Lack of Stamina

Monday, February 22, 2010

The bug up my butt seems to have fallen asleep. I was on quite the tear of activity the previous few weekends, but all of a sudden, all of my projects have come to a grinding halt. The evidence is sitting by the front door - a crate of tools and accessories. Did I really need electrical tape in every color? The molding, which I painted last weekend, spent the whole week lounging on the back patio. For reasons unknown to me, the dear hubby stashed the light fixture trims in the hall closet. I would have never found them if I wasn't looking for the children's Mucinex. The hall ceiling has not been sanded and respackled as I had hoped.


As it happens, I have a valid excuse. Everyone in my house has been sick. I caught a cold from my son. The petri dish came back from a visit with the grand parents with yet another cold which turned into a nasty cough, and, as I discovered in my lovely visit to urgent care on Saturday afternoon, a full blown ear infection. My mother managed to catch the little guy's cold, which has turned into bronchitis for her. My husband has also been taken down and will probably be diagnosed with his own case of bronchitis today. No one with bronchitis wants to breathe in spackle dust. Not to mention, I ran out of clothes to get dirty in.

Even though my motherly and spousal duties required that I be somewhat present and participating this weekend, I did manage to squeeze in a few projects to keep things moving.

Since my sixteen year old stepdaughter was visiting for the weekend, I decided to enlist her in a quick project. She has turned into quite the surly teen, and spends her visits either sleeping or texting morosely from the couch. Every now and then, we see a glimmer of the girl we used to know and love when she plays with her little brother. That little boy LOVES his big sister. She perked up when I asked for her help, and I didn't have to ask twice. The five year old was adamant about being Mommy's Little Helper (MLH) too.

I had brought the molding into the house on Thursday. By Saturday, I felt that it had acclimated back to an indoor environment, so I dragged it back out to the garage to cut. Since the molding is of the smaller, more casual variety, I decided to go with a full blown compound miter cut and skipped the coping method. Of course, it has been so long since I used the saw that I spent thirty minutes re-teaching myself. The teen helped me measure, and I cut everything down to size and dragged it all back in. By the third trip back to the saw, I was able to get everything to fit. I rolled in the ginormous air compressor and loaded up the finish nailer. I had the teen be the dead man holding up part of the molding – I even made her a propping stick with a towel on the end so she wouldn’t scratch anything, and MLH got to hold it when she wasn’t. His big role was closing the door behind me when I ran back out to the garage to re-cut. I promised MLH that when he was grown up, he could play with Mommy’s tools. Did I mention where the hubby was? Oh yeah…cooking dinner. I announced that the women had successfully put up the molding, and he asked when he could have his testicles back. I promised him that MLH would be able to cook AND use power tools, and therefore, be the redeemer of a blended gender role family.

Sunday, I mustered some more energy, sunk the nails and filled the holes and joints. Sadly, I discovered that I did not have any white calk or glazing compound. I don’t know how that’s possible since I have just about every other substance. Oh well, back to the local hardware store tonight and then painting time. All that will be left is hanging the curtain rod and tying back the drapes. Next time, I will let the teen know that she is responsible for making the bed. Rule of parenting a teen: If you want them to do something, you have to spell it out for them. The idea never comes to them on its own.

In addition to the molding, I was able to do five loads of laundry, sort my sock drawers, sign up the kid for drum lessons, pay the bills, and reformat my PC and reinstall software. Somewhere in the next three days, on top of the normal work schedule, I have to watch a 13 hour video (Exam Cram) as part of my studying for Friday’s real estate license exam. I have put it off long enough. Cross your fingers that I remember all this useless information.  If it goes well, I will be making cheesecake.

Breathing paint fumes

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

I have been on a bit of a tear the last few weeks.  To understand my level of accomplishment, the back story is totally necessary.  
I decided, back in November and about two weeks after putting poor little Fred to sleep, that it was a perfect opportunity to replace all the interior doors.  I swear the kitty door into the laundry room is haunted.  It's constantly setting off the hubby's ghost meter.  I keep hearing the departed cat scratching away when I'm home alone.
All the doors are original to the house.  They are that horrible dark plywood from the 1970's.  Every door has a collection of scratches and holes from the previous owner, her daughters, and their pets.  I have covered some of the holes with contact paper in an almost perfectly matching wood veneer.  Every door has a different door knob.  The laundry room door handle keeps falling off, and I couldn't pry it off to replace it. 
I had a very nice handy man come out and measure, and he delivered the doors the first week of December.  I ordered all matching door knobs and hinges on Ebay and saved myself a ton of money.  I decided to save some additional money and paint the doors myself.  I bought all of the necessary accessories (paint, drop cloth, and L-bar) and was poised to begin painting in earnest.  I have an industrial sized air compressor and an HVLP gun which I bought to paint the kitchen doors four years ago.  I have been waiting for an opportunity to use my gun again.
Needless to say, it is now Valentine's Day, and the doors are sitting, as yet untouched, in the garage.  The delay?  All those other projects on the list.

Project Number 1:  Finish the guest room.  The poor guest room.  I had managed to scrape the popcorn off the ceiling and paint three of the walls a buttercream yellow, but that was almost two years ago.  Two weeks ago, I haphazardly patched the ceiling, busted out the compressor and texture hopper (yeah, I bought one of those too), and refinished the ceiling.  I should have spent more time patching.  There is nothing worse than being able to see every imperfection.  I moved all the furniture and painted that fourth wall an interesting golden brown.  It's called Bread Basket.  I finally dug out the bedframe, reupholstered the headboard with an espresso pleather, and bought new bedding.  All that is left is putting up the molding, touching up the ceiling, and hanging the curtain rod.  I already hung up some art, and I'm going to wait on ordering the bifold mirrored doors.  They're expensive and not a priority.  I painted the molding, and will probably put it up tomorrow.  I think I'm going to try using a coping method instead of my compound miter saw, but I'm not committed to it just yet.
Project Number 2:  The hallway.  We've had big plans for the hallway.  It is to be a gallery of our family unity and splendor.  I was always jealous of my friends whose parents covered the walls with monuments to missing teeth, soccer league championships, and graduations.  My parents are minimalists.  Even today, the only pictures up are one of my son, one of my brother, his wedding photo, me alone, and my wedding photo.  The good stuff is taped to the computer monitors in their office where guests don't go.  Anyway, the hallway is where the majority of the new doors will be.  Wouldn't it be nice if the doors are framed by nicely painted walls and well placed photos?  Two weeks ago, I scraped the popcorn off the ceiling.  Last weekend, I tackled the lights.

We have been blessed with square recessed lights circa 1972.  Our first month in the house, I had to call the fire department at 1AM because we kept smelling smoke.  It turned out to be one of the hall lights overheating due to loose wires.  Not only are they fire hazards, but they also have big gaping openings that vent all the heat from the house right into the attic.  Not very energy efficient.  My handyman told me that replacing them was a project I could handle on my own.  I decided to see if I could pull it off.  What it took?  The purchase of: three recessed cans, trim, wire nuts, wire clamps,  lightbulbs (picking out the right bulbs took 30 minutes because I had to talk up the Home Depot guy), a small drywall board, drywall saw, drywall screws, drywall tape, joint compound, and then I had to run out and buy heavy duty wire cutters.  I also had some scrap wood strips.
The first step was to shut off the power and finally climb into the attic.  I had vowed that I would avoid the attic at all costs, but it was time to be de-virginized.  My aversion to the attic stems from the previous year's battle with an infestation of Norwegian rats.  Black Plague, anyone?  I wasn't going to take any chances that the pesky rodents may have been napping in the insulation, so I donned a ski mask, safety goggles, dust mask, and gloves.  I only wish I had invested in that pink tool belt.  Lugging a lamp, flashlight, pliers, hammer, screwdriver, cell phone and other oddities was rather precarious as I tried to balance along the 2x4 beams.  Why did I have to go into the attic?  To detach the existing lights.  Duh!  The dang things weren't nailed in, they were stapled in with inch long industrial staples.  It took me over an hour to pry them loose.  Then it was just a matter clipping the wires off of the old fixtures.

Next step, cutting the drywall to patch the squares.  Tedious process to get them to fit even with drawing templates first.  Cutting the circles was the easiest part.  Then there was the securing of the patches with scrap wood.  Each hole took an hour to cut, fit, secure and patch.  The tape and compound was probably the most fun, but it's a multi-phased process, and I'm still working on smoothing everything out.
Final step, connecting the replacement lights.  Unfortunately, the existing wires didn't provide enough slack to reconnect the new lights from below, so back to the attic I went.  Another hour passed of squatting on 2x4s, sweating in my ski mask, and desperately trying to strip and twist the copper wires.  I think I neglected to mention that the lights are connected on a three way switch which allows you to turn the lights on and off at either end of the hall.  Twisting that many copper wires together was a challenge.  I actually ran out of time, and had to run to pick up my son from daycare.  I ran into his daycare two minutes before they closed covered in cobwebs and sweating.  The next morning, I was back up in the attic.  I re-twisted and taped up the bulkier lines to make sure everything was well connected.  Back down in the hall, I screwed in a light bulb and flipped the switch.  Nothing happened.  My parents were a little concerned that I might cause an electrical fire, so I promised that I would call my handyman.  I was positive I had done everything correctly, so I couldn't understand why the lights still weren't on.  A few days later, the handyman climbed into my attic with his meter.  At the first light, he called down for me to flip the switch and turn on the lights.  I could hear his meter start beeping away.  Okay, that means I connected everything correctly.  So why no lights?  From above, Mr.Handy asked, "Did you check your bulbs?"  Really?  I ran to test the bulbs.  They worked just fine in the kitchen fixture.  I ran back to the hallway, climbed my step stool and touched my finger to the bulb I had put in previously.  It blinked to life.  Yeah, that's right, I didn't screw it in all the way.  Mr. Handy climbed out of my attic, I paid him for his troubles, and I stared at my lovely new recessed lights glowing brightly in the hallway.
I've been sick since Mr. Handy's visit, but I did manage to apply a fresh coating of joint compound after sanding everything down.  Mr. Handy warned me that if I can't get it perfectly smooth, I should seriously consider apply a texture to the ceiling.  After my unsatisfactory results of the guest room ceiling, I will definitely be taking his advice.  More construction details to come.