Applying paint and stain inside the house can be a time consuming and difficult process because there are always several people working on different parts of the house, kicking up dust, moving materials, etc. In order to alleviate this problem, we're trying to pre-finish as many elements off-site as possible. In the case of the ceiling boards, which consist of 1/2" plywood ripped to 12" wide, laying the boards flat on a set of sawhorses does the trick. The plywood is prefinished, so we only have to spray one side with a coat of primer and a couple coats of white latex paint. Some things, however, require building custom fixtures to make the process go faster. In the case of the slats for the louvers, we built a hanging rack so we could finish all sides of each slat at once. (And so we don't get hit with any safety violations, I should mention that right after this picture was taken we thought better of standing on a bucket and got a stepladder.)

Some things you just have to finish on site. We've been taking turns priming and painting late in the day after a bulk of the site activity has ended. While the house isn't large by today's suburban standards, there are still a lot of windows to cut around and a lot of nooks and crannies. Thanks to everyone who has helped out with this tedious but important effort.

Spraying the boards.

The custom built louver finishing rack.

Tedious painting around the windows.

Painting the mechanical room.