Gazing into the Past

A friend has archly pointed out to me that I haven't posted for a bit--say, about four months.  I've gone a couple of weeks here and there, and sometimes a month or so, but this is my record.  Consider my wrist slapped.

Weird thing is--if you don't record your life, you forget it.  I look back and just sort of figure that I haven't written anything because I can't remember doing anything.  But, of course, stuff has happened.  I'm just going to do a few quick Cliff's Notes posts to get caught up again.  So . . . .

August

Actually I had August pretty well covered, mostly with The Great Kitchen redo.  We celebrated that with a day trip at the end of the month.  We have a friend who lives in Texas but was visiting her parents in Panama City for a few weeks--so we went and scooped her up to go do the Tourist Stuff in Panama City Beach.  Kim is smart and sassy and pretty darned snarky, hence a lot of fun to be around (truth be told, she and Bob think at the same speed, which is a lot faster than my thinking speed, and I just sit back and nod at the obscure jokes as though I understand them).  We spend hours at the Ripley's Believe it or Not, which is the ultimate of cheesy fun.  I forgot to take pictures, but Kim took a couple, mostly pointing out that Bob is bigger than either of us.  That's such a surprise.

 

This is a casting of the hand of the world's tallest man, with, respectively, Bob's hand, my hand, and Kim's hand.

 

 

We had some really good seafood, and then headed off to the aquarium (trying not to feel guilty about eating fish).  Bob found a stingray petting pool (a perennial favorite of his) so we spent much time feeding them, and Kim's highlight was getting kissed on the mouth by a sea lion.

 

That wrapped up the end of August.  Now I have to think about September and try to remember it.  Did we do anything in September?  Did anything happen in September?  Something is nagging at me.

 

Oh, yeah.  We got hit by a hurricane.  Funny how one forgets little things like that. 

Intermezzo

So about the time that the kitchen was getting finished (albeit with a great deal of it still in the living room) the Hauntforum (an online group of people who are obsessed with Halloween) had it's annual "prop under $25 dollar" challenge.

What a good excuse to walk away from the mess and go make another one in my cottage.  At that point I had less than a week to make something, so really no time to design something and then go shopping (while trying to stay under budget).  So I just dug around, pulled out anything that looked like it might become something, piled it up, and waited for something to happen.

 

 

I raided the garden for an old tomato cage and covered it with brown packing tape

 

 

Eventually some water bottles got turned into legs, and some wire became wings, and a milk jug evolved into a head, and some old burlap covered everything.  Teeth and claws were made from hot glue and voila!  A swamp wyvern.

 

He's kinda cute, and after he was created I was in more of a mood to finish up all the kitchen stuff.  Believe me,  a great deal of the stuff that came out did *not* go back in.  It's actually rather nice to open a cabinet and not have stuff fall out.

 

And then I had to be an adult.  The baby armadillos really weren't babies anymore--and I let them go.  I usually get a bit sniffley when I do a release, but this time I had a good hard cry.  They were just so darned cute, and so friendly.  But alas--they were ready to go.  They were all playing with me and jumping in my lap and sniffing my ankles, then I propped open the door and they discovered a whole new world and suddenly I no longer existed for them.  But they looked happy. (and we did find a new den the next morning only about 10 feet from their cage)

 

 

 

Tah Dah!

It's finished.  So am I.  And the stuff piled in the living room has been sorted, purged, and returned (more on that later)

I love those commercials where someone picks out a paint color, and the next scene is them in their newly painted room looking happy.  They seem to have left the middle part out ("at this point, a miracle occurs").  The part where you drag everything out of the way, put down drop cloths, scrub things clean.  And, in the case of painting cabinets, taking off all of the doors (28 of them), removing the hinges and door pulls (total of 328 screws), taking the doors outside to the sawhorses and painting them, painting all the cabinet frames, and putting those 328 screws back in.  Oh--and I did a copper wash on the hinges and [lizard] door pulls.

And deal with the drying time. I had space out on the porch to paint four doors at a time.  According to the paint can, allow "1 hour to dry to touch, 2 hour before recoating."  Not in Florida in the summer!  One day I thought I'd get ambitious and try to paint a set before I went to work (at 11:00).  I got the first coat on at 7:30, went out to do the second coat at 10:00 and absolutely no drying had taken place.  About the time I was sick and tired of the whole process the kitchen looked like this:

 

Getting there--when I was waiting for one set of doors to dry, I could put the hardware back onto the previous day's painting and hang those.  But it was one of those cases of being *almost* done but never quite getting there.  Especially for the last set of doors--I knew I had about 15 minutes of painting to do--and I had to wait 5 hours to do it, then until the next day to hang them.  Arrrghhhh!  The drawers had been painted earlier, but it was easier to re-attach the doors without them being in the way so we pulled them out, which mean running into the living room every time we needed a spoon.

 

But it's done (almost.  It will always be almost.  We still have to put in some trim and decide what to do with the window frame and maybe get a new light over the sink).  And I'm happy, because I think it's beautiful.  So here's where we started

 

 

And here's where we are.

 

 I'm going to go have a cookie.

 

Baby Bear Paint

Which is sort of a play on words because I'm using Behr paint.

Remember all those color chips on the counter?  I finally decided that I wanted a bluish green, or more likely a greenish blue, and the color that I finally chose turned out to be  "green meets blue", or, to be more precise, Behr color S 430-4.

 

Only I thought that was a little light.  So when Bob went to Home Depot on Sunday, he picked me up a sample of "Long Meadow" aka S 430-5

 

I painted a sample cabinet door, admired it--tried to admire it--realized that I was going to be sad seeing my orange cabinets go.  The color was . . . pretty.  Pretty in a nice, innocuous "oh, don't pay any attention to me" way.  I'm used to cabinets that slap me in the face in the morning.  Cabinets with personality.  This color was . . . nice.

 

I pondered it for awhile.  I decided that the color was perfect with the new counters--there just wasn't enough of it.  What I needed was the next shade down.  So off to Home Depot on Monday to get the gallon of paint.  Smart ass that I am, I showed the nice man at the paint counter the streak of paint on my arm, and said "I want this color, only one shade darker."  After he got the "I'm dealing with a crazy woman" look on his face, I laughed, handed him the paint chip, and we chatted as he mixed it and I went home to start painting.

 

Then I took the lid off.  Apparently when I handed him the chip, he thought that was the same one that Bob had used the previous day (he remembered Bob--people do), and I wanted a shade darker.  In reality, the chip I handed him was the one I actually wanted.  In other words, the paint at hand was two shades darker.  S 430-7, "Fir"

 

I wanted more color, I *really* got more color.  I was going to get my statement.  It was dark.  Really dark.  Darker than it shows on the monitor.  But color is what I wanted, right?  Besides, I had it, and Home Depot is some 17 or 18 miles away and we had already been there four days in a row.  This would be fine, really.

I painted a bit.  Took a break and called my brother to chat.  Mentioned that this paint was really dark, but maybe I liked it that way.  Maybe I would go ahead and paint with it, and if I ended up not liking it I could always repaint it in a few months.  It would be fine.  Of course it would be fine.

Tuesday morning I woke up bolt upright at 5:30 a.m. saying "it's too dark!" 

Bob, bless his heart, offered to drive me to Home Depot, but I just rebelled.  I was over it.  Didn't want to go.  We stayed home, and I sorted and put away some of the stuff we had dragged out, did laundry, fixed up the small release cage and moved a couple of opossums into it to, and otherwise did stuff not connected to paint or trips to Home Depot.

Wednesday morning I had five (5!) museum programs (short ones), and we ran some other errands, and then to Home Depot where they were very nice and exchanged my paint for the one I wanted.  S 430-6, "Forest Edge"

 

And today I spent many hours painting (and there are many hours to go) but yes, Goldilocks, this color is juuuuuust right!

Sink Me!

It's taken several days, a few trips to the hardware store, and a lot of swearing, but we have a sink!

We've had almost six days of washing dishes in the bathroom.  Not only that--I never realized how many times a day I give my hands (or a spoon, or whatever) a quick rinse.

I've really tried not to complain and to be mindful of gratitude, because Bob and I have both lived in places where people had to walk to a fountain with jugs to get water.  I just had to walk an extra 13 steps a few dozen times a day to get all the fresh running water I want.   But even that got old after awhile.

It's far from over.  There's still all that . . . stuff . . . in the living room to be sorted and put away.  And the cabinets need to be painted.    But today--we celebrate (meaning we had a beer at lunch and now I may not get anything done this afternoon)

Saturday: Interlude

Saturday I get to take a break from the kitchen because I was scheduled to teach a felting class at the local yarn store.  Bob met friends for lunch and then made the next trip to Home Depot *and* Lowes to get a selection of plumbing part.

The class was fun--we were making felt scarves.  It's pretty simple--lay out wisps of colored wool, get it wet and a bit soapy, roll it up in bubble wrap and rock it for awhile until it turns into felt.  Pretty instant gratification compared to the hours and hours it takes to knit or weave.

 

As the saying goes--a good time was had by all.  My students told the shop owner that this class should be offered on a regular basis so I would call that a success.

This afternoon we pulled the sink out and Bob turned the faucet around, replaced the drain, and sealed it with a new tube of caulking.  Hopefully that will set up and we try installing tomorrow.

Bit by bit things are moving back into the kitchen--but I'm being very firm about what makes the cut.  I started to do a bit more purging after the sink removal but decided that I needed to finish catching up with the blog instead.  I believe that's referred to as "creative work avoidance."

Friday: The Saga of the Sink

We did have one major splurge on this update.  As long as we were saving money by doing our own destruction, we went for a hammered copper sink.  We ordered an undermount one, because that would eliminate the little edge that gunk gets caught under.  Then we found out that in order to use an undermount you have to have a solid counter, not a laminate one.  So we had to return that sink and get a drop in.

That should have clued us that the sink was not going to be cooperative.

So . . . back to Tuesday.  The new counter is in, the mess has been cleaned up, and Bob starts to put together the new sink.  One of the things you have to do is "insert the enclosed clamps."  There are no enclosed clamps.  So off to the Home Depot (all projects are gauged by how many trips to the hardware store you make) to buy clamps.  Got home--and they were too big.  That was another Wednesday errand--returning the clamps.  Contact the company and they pop the set of clamps into UPS.

So on Thursday (expecting the clamps on Friday) Bob preps the sink by installing the faucet and drains, caulking in the latter.  Friday morning--the caulk is still just as wet and gooey as the day before.  Not setting at all.  Bob scrapes it off and uses plumber putty instead.  It's ready to go by the time UPS delivers the clamps.  Clamps are installed and we drop in the sink and crawl under the cabinet to tighten things down.

The new sink is bigger than our old one, and there was very little leeway between the sink and the cabinet wall on one side.  I got to tighten those because I have smaller hands.  More awkward posturing under a cabinet.

Finally the great moment arrives--after 5 days, we will have a kitchen sink and no longer need to wash dishes in the bathroom!  I reach to turn on a tap (we actually found a faucet set with hot and cold taps).  "Bob,"  I say.  "This is weird.  The faucets turn back instead of forward."  A bit of swearing ensues as he realizes that he had the sink upside-down when he installed the faucet so it's backwards.  That gets put on the "deal with it later" list.  So water is turned on . . . and the leak is found.  He tightens and wraps that seal--and something else jiggers loose and leaks.  Fittings don't fit.  He's cutting bits off PVC pipe.  Finally he tightens the last fitting--and the plumbers putty gives way and the sink drain pops loose.

We have alcohol and give it up for the night.