Sunday, March 27, 2016

I fits, I sits!

Mary Oliver it turns out is one of those cats-if there's a container she fits in, she sits in it.  We've seen this with big boxes and laundry baskets before, but yesterday she tried it with something more form-fitting.

Saturday, March 26, 2016

Hail to the King, Baby!

Today was another epic day of puttering-my kingship is definitely secure.

It started far too early this morning with a kitten wake-up call, but at least that translated into motivation to do things on this beautiful day!


First up was loading up all the old pipe from my plumbing project a few weeks ago...


In the process of doing that, I got inspired to fix the way our garden hose hangs under our porch...


Then after a quick run to the dump to drop off the pipe, it was off to the car wash for a long overdue cleaning for Sharkey the Honda.
Before:

After:


Add in a trip to the Library to drop off books, a trip to the Farmer's Market, and a stop at the SPCA to drop off some extra cat food, and it was an epic morning of erranding.

Also, in wandering around cleaning up the pipe, I noticed that our fence behind our garage was in pretty bad shape, so after swinging by Lowes (oh how I've missed you-it's been two days since last I was in your hallowed halls) the afternoon was spent making a new fence and cleaning up the garage.
The old fence:

Midway through:

The new fence:


While I was at it, I also changed the air filters in Sharkey-5 minutes that saved me $50 from the garage (they definitely needed it!  The in-cabin filter actually had leaves in it!)


So after a quick shower and some dinner is was time to paint the trim (the original plan for today, but when the puttering bug calls, it's hard not to answer)


I consider this day well seized again!


Friday, March 25, 2016

Another house mystery revealed

Our kitchen stove is an incredible workhorse, but a couple weeks ago we tried to use the cleaning function and it wouldn't engage so we thought it might be on it's way out.  I wanted to give it a try to see if we could fix it (plus it was a great excuse to put the effort into moving it out from the wall!)


It had not been moved in a while...



After opening it up (a truly ridiculous number of screws and interlocking panels later) it quickly became apparent why appliance repairmen are paid so well...


I checked all the connections to the motorized oven lock, though, and apparently one must have been loose, because the clean function started working again once I got it put back together-so that's a win for random button mashing!

An interesting sidenote, though, in the process of cleaning under it, I discovered that at some point in the past, someone had covered up our lovely hardwood floors with institutional linoleum tiles-glad that change was reversed (though the tile definitely made it easier to slide the stove back into place). Believe it or not, those tiles were actually visible in that first picture of under stove up above-and we clean our floors almost every week!

Bathroom Reveal!

So a couple weeks after the actual completion, but here's the finished bathroom mini-makeover!

What's behind the newly painted door #1?


The scrubbed and painted view!


I really like the way the new trim and repaired lights work (you can see the new trim around the door in the mirror).


It's a little hard to tell in pictures, but the new gray is a lot crisper and cleaner than the old one (but it still matches our art :).


The little touches matter too (the TP dispenser's been broken since Christmas!)




Thursday, March 3, 2016

Mini bathroon make-over

Patching the ceiling fan hole has turned into another whole project.  Spackling went fine (though it took a couple coats):


But once the spackle was up, we should repaint the ceiling and replace the fan:


If we fix the fan below, though, we should fix the vent in the attic:


Oh, and if we're repainting the ceiling we should repaint the walls:


And if we're repainting the walls, we should fix the connections between the light sconces and the wall:


And if we're repainting the walls, we should finish the trim and repaint that too (technically tomorrow's job):


All that adds up to two days without a shower, a big mess in the bathroom (mostly cleaned up now) and very confused kitties).  But definitely worth it to have a polished bathroom-after the trim gets fixed, it'll be time for a deep clean and a final reveal!