Bachelorhood Almost Over

Good day everyone.

If all goes according to plan Anne comes home tomorrow. The dogs and I will be very happy to have her back. In the meantime, I continue to work on house stuff in a desperate attempt to keep busy and avoid insanity. Though, to be entirely honest, it’s way too late on that last issue.

Lots happened in the past week:

The guest bedroom/bathroom is done. Again. Mostly. Here are some photos:

The itty bitty bathroom is fully painted, the door is hung, and it looks a lot better. The pointless, extra switch just inside the door has been removed (the wires to it were dead… no clue what it did in the past) and the GFCI outlet was replaced since the old one no longer did what a GFCI is supposed to do. Also, the closet doors in the bedroom are painted and hung, so the guest room is coming together reasonably well. The last photo doesn’t show anything new, but it does give a sense of the rest of the space.

The only remaining task in there is just visible in the second photo, where you can see a missing drawer in the lower right corner. That drawer is a train wreck. It was barely held together with very old duct tape and a few staples (intended for use in paper, not wood). At the moment it is in the shop and looks like this:

I’m gluing and nailing the corners back together. The tape is gone, and when I am done it should be much better than it was. The blocks you see in the corners (on the underside of the drawer bottom) were already there. When I am done it should last a few more years before we wind up completely redoing the downstairs bathrooms, possibly as part of redoing the kitchen. Or maybe we leave it as a problem for the next owners someday. No one knows.

Update: the drawer is fixed and reinstalled. I declare that bathroom as done as I can make it.

In other news, since Anne is gone and I have easy access to the breaker box (which is in her office, and thus mostly off limits on weekdays while she is working) I also managed this:

What you see there is a cracked switch plate (I’ll replace it when I get around to painting the dining room where it lives) that used to have three switches in it. One of them used to turn on the landscape lighting in the back yard, which was already dead when we moved in and has been removed. That switch was pulled out weeks ago and replaced with the blank plate now in the middle.

The second switch in there turned on an outdoor floodlight that was completely pointless. I removed that just the other day and replaced it with the nightlight you see there. It’s light sensitive, so it turns off during the day (unless it is raining, as it was when I took the photo), and has several levels of brightness to choose from.

The remaining switch turns on the lights we actually use in the back yard. This box is much simplified from what was there, and thus much less confusing.

Actually, some of that is a lie. That particular switch box did not require access to the breaker box in Anne’s office. It is driven by a sub panel in the laundry room. There were other tasks that required access to the main breaker box, though, like the above mentioned GFCI outlet replacement.

It’s hard to convey just how much time this sort of stuff takes. Painting, touch up painting, moving hinges around on the tiny bathroom door (because it would not close properly), touch up painting again, and so on.

There are, of course, other projects coming. A set of closet doors from the library is already down and I will get started painting it soon. And I have lots and lots of other stuff to paint: doors and walls. It feels like it will never end. But thankfully I can work on the rest of it with Anne home.

Which reminds me: I mentioned last week that I was changing paint vendors. The new Behr paint is not stellar. It’s OK, but it’s pretty thin and I have my doubts about its ability to cover anything very dark. However, that is just fine for the moment, and it will work. I suspect I will upgrade to at least the mid grade Behr paint next time and see how it compares. They assure me I should not notice any difference in colour or sheen when I do that, so I will probably give it a try. Something a bit thicker would make me happier than the stuff I have now, but then again the current paint should work in most cases.

Also last week I mentioned appliances were on order. They were supposed to be delivered on Thursday, but on Wednesday in the late afternoon I got a phone call saying they had missed the truck from the manufacturer. They’re supposed to call again soon to reschedule the delivery. I’ll believe it when the phone rings.

Finally, last week I got a request for critter pics, so here I oblige KV (and others, no doubt):

That’s Tinkerbelle lurking at the top of the stairs, waiting for something/someone exciting to happen.

And that’s Cruzer, the canine embodiment of the excitement Tinkerbelle is waiting for. She wants to jump him, bark a lot, and play furiously. Cruzer, however, does not like to be jumped, so he stopped on the stairs and waited until I went around/over him (yes, on the stairs) to get in Tinkerbelle’s way and make his arrival on the second floor “safer.” But once there:

Yes, those are blurry action shots of dogs playing. That’s Tinkerbelle barking right in his ear in the second photo.

And while all of this was going on, what do you suppose the queen of the house was doing?

That’s right. It was raining lightly, so she was outside, laying in the cool, wet duff, avoiding coming back in. Her minions do all the scut work so she can relax.

That’s everything fit to share this week. Here’s hoping all is well on your end!