Wednesday: We Rest. Thursday: I Paint

Sort of rested on Wednesday.  I had a morning off-grounds program for the Museum, which by the time you go there, load up animals and program materials in the car, drive to the program, do it, reload, return, put animals back in cages, wash carriers  and put program materials away takes about a half day.  And we ran some errands.  So about the only kitchen work that got done on Wednesday was that I purged and returned three drawers.

Thursday was a painting day.  As long as I had the cabinets empty, I thought I would paint the insides of the cabinets, changing the light-sucking drab brown into gloss white.  It doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it does mean being down on the knees in some pretty awkward positions so I needed frequent breaks.  And they all needed two coats.  But it makes quite the difference!

 

There will be more painting--a lot more.  I really like my bright orange cabinets, but I knew they would not go with the copper oxide counters.  And they need repainting anyway.  Rob was wondering why we just didn't splurge and get new cabinets but 1) that would be another pain in the backside, and 2) I'm used to having vivid cabinets and plain wood of any type wouldn't do it for me.

 

Of course, the decision has to be made about the color.  One of Wednesday errands was going to Home Depot for that gloss white paint, and while I was there I grabbed a lot of paint color chips and tossed them on the counter.

 

 

There were eventually many more, and I cut up the multi-color strips so I could view them individually.  I'd play with them as I walked by, and pulled out the obvious losers, and realized that what I was hunting for was the green verdigris that copper gets as it ages.  There was a long of angsting (that looks weird--how does one angst?).  It got down to a few strips of a lot of "I want it bluer than this, but greener than that".  The winner turned out to be--wait for it--a color called "green meets blue".  Bob's picking up a sample can today.

Day Two: Tuesday

Tuesday morning we finished pulling off the old counters and yanked out the sink.

Then I had some serious cleaning to do.  I don't think ever the most Martha Stewart type every take off their countertops to clean under them.  At one point I felt a little cut on my thumb and assumed that I had scraped a staple or something--but then my thumb turned the most interesting shade of purple so I suspect that one of the various spiders I was evicting took her revenge on me (no--I didn't go to the doctor--it didn't look like a black widow or brown recluse bite and the purple eventually stopped spreading).

Then we pulled out the stove.  In today's parlance:  OMG!!  Shall we say a bit more cleaning . . .

Finally--cleaned and ready.

Then, in the afternoon, just as it started pouring down rain, the installer arrived.  No worries--they set up shop on our front porch, and sure enough, in about an hour we had out new counters.  Copper oxide pattern (beautiful and won't show stains)

I did have a bit of a comeuppance.  After all, I had been rather proud of myself for being able to squeeze into that 8.5" opening to get to the back corner.  As I was wondering if I was going to have to offer my services again for the installation, the 6'7" assistant popped into it like a bunny going down a burrow.  Ahem.  The 6'7" *lanky* assistant.  And young.  It was pretty hysterical.

So the new counters are in.  And beautiful.  But we're not quite done . . . .

Day One (Monday, July 11)

So Bob and I are in the kitchen dealing with the gifts of the garden--making several batches of pesto to freeze and some habanero jelly.  In the middle of this pleasant domestic chaos we get a phone call from the installer--our countertops have arrived and he could install them tomorrow.

We weren't exactly ready--but we bit the bullet and said yes (as Lady Macbeth said--"if 'tis down when 'tis done, 'twere best 'twere done quickly").

Goodbye, old counters.

 

(actually it never does look quite this nice--we had already cleaned all the stuff off the counters.)  At this distance it doesn't look that bad--but here's the closeup.

 It wasn't a matter of just waiting for the next day.  Frugal beings that we are, we had elected to take off the old counter ourselves.  But first--and this is a big but--we had to empty out the cabinets.  All of them.  Even the "zombie" cabinets--those corner ones that have unreachable depths and where you shove everything that you don't use but for some reason keep anyway.  And the drawers had to be pulled out.

So now my living room looks like this.

 

Trust me--that's not all going back in.  There's going to be some serious purging.

 

*Then* we could start removing the countertops.  The challenge was to get to the screws in the far back corners.  Remember those "zombie" cabinets?  They are about 3 feet deep--but the cabinet door is only 8.5 inches wide.  Neither of us have arms that are three feet long--so I had to get into the cabinet.  Um--I'm a little more that 8.5 inches wide.  It took quite a bit of wiggling and rearranging of the squishy bits but I managed. 

 

 

 

And then I had to be able to work upside down--but I got all the screws out.

 

We slept well that night.

 

 

 

 

The Great Kitchen Update

The kitchen is getting a facelift.  No--not a full "tear out and redo."  I'd just buy another house before I'd live in a full kitchen renovation.  But ours definitely needs a facelift.

When we first moved in (25 years ago!!) it was a drab brown kitchen.  Rough brown wood walls (think exterior siding--what was the builder thinking?), drab brown cabinets, and yellow Formica countertops.  I really disliked the walls--not only were they drab brown, but the rough surface caught every bit of dust and spiderweb.  But I really couldn't stand the idea of taking all the cabinets down, prying off that siding, putting up drywall . . . you get the idea.

Then I made the mistake of watching one of those DIY shows where they make over a house in 24 hours--and they just used joint compound to cover the ugly wall.  Eureka!

It ended up taking a bit more than 24 hours.  And 12 gallons of drywall compound.  And moving the fridge and the washer and dryer to the middle of the room.  But I do like the results.

A few years later we pulled up the torn and stained linoleum floor and tiled it.  That also was . . . a bit of work.

The yellow Formica was the next to go--or at least disappear.  At the time we couldn't afford the $500 or so to replace it, so I painted and polyurethaned it a tomato-leaf green.  Then I painted the cabinets a bright orange (they were supposed to be tomato-colored).  At that point I declared it done and was happy for about 10 years.

But over that decade the counters got stained, and chipped, and some of the paint peeled.  I thought about repainting (and you can get paint meant for counters now) but as the saying goes "you can't polish a turd."  We really needed new counters.  And I had already picked out the one I wanted a few years ago (yes, I procrastinate).  What's the big deal--you actually hire a professional to do it, and it's a one-day job.

Yeah, right.  Stay tuned.

Summertime!

Y'know, I've lived in Florida since 1981.  You'd think that I would figure it out by now that summer is *hot*.   Perhaps it's to keep me happy in the land of denial instead of just cowering under my bed.  It's the sort of heat that just hits you in the chest when you step outside and has you looking for the fire, or at least an open oven door.  Specifically, the heat index has been hitting 103 or 104 every day for a couple of weeks.  And much as love working at the museum, it's an outdoor job.  And while there are a couple of places that I can duck into the air conditioning for a few minutes, I find that it's best not to--because you then get that "hit in the chest" effect when you go back out.  It's best to literally sweat it out.

There are a few compensations--we're eating a lot from the garden these days.

 

We live a lot on a version of ratatouille.  Just cut up whatever we have, douse it with some olive oil and balsamic vinegar, and shove it in the oven for awhile.  When done, eat it with quinoa or pasta.  Leftovers make a great cold salad.  Otherwise, we live with the irony that just when this great stuff is coming in--we don't particularly feel like cooking, or even eating.  Sometimes we say the heck with it and have a root beer float instead.  But then the eggplants sort of sulk on the counter and guilt us into cooking them.

 

And living in the sub-tropics, Bob manages to grow pineapples--I think he has six or seven of them now.  It started off several years ago when a friend was cutting up a pineapple and getting ready to throw the top away.  Bob grabbed it and gave it a home in a flower pot and in a couple of years he had a wee pineapple.  "Wee" seems to be the norm--they normally get to be about 3 inches tall and have just a few bites of fruit it them.  But they make up in flavor what they lack in size.

 

 

And of course summer brings the baby animals that need a little help.  I've acquired two more little armadillos (the siblings of one of my previous ones).  I try not to name my fosters; it makes releasing them a lot easier.  But these have turned into Big Bug, Little Bug, Scar Bug (injury healed but left a scar) and Other Bug.  This is Little Bug getting his tummy scratched.

 

 

And (as I mentioned previously) it's been rather hot here, so we put a large pan of water into their pen--and they immediately dove in.

 

There's a lot of rolling on the back and kicking and splashing and it's all rather adorable.  We watch and laugh for awhile, then slap at the biting flies and mosquitoes and wipe the sweat off our faces and head back inside to the air conditioning and the second or third shower of the day.  The joys of summer!

 

The Great Escape

Spring has sprung, summer moved in close behind (we've already hit 100 degrees) and once again I find myself fostering wild babies.

The little armadillo in the last post went on to an animal rehabber--I sort of had to do the adult thing.  There were scratch marks on him--probably from a cat--and a friend of mine who works with that particular rehabber let me know that he did indeed get an infection.  He's recovered but it's good that I gave him up.

However . . . a few weeks later my other rehabber friend got in some babies in good health and I got two of them.  They are just so strangely adorable (here they're checking my fingers to see if I brought them a worm)

Such cute little guys.  Of course, they needed an armadillo-proof pen.  We were pretty much there; when we fostered the little foxes last year we had dug out the release pen and lined it with wire so they couldn't dig out.  Several inches of dirt on top of that, and mulch over all of that.  The only additional thing we had to do was line the bottom walls with some plastic sheeting.  Surprisingly, armadillos can climb, and it's possible for them to climb, fall, and hurt themselves.

So in they go--and within a day they disappeared.  The little buggers had found about a 2" gap between the bottom wire and the wall and dug out.  They didn't escape, because the outside of the pen is also wire-lined, with paving stones over that.  But . . . I never saw them.  I knew at least one of them was still around, because the food got eaten.  I kept sneaking out there at all hours, hoping to catch them out in the cage so I could block the burrow.  Alas--no luck in that.  Finally on the fourth day, I had to be certain that they were both all right, so long-suffering Bob and I got to work with trowels, pruners, and other implements of destruction.  Despite the 95 degree temps we both put on long pants, long-sleeved shirts, and gloves because of biting flies and mosquitoes--oh the joys of Florida living.

So we pulled up paving blocks, peeled up wire, and started digging.  I found a soft spot right away, and triumphantly stated "oh--this won't take long at all".  That was a bit premature.  We couldn't just plunge in with a shovel because we might have hit them.  Besides, the top 6 inches was mostly tree roots that had to be cut away.  So, using trowels, we gently dug a trench.  And dug.  And continued to dig.  Cut roots and dug.  Cut more roots and dug.  Finally we saw masses of leaves being kicked out of the hole we were following into our trench and we knew we had come to the nesting chamber.  One of the little guys backed out and we grabbed him.  Success was in the air.  Then we saw sand flying as the other one started digging like a little auger.  We were frantically trying to get ahead of him, when at last he also backed out to clear some dirt and we snagged him as well.  My "not long at all" took about 2 hours of digging on that hot sweaty buggy day to yield a trench about 4 feet long and two feet deep--which of course had to be filled back in and the wire and pavers replaced.

Knock wood--so far they haven't found another weak spot.

They're not my only foster, of course.  I've already released my first batch of squirrels, and one opossum, and I still have seven little opossums.  While at first glance they seem to be cute . . .

personality-wise, they're more like this.

It's not going to break my heart when it's time to let these guys go.

Strange Looking Little Friend

I got an extra bonus at work today (and so did two groups of schoolkids).  I was giving a tour of the farm at the museum, and had just gotten to the farmhouse where I would trade my group for another one.  I saw . . . something . . . walking between the farmhouse and the fence.  Suddenly I realized it was a young armadillo--and just as I called the kids' attention to it and told them to stand back, I realized it was a *very* young armadillo.  A baby way too young to be away from his mama.  So both tours got interrupted while I scooped the little guy up, the other tour guide found a box, and we called the animal department to come rescue him.

After the tour I went to visit him--after all, finder's keeper's, right???  So he came home with me.  Truth to say, it's only for tonight.  There's a proper animal rehabber who has a litter and much as I would love to raise him he'd be better off with little buddies.

He's quite cute, in a strange reptilian sort of way.  Glad I got him, if only for a little while.