Well…I came to a decision today…I am not doing another house…after doing my son’s for 15 months and getting straight into this one for a year now, it has me drinking coffee at 2 in the afternoon after working on this place for 5 hours today…but I am down to one more day of eating dust and I am really happy about that…made a damn big mess today fitting up the last 4 doors in the kitchen..I didn’t remember how bad they were when I took them off and I probably should have fit them up before I painted them…had to use my grinder and a flap disc to take off enough wood to make them close so that means I need to repaint the edges of the doors where I had to cut them down to make them fit…but, not today…I made such a mess in the kitchen with all of the dust and wood chips that I had an hour of clean up to do after sanding the big patch and some other filler…I am worn out and in pain so I am going to finish my coffee and take a break for a bit…looks like another one meal day since it’s too late for lunch and too early for dinner so I may just make some rye toast and call it good…I’ll be back later for a political one….I hope…

Well…as you know, I really do try to take one day off a week and let my poor old body the chance to rest some and stop hurting…but I really don’t know how and someone needs to show me…as I said earlier, I did start putting stuff back into the cupboards this morning and washed all of the dishes and food that are going back in there….and I really should have stopped there…but no, can’t do that…so I went down and started to put the hardware on the 5 small doors that are on the sink side cupboards…and once I did that, I decided to mount and fit them since they were just sitting there…but, these doors were in such poor shape that they took a lot of work to get them to open and close correctly…and I now understand why they had magnets on most of them to make them stay closed….and the last one closes on a part of the frame that is at least 3/8ths of an inch set out from the rest of it from how out of square they are…and now I get why it kept popping open even with a magnet on it…so I had to make up a 3/8th shim to put under the hinge so it didn’t have stress on it when the door closed. Yeah, big pain in the butt but at least it closes and stays closed with just the pressure from the self closing hinge now…okay, it’s almost two and I am taking the rest of the day off…I need it…oh, and I did laundry, too, and I’m now waiting for it to finish so I can put the bedding back on my bed and put the rest of it away…darn…too damn much work…

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…

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…

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….

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….

Well…as you know, I have been bathed in dust for the past couple of months filling and sanding the cupboards and today the doors for them…and now I think I’ve become sensitized to the dust with breaking out in rashes everywhere that itch and hurt like crazy…and this has never happened to me before even using all kinds of chemicals my whole life…so, I slathered myself in hydrocortisone lotion and I really hope it helps since I am really uncomfortable and don’t need to go to the emergency room…I think I’ll try some antihistamines later if the cortisone doesn’t work and this does not bode well for completing the rest of the house….crap, crap, crap…it’s bad enough that I’m beating the heck out of myself working hours and hours on this place every day…but I can deal with that pain since I live it every day…but this is new for me…at least I got everything sanded and I even got all of the insides of the doors painted two coats today…so tomorrow will be painting the fronts of them and that will be pretty easy since the fronts are all done with a roller and it only takes about two minutes to do each one…but then I have to wait for an hour so it can dry some before the second coat…so, another all day of work but at least there is no dust…other than cleaning up all of the dust from today…but, I’m not going to do that until I have the drawers done since they need to be filled and sanded before I can paint them….owww….

Well…are you getting tired of me chronicling every damn thing I do restoring this house? I’m not tired of it yet so if you don’t want to read more about it, just skip over these and get to the political one that I’ll be doing later….I did get the doors finished sanded this morning and looked like a damn ghost by the time I was done….the sheeting I put up to create a room to contain the dust downstairs worked pretty well and it was funny how much dust I had on me when I finished…and I left dust footprints when I went over to shut down the music and then upstairs to get a towel to brush myself off outside before I tracked more of it into the upstairs…but, I still need to go back down there to change the setup and get my other two sawhorses set up so I can paint 5 or 6 doors at the same time since I need to put two coats on and wait an hour in between coats…so, tomorrow is going to be a long day getting the backs of all of the 11 doors painted…I think the doors came out okay and I’m sure they will look much better than the did with all of the excess paint, runs, and drips they had on them…and the grey should hide some of the flaws that remain but if it doesn’t, I can live with it knowing I gave them the best finish I could and they are not dirty anymore. Man, I can’t wait to get my dishes and food back in the cupboards but I am going to wash everything that is going back into them…the dust is just pervasive and got everywhere even with the airlock I had up in the kitchen….at least I made it though with my toes not hurting any worse…

Well…I know you’ve heard me go on about how filthy the kitchen was before I got started tearing it down to clean and paint…but today, I found that it was even worse than I thought…when I was working on the doors for the cabinets above the stove, I had to scrape what looked like a quarter inch of grease off the tops of the doors that had collected there over the years…and that grease had penetrated the paint to make it gooey and damn near impossible to sand off…it was gooey and hard at the same time and I can’t figure that out but I know I’m sitting here in pain from using the sander so much today…can barely move my thumb and I still have the fronts of the last 4 doors to fill after the backs dry in another hour or so….and I need to get ready to eat dust all day tomorrow sanding the filler smooth…I am so sore from being on my feet the past few days that it may be a huge chore to do all 11 of them…and I need to seal myself into my dust room downstairs and open the window to try to get the fan to push some of the dust outside…but, it should be my last day of huge dust since the rest of the windows and the baseboards/door frames don’t need that much repair…at least I hope they don’t since I am really hurting myself with all of this work…at least I’ll be able to paint Friday…I hope…then I’ll need to spend a few days just cleaning up the dust downstairs…owww…

Well…man, you know I usually complain a bit when I have busy days and not a lot of time to just live…but, after how lousy I felt yesterday, a busy day that I could get through with energy left over is welcome…although the small toes on my right foot are hurt somehow and it may just be from standing on my feet for 4 hours today…and that didn’t help my back either with nasty pain in the lower part and stiffness that I am going to aggravate tomorrow with doing the last 4 doors….but, I did get the bike ride in, washed the car, got 4 doors done, and did my laundry….so, it looks like Thursday is going to be dust day with sanding the filler I had to use on the doors to repair them…and some of them were so bad that I had to skim coat almost the whole face to fill all of the dents and gouges in them…and there were a few of them that had food grease that had run down the back of them that I had to take the putty knife to and scrape it off…who the hell lives that way? It’s a little after 4 and I am done for the day after getting after it since 7 or so this morning….going to have leftover beef stir fry for dinner so I don’t have to work too hard for the rest of the day…my hands hurt and they aren’t going to get any rest until I’m done painting this weekend…ow…