Tag: home owner

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!

In the Office

For the third time this month, I am in the office. I hit a little bit of traffic on route 93 South before I even got out of town, but after that it was mostly smooth sailing. Mostly.

I had said that the kitchen redesign was done as far as outside help was concerned, but we came in under budget and decided to do another small thing or two. We’re still waiting on the pre-fab furniture deliveries and the big stuff isn’t coming until next week. Jen and I will put together whatever we have over the weekend and try to keep our wits about us while waiting for the rest.

So far everything looks great. We are both really thrilled. I keep saying this to anyone who will listen, but when we moved into the house in 2010 I said the first thing we needed to upgrade was the walls in the dining room and the kitchen. The paneling and the wallpaper border had to go. 12 years, a redone bathroom, and a garage turned into a bedroom suite, not to mention new furniture and floor plans in literally every room in the house, and we finally get to the paneling and the wallpaper border. I gotta say, it feels great.

I managed to watch Star Trek Picard last night so you can feel free to discuss it with me in a spoiler-heavy manner. I mean, Picard is Q’s father? Who knew!?

Busy Sunday

Jen and I spent our Sunday morning prepping the kitchen and the dining room both for the next week’s worth of contractors and for what comes after the contractors are done. Mostly we just talked about redesigning things and cleaning up some of the places that require changes. We also built the first piece of pre-fab kitchen furniture. The ball is rolling and it is out of control.

The Bruins traded for a new defenseman and the Red Sox signed a new infielder (I think). I don’t know either of them because I am completely out of touch, but they both received long term contracts so maybe they’re both pretty good? I hope so. I missed the last couple of Bruins games so I didn’t hear that Bergeron is injured. Shit.

I may have made a decision about music last night and it may result in more annoying blog posts. Duck and cover kids. It was well after midnight and I should have been asleep but I was wide awake. I started poking through my Alonetone account. I listened to a few things from the last couple of re-recording projects. I thought to myself… do I want to do another one? I have six “albums”, do I want to do a seventh? There are two or three songs from last month’s RPM Challenge that might be worth another look. There’s also a couple of songs from the previous RPM that might be worthwhile too. Shit… I think I am starting to put together Quarantine Tunes Volume Seven. Just when you thought it was safe to listen to music again.

Spring officially began about an hour and 10 minutes ago. We survived another Winter. Now we just need to avoid any unscheduled Spring snow. That would be nice, right?

Okay. I need to do some laundry. I’ll talk to you later.

Fun with Houseplants

Check out Bertha’s new leaf. It looks healthy and happy. She has now doubled in size since we potted the clipping.

The new branch is huge. It’s bigger than the original two branches combined. Good job, Bertha!

The thing that I think is going to be a new flower on the Japanese Peace Lily hasn’t opened yet, but it is growing like crazy. If this keeps up it will soon be the tallest point on the entire plant.

Finally, let’s check out the tallest plant in the room. This guy has grown about 4-5 inches since we repotted. Keep it up, big guy!

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!