Ding, ding, ding; patch, patch, patch

We called Franklin, our drywall guy, to come look at the bathroom walls over the tile -- there's some smoothing to be done over the WonderBoard, and he's the smoothest guy around.

He also had asked to come back once the primer went on, because any flaws show up so much better then, and he wants his product to be as close to perfect as it can be.

Most of his work is flawless -- you should see the soffits close-up -- but red shows every little thing. So there we were, using blue tape to mark tiny seam lines, a few nicks and what appeared to be built-in flaws in the drywall. Skim a little, sand a little, and voila.

Some were amazingly small; some show only in a certain light; some show only from a certain angle; some probably only show up at the full moon in months without an R. I appreciate Franklin's eye for detail, but I told him not to kill himself.

Also on the paint trail, Darren finished up the primer on the picket fence -- it looks quite . . . Mr. Blandings -- and he, Santos and Roy started caulking the front porch wall.

Roy and I took a drive out to Stock Island to return a bad set of scaffold wheels, and stopped at the paint store on the way back to pick a nice shade of sky-blue for the exterior soffits and porch ceiling (keeps the birds and bees at bay) and then order the shade of yellow that the Historic Architecture Review Commission approved for our exterior.

"Wow!," said the paint guy, who assured us he mixes his own special formulas for yellows, since the sun is so relentless here and bleaches out lesser stuff. "HARC approved that?," he asked. I assured him I had the certificate.

"They must want to make Key West visible from the Space Shuttle," he said.