a picture of the room after I ripped out all the old walls and primed the foundation wall.]