Categories
food home improvements life

party time: day 15

Laid in bed till after 9 because my feet said so.  Any time I thought about getting up, my feet convinced me otherwise.  Turns out, squatting for 6 hours is tuff on the balls of your feet.  Most especially when you do it barefoot …

Finally got up, put on clean, pretty clothes and headed to AC Moore for some little paint brushes.  For painting in tiny little spaces.  That my fireplace is full of.

Made a 10:45 am stop at McDonalds to pick up a burger, fries and fruit parfait to get my day started off right.

Painted a banister, trim, and fireplace.  Did not finish the trim.

The mail man brought me my new internets!  Oh, happy day.

The bathroom tile man stopped by to see what he was dealing with.  What he is dealing with is a room with no subflooring.  Or shower drain.  Oy.  I gave him a key so he could get started on Monday. 

Papa Johns brought dinner, and I called it an early night.  Didn’t finish the trim or any doors, but 8 hours of painting is plenty.

Categories
home improvements life

party time: day 14

Painted from 7:45 am to 11:15 pm.  (Two bathroom breaks, two cheezit/tuna salad/frozen grape breaks.)  The basement is much larger than it looks.  But I got two paints of the purple/gray on, and it looks great.  I painted over an unsanded patch, but I didn’t much care, seeing as it’ll be behind my new bookcases.  Whenever I get a job and make some money to buy new said bookcases.

Fell asleep dreaming of the pattern that paint rollers make when they put paint on the walls.  Seriously.  Because that’s what painting for 16 hours will do to ya.

Categories
home improvements life

party time: day 13

Sat on the top ‘not-a-step’ of my 6-foot ladder and lived to tell the tale. Work on my bathroom started today. And my ceilings now look fabulous.

Day 13 was a much, much better day than the horrible 12. Even if my neck has now failed. I have decided to never paint a ceiling that large again. Ever.

Will be heading to Home Depot later to buy the wall paint, now that I picked a color (I call it purple, he calls it gray) that the husband has agreed to.

And I’m so looking forward to a shower once the bathroom men turn my water back on …

Categories
general complaints home improvements

party time sucks: day 12

Up early for more patching and sanding and cleaning off dust and patching and sanding and cleaning off dust.

I hate this part of painting.  I rather like painting itself.  But I sure could do without all the prep.

My ceiling patching efforts aren’t getting rid of the ceiling crack.

And the cats will NOT leave me alone.  Right now, as I type, Havok is cramming his entire body on the 4 square inches available on my lap, between my arms and the laptop.  Because he knows that as soon as he steps or sits on my laptop, I will usher him away.

And my vacuum cleaner broke.  That’s right, my 5-year-old $50 Wal-Mart vacuum cleaner that nobody even makes bags for anymore broke.  The vacuum cleaner that I NEED in order to get rid of all the dust I am generating.  Oh, and buckets of cat hair.  I do not want buckets of cat hair in the basement once I start painting.  Cat hair and paint do not mix.  I already have basement trim full of dog hair (courtesy of previous owners).  I do not want to add cat hair to the mix.

I am toying with the idea of running to BB&B for a 20% off dyson.  Because, you know, I’m not earning any money at the moment.  And what better thing to do than SAVE $100 on a vacuum cleaner that doesn’t lose suction.  Because my current vacuum cleaner has given all its suction away.

Grrr.  I think I might be about ready for a real job …

Categories
food home improvements life

party time: day 11

Time to get to work!  Woke up “early” (a hair before 7) to beat the garbage man.  Gathered up all the trash, scooped the kitty poo, and ran out to the street in my jammies with plenty of time to spare.

Cleaned out the pink room (a 9×9 child’s bedroom that is painted pink, with a pink wall paper border, and pink mini-blinds), which mostly just meant actually filing all the stacks of paper that has collected over the last 6 months.  Discovered a reimbursement check dated January 17 that is no good after 180 days – today is day 179.  Who said bein’ unemployed doesn’t bring in any money? 

Moved the closet that I had previously moved to the basement on account of our mold issues up to the newly organized pink room.

After making about 30 trips up and down 2 flights of stairs, I was really cursing my decision to take all our clothes to the basement. 

Once the clothes were upstairs (the pink room looks better than it has in months, the cleaning ladies are in for quite the shock …) it was time to move everything out of the basement.

Oi.  Books are heavy.  As are bookcases.  And OMG, I totally discovered something new about the husband:  he has a TMNT sewer playground.  Like that he used to play with when he was 10.  Now, I’m not one to talk; I, myself, have an embarrassingly large lego collection.  I just didn’t know the husband had anything besides collectors-items-still-in-the-packaging toys.  That we are soooo gonna retire on.

Got a phone call from the bathroom man just so he could tell me that he didn’t have a start date for me yet.  Oh, and could I drop by a check for the over-budgeted tile amount?  Because once he orders the tile, THEN he can get me a start date.  Maybe.  If he feels like it.

Showered, paid the bathroom man, did some shopping at Lowes for pre-painting supplies (caulk and pink patching goop), and found some fabulous light fixtures!  So I bought 6.  And wished my dad was still here to show me how to install such things without killing myself.

Stopped off at the grocery store and bought all kinds of wonderful yumminess.  And found out that when you don’t stop off at the grocery store after work in a mad rush to get home in time to start dinner, the grocery store is quite a lovely place to leisurely meander. 

Got home just before the husband, and started dinner.  And did some dishes.

Washed the basement walls and doors (I know it’s not necessary, but the previous owners liked to fling lumpy goop all over the walls – and I don’t dust or de-cobweb …).  Helped the husband with some wow quests, then patched up some holes.  There’s still plenty more to patch up tomorrow.

Categories
home improvements life

party time: day 8

Woke up late (I love getting up at 7:30, wish I could do it in real life), with the determination to clean out some closets and drawers – and didn’t get very far.  Did about 8 loads of laundry and the dishes, however, so I did do something useful with myself.

Pulled some freezer montreal chicken out of the freezer to thaw (quart-sized ziploc, 2 tbsp olive oil, 3 tbsp montreal seasoning, 2 chicken breasts, freeze up to two months; thaw and cook at 400 degrees for 20 minutes).

Met up with my bathroom design consultant at Lowes to pick out shower hardware, towel bars, a toilet, mirrors and lighting.  Now all I need to do is schedule a start date …

Went to Target (because spending money is a fabulous idea when one is unemployed) to pick up some tums, milk and dishwasher detergent (so the dishes I loaded into the dishwasher could actually be washed).

Worked on my warlock for a bit, then cut up some potatoes for some home-made chips.  Enjoyed dinner and some ice cream, then spent the rest of the evening on more wow, some tv, and a little free cell.

Unemployment rocks!

Categories
home improvements life

energy, shmenergy

‘They’ say that the cost of energy has gone up drastically over the last few years.  Fortunately, we haven’t noticed an increase at our house; on the contrary, our bills have actually gotten smaller over the last 3 years.

All you have to do is get your filthy AC cleaned and have a failing part replaced; replace a 15-year-old fridge with a leaky seal with a brand new refrigerator; and replace an old-fashioned, mercury-filled thermostat with a digital one.

Our next moves are to get new sliding-glass doors, and better curtains.  As long as we keep improving the efficiency of our house, we won’t have to face the reality of rising energy prices!  Good thing we have lots of room for improvement …

Categories
home improvements

rock garden ’08

rock garden

 So I finally got around to putting in my new, HOA-approved rock garden this weekend.  My moss plants came in the mail this last week, so I figured I should plant them.  Before they died sitting on the porch in their little plastic pots.  Now they can die planted in my garden! 

I’m still missing the plants that I’m supposed to put around the edge of my entire garden, and I’m not sure when they’ll be arriving.  Ordering plants via mail seems a little shady, so I’m half-expecting they won’t come at all.  Or won’t be alive when they make it here.

So why buy plants through the mail?  So the friendly neighborhood UPS man can wonder why he’s delivering a box with holes in it, of course!  And also because when I went down to the nursery on route 7 and priced out my plants, the total came to $450.  For plants?!  That I am going to kill in 6 months.  Because that’s what I do to plants. 

That was a big part of my motivation for a rock garden.  You can’t kill rocks.  (Though, I did learn on a show about werewolves this afternoon that rocks can fail.  Rock failure is what makes earthquakes happen.)  But thanks to the HOA and their personal vendetta against plant-less gardens, I am now required to put something green and growy in my garden.  Sigh.

So I found a reputable-looking website to buy my moss from.  For way way less money than the silly brick and mortar store.  And then I found a much less reputable-looking website to buy my creeping ground cover from.  Because they were the cheapest.  Guess that’s probably why it hasn’t arrived yet …

So here’s to hoping my moss grows.  Each tiny little clump is supposed to fill in a 12″ circle, so I made sure to plant them all 4 inches from each other.  Hmm, that’s probably bad mojo for gardening, maybe I’ve doomed my garden already.

Categories
home improvements

bathroom remodel, grrrr

So what with all the mold ‘remediation’ that we had done in the master bath and living room ceiling, we need to get the bathroom brought back to a usable state.  Because no shower and only half a floor does not a usable bathroom make.  Especially when there are little bitty nails (or staples?) sticking up through the floor plywood.

We got estimates from two different remodelers.  We had them each give us the cost to ‘restore’ the bathroom, and the cost to ‘remodel’ the bathroom.  The full remodel price from each company sounds about like what I had decided to spend next year to remodel the bathroom.  The restore price is half the cost of the remodel price.

I think probably we’ll bite on the full remodel.  Because, well, we were gonna do it next year.  (Oops, maybe I didn’t tell the husband that yet …)  It just woulda been nice if we had budgeted for a bathroom remodel this year …

Categories
general complaints home improvements

more bad news from the mold man

I was supposed to get my house back tonight.  I was supposed to be able to resume my normal life.  And sleep in my bed.

But the mold man didn’t dehumidify the bathroom.  He thinks it’s my fault.  He thinks I went in and turned off his stupidly expensive machinery.

But I didn’t touch it. 

So they came and plugged in the dehumidifier.  And they will be back on Friday.  :'(

So two more nights in the basement.

At least I have my kitchen back.  And both the horrendously loud particle scrubbers are gone.