I left town last Tuesday and just got home today....a whole week of adventure.
My nephew got a job in NYC....so he is officially moved out of the house. He ordered up a POD for his stuff...and came back home for a couple days to box up his stuff. the job for me and my sister was to load all his stuff into the POD.
They aren't very large....7x8x5. i didn't think all his boxes would fit. we actually had them leave a second one....just in case.
We started Tuesday night and got most of it in there....there was some creative packing going on here.
This is all that was left to pack....and we got it all in Wednesday morning.....in about an hour.
I sure hope there was no one around with a video camera. you would have gotten a laugh out of us trying to stuff his mattress on the top of all this. hahahaha but it all went in...we slammed the door...put on the lock....and wished it luck. it is on it's way to NY.
So then when that was finished, i headed on out to the Duck. i had my sister's library card catalog cabinet in the back of my truck....in pieces. once she got to the Beast, we unloaded all the parts and got it all set up in the library. it looks great.
Then i headed over to the Duck and painted the first hutch in the dining room.
Inside all the little cubbies at the top are little houses and people that i find here and there.
Most of them are chunks of wood that someone painted.
My piece of stained glass that i had made was finished, so i went and picked that up. i hope to get it installed above the door soon.
On Thursday i was back at it.....
I did some tape and bed work in the office. i pretty much sucked at this for the first couple of pieces. hahaha but i started down at the bottom...by that plug. i should have started at an easier spot. i haven't done this in YEARS...and it is NOT like riding a bicycle. hahaha
But as i moved around the wall i got a bit better...the second plug didn't intimidate me.
I even got a horizontal strip on there.
While i was in the office...my sister was doing her thing in the dressing room area. she is already at the top half of the wall. she is more experienced at this than i am.
And i hung some drywall also. i had 3 pieces laying on the floor.....in the way....in the bedroom and i was determined to get them up off the floor one way or another.
The first piece i hung on a bathroom wall.
These pieces were being saved to cover this wall where the pocket doors are. but my handyman never got out to hang the doors....so i just cut the drywall down and hung them in place anyway. they might have to come down for the doors to get hung properly....but i just have them up there with 4 screws, so that will be easy enough. this is the right side.
This is the left side.
You can tell a pro job by how the plugs fit. hahahaha i managed to get both of those pieces up there pretty well.
I also carried in the pieces of a cabinet to put together. but that's as far as i got. enough for thursday.
Friday....more fun and games.
I got that cabinet assembled....after a couple of false starts. the instructions sort of sucked. and i didn't have faith that the construction would stay together, so i put some screws in the sides to hold it all together....just in case.
I got extra drawers to add to the cabinets. those instructions rather sucked, too. what is it with instruction writing people?
I think they will look nice in the end. i like the doors. i still have to install the door....that is a 2 person job.
I will have 2 of these narrow cabinets and 4 wider ones in the dressing area. i just had to put one together to see how it looked. of course, by the time i assemble the rest of them i will have forgotten my issues with this one and have to start all over again. hahahaha the shelves are adjustable....and the drawer can be installed anywhere also. wonder why they didn't make the drawer white like the shelves.
I did some more tape and bed work in the office.....got 8 more pieces up.
Then i painted the second hutch in the dining room. i love the glass in the top and that i found a perfect little quilt to hang behind it. it's the first thing you see when you come in the back door.
That was enough for Friday.
After a good night's sleep....it was on to Saturday. it was a slower day.
I rescued this ugly buffet last year from some destructive children. here it is before.... i got the electric sander after it....
And...here it is after some sanding and painting.
And after i got the hardware on. why does everything have to be a big deal? sheesh! i had the 4 handles that are on the longer drawers. they were in the drawers, so i assumed they fit. wrong...the bolts were too short. so, off to the hardware store for more bolts. well, then the heads of the bolts went through the holes...damn.....off to the coffee can to find washers to hold the bolts in place.
Then off to the hardware store to find handles for the top 3 drawers. found an appropriate color match but the holes in the bottom pulls are further apart than most pulls made today. so, was sent to another store and found pulls there that would match. the newer pulls now have 2 sets of holes...genius. what should have taken a few minutes....was a couple hour project.
Then hung a Splendid lemon sign that my sister gave me. she thought it was peaches at first. then we thought oranges....finally decided it was lemons. the sign was not clear.
And hung up my Fried Green Tomatoes sign, too.
Then i cleaned up a bit......i had made quite a mess in the last few days. called it a day.
Sunday found me back in the saddle again.
I decided to work on the baseboards for the dining room. when i was destroying the house i saved all the woodwork and such that i could.
So, i spent a few hours pulling nails, scraping paint, sanding boards, and painting boards. i found enough to do what i wanted to do. here's a few of them.
I also saved the corner pieces. i couldn't scrape the top of the corner pieces too easily so i tried some stripper stuff. that didn't work ideally, but it will have to do. i just painted over what was left. so, if you come to my house.....don't look at the corner pieces too closely...ok? i also saved the pieces that go in the doorways.
Scraping the paint off those curvy doorway pieces was a bitch i'm here to tell you. my hands were sore.
And i gave myself a blister in the palm of my hand from all that scraping. that is why i saved some of them for next time. so, next trip will be scraping the rest of them and painting and attaching them all.
I also got 2 pieces of wood attached to the inside of the doorway but failed to get a pic of that. just pretend.
I spent the evening pulling weeds from the side of the house....pulling poison oak from under the porch....and pulling weeds out of the flower beds. at least it was in the shade.
And my sister came down and did some more drywall tape and bedding in the dressing room. that wrapped up sunday.
I was intending to come home on Monday, but i had a guy coming out to give me an estimate for rebuilding my enclosed front porch floor....so i stayed another day.
So, as long as i was there.....i worked a bit on more baseboards......picked up the weeds that i pulled yesterday....and...
Pulled up some boards on the front porch to see what it looked like under there.
It didn't look too good. this joist is rotted...whether termites or weather...who knows.
And this one is not much better. but at some point someone had added another joist to it.
We will be shoring it up some, adding more 2x8s, putting in a subfloor and laying a new floor. it should look like gray slate. that happens next week.
So, i have a few days to rest up.....and think of more things to do....LOL.....and get back out there and have more fun.
My nephew got a job in NYC....so he is officially moved out of the house. He ordered up a POD for his stuff...and came back home for a couple days to box up his stuff. the job for me and my sister was to load all his stuff into the POD.
They aren't very large....7x8x5. i didn't think all his boxes would fit. we actually had them leave a second one....just in case.
We started Tuesday night and got most of it in there....there was some creative packing going on here.
This is all that was left to pack....and we got it all in Wednesday morning.....in about an hour.
I sure hope there was no one around with a video camera. you would have gotten a laugh out of us trying to stuff his mattress on the top of all this. hahahaha but it all went in...we slammed the door...put on the lock....and wished it luck. it is on it's way to NY.
So then when that was finished, i headed on out to the Duck. i had my sister's library card catalog cabinet in the back of my truck....in pieces. once she got to the Beast, we unloaded all the parts and got it all set up in the library. it looks great.
Then i headed over to the Duck and painted the first hutch in the dining room.
Inside all the little cubbies at the top are little houses and people that i find here and there.
Most of them are chunks of wood that someone painted.
My piece of stained glass that i had made was finished, so i went and picked that up. i hope to get it installed above the door soon.
On Thursday i was back at it.....
I did some tape and bed work in the office. i pretty much sucked at this for the first couple of pieces. hahaha but i started down at the bottom...by that plug. i should have started at an easier spot. i haven't done this in YEARS...and it is NOT like riding a bicycle. hahaha
But as i moved around the wall i got a bit better...the second plug didn't intimidate me.
I even got a horizontal strip on there.
While i was in the office...my sister was doing her thing in the dressing room area. she is already at the top half of the wall. she is more experienced at this than i am.
And i hung some drywall also. i had 3 pieces laying on the floor.....in the way....in the bedroom and i was determined to get them up off the floor one way or another.
The first piece i hung on a bathroom wall.
These pieces were being saved to cover this wall where the pocket doors are. but my handyman never got out to hang the doors....so i just cut the drywall down and hung them in place anyway. they might have to come down for the doors to get hung properly....but i just have them up there with 4 screws, so that will be easy enough. this is the right side.
This is the left side.
You can tell a pro job by how the plugs fit. hahahaha i managed to get both of those pieces up there pretty well.
I also carried in the pieces of a cabinet to put together. but that's as far as i got. enough for thursday.
Friday....more fun and games.
I got that cabinet assembled....after a couple of false starts. the instructions sort of sucked. and i didn't have faith that the construction would stay together, so i put some screws in the sides to hold it all together....just in case.
I got extra drawers to add to the cabinets. those instructions rather sucked, too. what is it with instruction writing people?
I think they will look nice in the end. i like the doors. i still have to install the door....that is a 2 person job.
I will have 2 of these narrow cabinets and 4 wider ones in the dressing area. i just had to put one together to see how it looked. of course, by the time i assemble the rest of them i will have forgotten my issues with this one and have to start all over again. hahahaha the shelves are adjustable....and the drawer can be installed anywhere also. wonder why they didn't make the drawer white like the shelves.
I did some more tape and bed work in the office.....got 8 more pieces up.
Then i painted the second hutch in the dining room. i love the glass in the top and that i found a perfect little quilt to hang behind it. it's the first thing you see when you come in the back door.
That was enough for Friday.
After a good night's sleep....it was on to Saturday. it was a slower day.
I rescued this ugly buffet last year from some destructive children. here it is before.... i got the electric sander after it....
And...here it is after some sanding and painting.
And after i got the hardware on. why does everything have to be a big deal? sheesh! i had the 4 handles that are on the longer drawers. they were in the drawers, so i assumed they fit. wrong...the bolts were too short. so, off to the hardware store for more bolts. well, then the heads of the bolts went through the holes...damn.....off to the coffee can to find washers to hold the bolts in place.
Then off to the hardware store to find handles for the top 3 drawers. found an appropriate color match but the holes in the bottom pulls are further apart than most pulls made today. so, was sent to another store and found pulls there that would match. the newer pulls now have 2 sets of holes...genius. what should have taken a few minutes....was a couple hour project.
Then hung a Splendid lemon sign that my sister gave me. she thought it was peaches at first. then we thought oranges....finally decided it was lemons. the sign was not clear.
And hung up my Fried Green Tomatoes sign, too.
Then i cleaned up a bit......i had made quite a mess in the last few days. called it a day.
Sunday found me back in the saddle again.
I decided to work on the baseboards for the dining room. when i was destroying the house i saved all the woodwork and such that i could.
So, i spent a few hours pulling nails, scraping paint, sanding boards, and painting boards. i found enough to do what i wanted to do. here's a few of them.
I also saved the corner pieces. i couldn't scrape the top of the corner pieces too easily so i tried some stripper stuff. that didn't work ideally, but it will have to do. i just painted over what was left. so, if you come to my house.....don't look at the corner pieces too closely...ok? i also saved the pieces that go in the doorways.
Scraping the paint off those curvy doorway pieces was a bitch i'm here to tell you. my hands were sore.
And i gave myself a blister in the palm of my hand from all that scraping. that is why i saved some of them for next time. so, next trip will be scraping the rest of them and painting and attaching them all.
I also got 2 pieces of wood attached to the inside of the doorway but failed to get a pic of that. just pretend.
I spent the evening pulling weeds from the side of the house....pulling poison oak from under the porch....and pulling weeds out of the flower beds. at least it was in the shade.
And my sister came down and did some more drywall tape and bedding in the dressing room. that wrapped up sunday.
I was intending to come home on Monday, but i had a guy coming out to give me an estimate for rebuilding my enclosed front porch floor....so i stayed another day.
So, as long as i was there.....i worked a bit on more baseboards......picked up the weeds that i pulled yesterday....and...
Pulled up some boards on the front porch to see what it looked like under there.
It didn't look too good. this joist is rotted...whether termites or weather...who knows.
And this one is not much better. but at some point someone had added another joist to it.
We will be shoring it up some, adding more 2x8s, putting in a subfloor and laying a new floor. it should look like gray slate. that happens next week.
So, i have a few days to rest up.....and think of more things to do....LOL.....and get back out there and have more fun.
