Tag: home owner

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!

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!