Tag: home improvement

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.

Non-Lunch Post

We’re coming to the end of another work day spent in the office. How many more will there be at this desk? I don’t know. A few, probably.

It’s been a hectic and stressed out day. I’m not sure how, but I managed to do everything right as far as the weight loss surgery prep steps are concerned. I’m up to date on my vitamins (still have one more to take with dinner), and I tracked all of my food, and I stopped drinking more than 15 minutes before eating, and I didn’t drink again for over an hour after eating.

My exercise ring is half closed. That’s due to the long walk from the car to my desk, and the long walk from my desk to the kitchenette and back, and the long walk from my desk to the bathroom and back. I think wearing a mask contributes to the increased heart rate as well, but I don’t have proof of that.

The building recently switched from masks required in all common areas to masks optional for vaccinated folks. I think it’s too soon for that, but I have to deal with it. My mask was on in all common areas but I was in the minority. Will peer pressure eventually remove my mask? I don’t think so but I can’t say for sure. The Covid numbers are way down for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. I would like to take approximately 1/6,893,000th of the credit for that. At least that much. I kept my mask on and kept those around me safe from the virus that I don’t have. That’s not sarcasm. That’s honesty. Wear your effing mask.

Anyway, I was able to eat lunch today, but I was not really able to take a lunch break. That’s why there’s no lunch post from today, and that’s why I titled this post the way I did.

I might look into a new theme for this page. It might be time. Maybe something black and gloomy. Yeah, that would be cool. Black and gloomy is tight.

Now I need to get my exhausted ass home so I can eat dinner with the love of my life, check out how far the paint job got while I was out, watch the new episode of Star Trek Picard, and then finally get some of that sleep that I didn’t get any of last night.

Almost quittin’ time, babie!

How Do You Spell Cacophony?

The kitchen work continues. The contractor we hired took down the paneling and put up new wallboard over the last two days. He also started taking off the wallpaper border. He had another guy come in today to gunk the wallboard. Is it gunk or mud? I always heard it called gunk, but everyone’s calling it mud now. When did that change? Was I just starting off with bad information or something?

Anyway, the guy has been patching and mudding and/or gunking all day today. He just started sanding it down. The volume level is impressive. Holy schnikey is it loud. It’s looking great though. Painting should be starting tomorrow. I’m looking forward to seeing the end result.

Sure is loud in here right now though. Let’s consider it practice for the next band practice. That’s probably still a couple of weeks away, but it’s coming… I think… I hope.

The Last of the Paneling

The contractor is here. He’s been here for a couple of hours or so. He took down the last of the kitchen/dining room paneling today and it is everything I dreamed it would be. There is still paneling in the hallway, but I don’t eat in the hallway (or to put it the way Connor McCleod of the Clan McCleod did, I don’t dine in the hall*). The end of the paneling will be a day long remembered (It has seen the end of Kenobi, and will soon see the end of the rebellion**).

The contractor is subcontracting one item on the to-do list out to someone else. That someone else is coming tomorrow at…

…wait for it…

7:30am.

Yeah, that’s going to suck out loud.

Totally worth it though.

*Highlander reference, of course. They had the French guy play the Scottish guy and the Scottish guy play the Egyptian via Spain guy. Fucking brilliant.

**Star Wars quote, of course. Most things in my tiny little brain are revolving around Obi-Wan Kenobi these days and they will until we get the full Disney+ series. The few things in my tiny little brain that are not revolving around the imminent release of Kenobi are revolving around Star Trek Picard. Oh, how yesterday’s enterprise***.

***Star Trek Picard quote that is a call back to the title of a Star Trek the Next Generation episode. A killer episode at that. Welcome to the 21st century, Q.

Paneling is a Jerk

We have paneling on our walls all through the house. The kitchen, the dining room, the hallway. I hate paneling. The house I grew up in was wall to wall paneling when I was a kid. I hated it. I guess it was better than wallpaper, but only by a hair.

When we moved into the house in 2010 I said the first thing we need to do is get rid of all of this horrible paneling. Here we are in 2022 and it’s still there. We’re trying to find a way to redo the kitchen a little at a time over the course of a couple of years. One of the things we want to do to kick things off is repaint the kitchen and the dining room and that includes taking down the crappy, ugly paneling.

We had a guy come in to give us an estimate. He said it would depend on the state of the wall behind the panels. Makes sense. There’s one spot in the dining room where it’s busted up pretty bad so we tried pulling it away from the wall to see what it looked like.

That’s when I learned that paneling sucks even more than I already knew it sucked. He said something that I was assuming was the truth all this time. The paneling is nailed to the wall. Take a crow bar and pull on a spot and it should pop right off. That makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, when we were looking at that one little damaged spot we found that the friggin’ jerk is actually glued to the wall. Glue! Are you kidding me? So now we have to pry it off and deal with the glue left on the wall.

Paneling… you’re an effing jerk. I hope you are eradicated from existence the world over. Glue? Really? What a jerk!

The Goings On

I am procrastinating. The Apple Activity App has a challenge for National Women’s Day to do a 20 minute work out. I want to do it but I don’t want to do it. So I’m sitting here procrastinating.

We still don’t know what we’re doing with the kitchen. We have an estimate for like four different upgrading scenarios. All or grossly expensive, but only a couple are beyond us. We have more people coming in for estimates, which is terrifying on the Covid front. We have someone coming tomorrow to look into pulling down the panelling and the wallpaper border and repainting. No promises, but when we moved in 11 years ago it was the #1 change we wanted to make. Still waiting. We’ll see how that goes.

I have my next appointment at the weight loss clinic on Thursday. It’s the psyche check in. My first. I am not sure where it’s going to go but I expect a nervous breakdown, or at the very least tears. We’ll see how that goes.

I haven’t done any music today. If I end up doing an album in a day thing then it will probably start around dinner time. There’s just too much else going on.

Okay. Enough procrastinating. Let’s do that 20 minute workout. Wish me luck.