Well…even though this is a Sunday, I just couldn’t sit here and do nothing…so I got the two totes that had my spices, staples, and dishes emptied and washed everything before I started putting it away….still waiting for the dishes to dry and that won’t happen for a couple of hours so I’ll have to wait to put the dishes away…I cleaned up my silverware caddy, too, since it really needed it and I hadn’t cleaned it in years…yeah, I know…ick….will probably still use a towel to make sure they are dry before the go in the cupboards….I really like how the food looks in there with it so damn clean and finished off and it makes me happy that they came out so good..better than I hoped and now I won’t cringe whenever I look at them….the new blinds for the last window will be here by Wed and I am gradually, bit by bit, getting the kitchen toward the finish line…when I get the blind, I am going to clean all of the windows and other blinds that are still covered in dust…I probably should wait til I do the rest of the sanding on the big patch and probably will do that tomorrow….and I may put a couple more doors up later this aft but there are races that start at 3 so I may just finish the dishes and call it good…more later…
February 6th
Well…man, I really like Sunday mornings…it’s the one morning of the week that I can do what I want without any guilt…okay, I’ve talked about that before so that’s enough…slept okay last night but was up at 3 and that was a little annoying…didn’t get up til coffee o’clock, though, so that was a successful night…I did inch up toward having cocktails last night with even putting some materials in the freezer to reward myself for getting the first two doors up in the kitchen but I really think I’ve decoupled that reward system and was able to resist and stayed good for over a month now…and that gets me toward the goal of two months off at least and maybe more….I am surprised how well the doors fit when I put them up…before the work on them, they wouldn’t even close at all and stayed open about 4-5 inches unless I pushed them closed and even then they wouldn’t stay closed…but now they close to the point that there is only a half inch gap left and that is from the warp in both the cabinets and the doors and I can live with that…not sure if I’m going to work on putting the rest of the doors up today or if I’m going to put the dishes in them along with all of my spices and staples like flour, sugar, salt and cooking oils…but all of that needs to be cleaned since they do have a fine coating of dust on them and I can’t put them in my nice new cupboards without cleaning them up…there is still a lot of work in the kitchen and it should take maybe 4 weeks to complete it but then it will be clean and modern looking and all I’ll have left to do is the floor but that may be a project for next winter…I really do need to take some time to just live after finishing it up to let my beat up body heal….not much to do today…just going to read the news and have more coffee with no plans other than to take it easy for a bit….but, you know me, if there is work to be done, I can’t just sit here and not do it…more later…..
Rooting against America at fox news…
Well…if you watched fox news Thursday evening or Friday morning, you saw every damn one of those ghouls rooting their damndest for America to fail on job creation…with the comfy couch assholes just gleefully predicting that we probably would lose up to 300K jobs and blaming Biden for what I don’t know but blame they did…and that doocy ass who is daily shredded by Jen Psaki at the WH briefing was standing outside the WH calling Biden a failure and predicting Joe would try to spin the job losses by saying he had created more jobs in his fist year than any other president…but that doesn’t matter anymore because losing 300K jobs is so bad that it offsets the gains of the past year…you see where I’m going here, right? Yep, the meme they were pushing fell apart spectacularly when job gains of 467K were announced for January and November and December were revised up by almost 700K jobs gained…and you know what happened next, right? Yep, fox completely stopped talking about jobs and went straight into their puff pieces on the asshole truckers in Canada who are protesting vaccine mandates and spouting even more outrage at the January 6th committee…normal stuff for them when their propaganda is stuffed right back down their throats by the truth…god I hate those assholes…geez…
Good choice of colors for the kitchen..
Well…before I got the two doors hung this morning, I was a little concerned about my color choices of white for the cabinet frames and a subtle grey for the doors with black hardware…but, now that I have doors up so I can look at it, I really like how it modernized the look of the kitchen and made the 82 year old cupboards look like they are only 40 years old…okay, that was a joke and they do still look old but now they are clean and they have no runs or drips in the paint anymore and I like how the self closing hinges hold the doors in position when I open them…I feel a lot better about all of the work I had to do to get to this point…and I’m now excited about finishing the kitchen and getting everything else painted…still 3 more weeks of work to do and I have to remember that I really don’t have a schedule that I have to meet so I don’t need to stress out about progress…I mean there is only one person in the world who cares how long it will take to complete and that is me…and I’m a bad boss at times…maybe I’ll fire myself…
Got the two big doors hung…
Well…yeah, things have changed in my schedule today once I got to working on the drawers this morning…they need so much work that there is no way I’ll get them done this weekend…had to remove the head of the small one since it was so cracked and I couldn’t get to the cracks with it still attached…so I had to re-glue it after I did the repair and now it’s drying with my heaviest toolbox sitting on the face of it…and I had to remove all of the partitions in it which took a heck of a lot of work…I did get the two big doors hung but had to take my grinder with a cutoff wheel on it to shorten the screws so I could tighten the door handles…both of the sets they included were way too long and I wasn’t going to go out and buy all new screws for them…the doors actually close now but they still bind a little but they wouldn’t even close before so I’ll take it…a little paraffin rubbed on where it binds helped a lot…I don’t think I could have gotten them to work better since both the doors and the cupboards are warped…but I probably should have waited til Monday to let the paint cure since it is so soft that I peeled off a couple of spots that I’ll have to touch up later today….I am done for the day…abused my hands again and peeled my knuckle open that had started to heal and my thumb hurts like crazy every time I use it to hit the space bar…3 1/2 hours is enough for a Saturday and I am going to take tomorrow off completely to let my hands and back rest…but I will be back for a political one after I take a break…I forgot that the circuit that I have my microwave and toaster on temporarily won’t take running them both at once so I had to go downstairs and reset it while I was making breakfast for lunch…can’t wait to get them back in the kitchen where that doesn’t happen….
February 5th
Well..I gave up at 5:37 this morning when I lay there for a few minutes and quickly realized that I was not going to get back to sleep…but, I went to bed at 10:30 from boredom so I guess that’s okay….feel okay this morning and that is from resisting the urge to have cocktails to celebrate finishing the cupboard doors yesterday…I am a little disappointed in my work on them when I missed some obvious flaws in them that should have been repaired…I guess I can say they look like distressed antiques since they are 82 years old…and I still fall back on my idea that they are okay since they are now clean and that’s really all I wanted…and with what I had to work with, they are okay….still pretty darn sore from all of the work I’ve done this week and I am glad I get to take the day off the bike tomorrow…I am going to get on the drawers today so I can have them done tomorrow….they built some really crappy dividers in the top one and I think I’m going to remove them since they are so half assed and I need them gone to get at the bottom of the drawer where it looks like they just poured paint in them….so, it looks like another all day work day to get the drawers ready so I can paint them tomorrow….not much to do today…going to get on the bike early to get my miles in and I may start cleaning my dishes so I can start putting them away since the insides of the cupboards have had 10 days or so for the paint to harden….but maybe not…the drawers are in such sad shape they could take all day…more later…
My free covid tests came today…
Well…it was a little bit of a surprise when the free covid tests that I ordered showed up in my mailbox today…I read that I didn’t qualify to get them with having Medicare but I’ll take it…and I now have 6 n-95 masks that I got at Meijers the last two weeks with groceries so I’m set for a while…still not going out for anything but groceries and to depot for supplies and won’t until the hospitals are no longer full out here and the infection rate subsides some…I wonder if I’m still being too careful when I see almost all of the rest of the people everywhere who aren’t doing anything to mitigate the spread of the virus? I guess I don’t follow the herd when my health is concerned…but I am considering having cocktails soon since I do miss it a bit and I do need a reward for all the work I’ve been doing lately…but not tonight…darn…
Got the doors finished…
Well…that was pretty easy…got all of the fronts of the doors for the kitchen finished with two coats of paint on each….but I did notice that one door was not sanded enough so there is a little line where the filler was put in…and the bitch is that you can’t see it until it’s painted so that door will probably need to be removed, re-sanded, and repainted at some point in the future…but not now…just want to get the doors installed first and take some time to get the kitchen finished…will probably do the drawers tomorrow but won’t be able to sand and paint them until Sunday even though my Sundays are supposed to be my one day off for the week…it would be nice to have all of the kitchen cabinets completely finished Monday so we’ll see how it goes…I think I’m taking the rest of the day off after all of the work the past week…I can use a little veg time…more later….
Biden is doing it right…
Well…damn, what a difference a real president makes on the world stage…as Putin rattles his sabers and threatens Ukraine with an invasion if they don’t roll over for him and stop working with the west to guarantee their sovereignty, can you imagine what would be happening if the idiot boy was still in office? Yep, he would be rolling over for Putin and half of Ukraine would be Russian territory by now…but, Biden is not taking any of Putin’s bullshit and is working with NATO to respond to his threats with the only thing he understands…power…and we are making it clear what the cost will be if he does invade…the Russian economy will be crashed and it will cost him billions personally…and he won’t have a reconstituted USSR that is his real aim. I understand the people who are protesting and have sent letters to Biden opposing war in Ukraine, but appeasement of people like Putin just doesn’t work…and I think that Putin is thinking in terms of the previous guy who was so scared of everything and his administration was so incompetent that he could basically do whatever he wanted anywhere in the world with no consequences…and that is no longer true when you have a competent president who truly values our allies and works with them as a team to meet Putin’s blustering…no matter what China says….why they are supporting Putin on trying to stop NATO expansion, I don’t know but I think it is more a sharp stick in the eye to a newly muscular American foreign policy…and it costs China nothing as they try to extend their influence across the world…so, I think Biden is doing it right and I hope he keeps it up…
February 4th
Well…up at 4:51 this morning but was able to get back to sleep until a little after 6 and I’ll take it…it’s 2 degrees out there right now and I am happy that I don’t have to go anywhere for the next couple of days….just checked the weather and it looks like not much snow for the next 10 days and that gets us 10 days closer to spring…it hasn’t been a bad winter for my first one out here and I do need to check to see if this is a normal winter for Muskegon or if I need to plan for a worse one next winter….with all of the work I’ve been doing on the house I’ve let this place go a bit and I need to clean and straighten this place up some after I get the kitchen done…but I still need to finish the doors this morning and start planning the painting of the rest of it….the downstairs cleanup is going to be a little worse than I expected…I guess I didn’t have the dust corralled as well as I thought and there is a light film of it everywhere…but that can’t happen until I sand, fill, and paint the drawers and I will get at that after the doors are hung Monday….the cortisone cream did work on the rashes I got from sanding yesterday and they are not itching nearly as much as they were….but, I’m still concerned that this is going to happen every time I expose myself to dust and that is still going to happen a lot as I prep for painting…not much to do today….just going to get the bike ride in and then get painting on the fronts of the cabinet doors that will probably take most of the day…but it will be easy with no detail work to do so I can just use a roller to get a good finish….oh, I did paint one of my detail touches on the edge of the countertop where they had painted it white and I changed that to the same grey as the doors and the walls of the kitchen…it looks pretty cool and I can’t wait to see how it looks with the doors up…more later…