Tag: home improvement

Hectic Weekends

Last weekend was a kitchen furniture building pre-fab marathon that left me sore and exhausted and with some sweet new looks in the kitchen and dining room.

Yesterday didn’t involve putting together pre-fab stuff but it did include moving a lot of really heavy stuff, some of which went outside for a junk pickup service to haul away. The living room doesn’t look terribly different, but the changes we made make it feel completely new. It’s weird that way.

Now what? Well… now comes the biggest job of all. The cellar. We have someone coming this week to replace the lights, then someone coming to take down what’s left of the panelling on the walls and replace it all with wall board, including a new paint job. After that we’re getting new flooring installed.

Then what? Furniture, mostly. Nothing is set in stone yet, but we’re thinking a mini-living room space and maybe a pull out couch or something that can act as a guest room. Like everything else we do, the more time we have before it happens the more complex the plans get. We’re thinking of maybe upgrading a few things in the living room (not the TV, our TV is gigantic and amazing and it’s staying right where it is) and moving the current things to the cellar.

Jen came up with this plan, and it’s a good one that I wish I thought of, to have a space in the cellar where I can go to ride out my post-surgical recovery period. I could stew in the living room all day, but she’d be working in the next room and I’d be afraid I was bothering her. If we have an alternate living room space in the cellar I could go there and moan and groan in my post-op agony without worrying about being heard on her conference calls. I imagine the first few days are going to be spent in the bed room, but as things (hopefully) lighten up for me I will probably go into the cellar and maybe binge watch all of the Marvel movies or something. Assuming we stay on schedule and everything is done by May 4th.

As for this moment in time… holy shit does my back hurt.

Changes

First, along the wall with the TV, we have new end tables, the bookcase moved and was replaced with the cubby hole table (that’s a technical term) and the record player.

The bookcase traveled to the other side of the room and was loaded up with legos and cool keepsake thingies. Also, DJ Roomba is hiding over there now. Also the router now lives in that corner instead of the opposite corner.

Finally, the piano moved from in front of the fireplace to the opposite wall and the DVD racks that have been with us since the duplex have been removed.

We also shuffled some pictures and stuff around and found new homes for the PS4 and the Switch and the HomePods.

This has taken all day and my back and my legs don’t work anymore.

IKEA Can’t Defeat Us… Mostly

Yesterday was tough. We had one huge cabinet to put together and then hang on the wall. I was dead set against having us hang it ourselves because I knew the end result would look amateurish and Jen would be disappointed. When push came to shove though I said fuck it and we did it. Jen’s folks came over to help but something much more important came up and they had to go and take care of it. That left us flying solo and we got it done.

It took ALL DAY. We were up at 5:00am and we weren’t finished until after 7:00pm, but it’s done! We stood up to the IKEA challenge and we survived!

Except…

We have another big piece of furniture to work on today, and we are both seriously hurting after yesterday. My back and my legs are in really bad shape. Jen has a legitimate bad back, whereas mine is just me being fat, and she is in major pain. It hasn’t gone out on her though so we’re babying it as much as we can.

We’re going to start putting together today’s project. We may not finish it, but we’ll make a good dent.

Wish us luck in our battle against the Swedish* pre-fab menace.

*I couldn’t remember if IKEA was Swedish or Swiss so I Googled it. Apparently they are currently based in The Netherlands! Who knew? Bellana can go visit their headquarters!

Don’t Spoil Me

I could have watched the new episode of Star Trek Picard this morning but I chose to do other things, like clean up some of the stuff that was displaced for the kitchen/dining room fix up. We had these huge ass canvas tarps covering the furniture. That had to go somewhere. There are so many cardboard boxes everywhere from ordering new pre-fab stuff.

I took some time to straighten a couple of little places up. That’s why you can’t tell me what happened in Star Trek Picard season two episode four. I expect I’ll get to it before I sleep tonight though so it won’t be too long before you can talk to me about all of it.

The last contractor is here. Hopefully we’re just minutes away from having a kitchen again. I hope so because not having a dishwasher or a kitchen sink has been a kick in the nads, I tells ya.

That’s Better

Wednesday night’s awful sleep combined with a tough day at work combined with the Covid stress of going to the office left me a bit of a mess last night. I managed to pull off the rest of the exercise ring but I’m not exactly sure how. I was toast.

Last night’s sleep was better. I went to bed around 10:30. I woke up a little after 4:00 to go to the bathroom and my watch didn’t register any sleep after that. I know I slept more but maybe it was really light? I don’t know. What my watch did register was almost all restful sleep including one stretch that lasted over an hour. I don’t feel great this morning, but I do feel better than I did yesterday.

Bad sleep blows.

The contractor we’ve had working on the kitchen and dining room expects to finish the painting tonight. I am so happy with the way it’s going. It looks great so far. He’ll have to come back next week for the finishing work but that’s a-ok with me.

For me right now, Star Trek Picard season two episode three. I have about 10 minutes to go. Good stuff so far.