I'm a little odd, I know. And while I take great pride in getting things done on a daily basis, I also allow certain projects to amass into a small heap until I just know I that if I don't get most or all of them done, I'm bound for a minor meltdown... This was one of those weekends where certain odd little home improvement tasks reached critical mass in my head and I knew I was going to be a busy bee in order get a little relief mentally. A rare weekend of total solitude lent itself particularly nicely to the high level of achievement for which I was aiming.
Given that I knocked them out with time to spare, I'm particularly proud of this weekend's accomplishments, I'm going to enumerate them for you now... Not the most riveting reading, I know, but I just want to be able to look back at this some day in the not too distant future and be able to say to myself, "Damn, I got a lot done in a relatively short period of time. I need another weekend of productivity!"
So here's what I did, roughly in the order that I did it:
First, I changed my sheets and did a couple loads of laundry. This was pretty basic stuff, no need for explanation.
Then I removed all of the vent covers from the vents, marking their location on them so that I could be sure to get them back to their proper places after I was finished... You see, after the fire, the contractors and construction crews ripped out most of the walls, replaced them with new walls, cleaned out the vents put the vent covers back on, and installed the new baseboards around them... But as a result of all the work that had gone on around them, and the fact that they are 70+ years old to begin with, they all ended up looking rather dingy and in need of a little rehab. So I hauled all 20+ of them down to the basement... ("Hauled" is an accurate term here because they are heavy iron things that weigh about 8 lbs each.) I then hand rinsed them of dirt and debris and used pliers to straighten a few bent parts of the grates. I folded my laundry while they dried off and then I proceeded to spray paint them all. Then, I watched a little TV while I waited for them to dry.
Once they were dry, I hauled them all back to their original locations and reinstalled all but one. The reinstallation process sounds simple enough, but since the new trim was installed around them, the fit was quite snug, and so several of them had to be beaten back into place using a process involving a hammer and a hockey puck. We'll get back to that lone cover that wasn't reinstalled momentarily.
I then took a few of the doors off the kitchen cabinets so that I could tweak the hinges a bit for a smoother closing action. I did my tweaking, and rehung them, but noticed in the process that I had slightly damaged the finish in a few places... So touch-ups got added to the list.
At that point, I called it a night and went to bed.
When I got up, I went to pick up business cards for my boss from the printer's. While I was out I shopped for the other items I knew I would need to bang out my list. I picked up a new mirror, some plaster, some herb plants, some topsoil, a few pavers, and a few flowering plants... Saturday's list would take me outdoors, fortunately, the weather was cooperative.
Upon getting home, I unloaded the car, and got back to work. I mowed the lawn, I planted the flowers in a spot near my back door, and I proceeded to dig up the weird non-flowering bulbs in a small patch next to the driveway and moved them out of the way. I then proceeded to set the pavers as edging, planted my herbs, added the topsoil and watered all of my new plantings.
Then I broke down some boxes that were lingering around, and loaded them into the car for recycling later.
That one errant vent cover was why I needed the plaster... You see, when the contractors were installing new drywall, they cut one opening a bit too big and the ragged edge had been peeking out and making me nuts, so I plugged the gap and plastered it so that it looks normal... It still needs to be painted, because I thought I had the right paint in the basement, but I was wrong... So that's another task for another day, after another trip to the home depot.
Moving along with my day, I removed the hardware from the cabinets in the upstairs bath, drilled new holes to accommodate the different handles I'd planned to install, puttied, sanded, and painted over the old holes. While I waited for that to dry, I touched up paint and plaster in the kitchen. Once everything was dry, I put the new hardware on in the bathroom.
Then I hung the new mirror, moved a little furniture around, hung another mirror in the front hallway, hung a few errant things which needed an obscene amount of careful measurement in order to look right on the wall, and called it a day for Saturday. And then I wrote this meandering post which is entirely too long, given its lack of genuine interest or substance.
Sunday holds little more activity than fetching the needed paint for that patch job, painting it, and then sitting on my ass, being awesome.
In the words of the fictional Dr. Sheldon Cooper, "BAZINGA."
2 comments:
wow. and all I did was drink beer and margaritas on Saturday night. well that was after going to breakfast with the boys, finishing up some paperwork at the office, and taking them to the diamond to throw and hit balls.
Sunday I did some laundry, then spent six hours coaching a 9U doubleheader in sustained 30mph winds with gusts up to 50.
That's when I sat my butt on the couch, trying to be awesome...
I should note that I was unable to sleep on Saturday night/Sunday morning, so I didn't just sit on my fabulous ass being awesome on Sunday.
I cleaned the kitchen, breakfast room, and my bedroom. I went to early church. I swept the floors, I ran the boxes to the recycling center. Picked up the paint that I needed, painted the wall, put that last grate back on, and took out the trash... AND THEN, I sat on my fabulous ass being awesome.
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