Canada

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Insourcing

When I work crazy hours like I did this past summer, outsourcing makes sense. I eat out a lot and rely on technology to do some chores for me. But when I’m paused like I am now and stretching the budget to the limit while I await a new source of funds, outsourcing is a waste of money.

Today, I insourced three things:

1) Laundry

I haven’t had to pay for laundry in almost a year and a half! Needless to say, the Wonderwash hasn’t been getting that much use other than for dishcloths and delicates. Today, I put it, and the drying rack, to good use and did a couple of loads by hand, saving a very tangible $6.

2) Dinner

!!! I forgot what a good cook I am! 😀 Tonight was definitely a ‘big’ dinner night since I’ve been moving around all day and was just about ready to eat cardboard by late afternoon. I made chicken breasts in a shallot/dried mustard sauce over spaghetti noodles with Brussels sprouts navidad. Last night I accidentally opened a can of corn instead of pineapple, so I threw the corn in with the sprouts. Since I’d just a tad overpeppered the veggies, the sweet corn balanced the heat out very nicely. I might make a chocolate cake for dessert, I’m feeling that domestic. 🙂

3) Dishes!

Rent here is site plus power. A good way to reduce my power usage is to reduce my use of power hungry devices like my beloved dishwasher. *sighs*

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Prepping the Dressing Room

Today’s big project is to get the dressing room ready for painting. I had some decisions to make and chose to not paint, in addition to all the ‘oak’-style cabinetry:

-the trim since I’m not happy with it (weird angles, remember?);

-the door into the toilet room and the pocket door;

-the wardrobe doors.

First off was to remove the last super ugly towel holder as well as a hook that has not been useful since I installed the cloth dresser:

the white things underneath are Command hanging strips that held up a picture that will be going right back in that spot.

At some point in the last two years, a piece of wall trim covering a corner was broken. I removed the whole thing and debated how to fix it. The obvious solution was to get a piece of 90 degree wooden trim, but the rough edge that needed to be covered didn’t seem that bad. I decided to try filling it with wall repair compound. I have a small bucket of it, more than I’ll ever get through before it goes dry, so it’s a cheap experiment.

in progress

after

Finally, it was time to do away with the hideous cloth-covered pocket door lintel:

*shudder*

That\’s it?! I\’ve been living with this eyesore for two years and all it was hiding was a few screw holes?!

When I last examined the lintel, I thought it was glued on. Turns out, fabric was glued to a piece of cardboard that was screwed to the lintel. Don’t ask me why; the non-cloth covered version would have looked a million times nicer! Unfortunately, the lintel is made of a cardboard-type material, so the screws created protrusions that are impossible to sand flat. I did the best I could, then filled the holes with wall compound.

Once the wall compound dries and I can sand it, I’ll wash the walls with TSP, then start taping. I should be able to prime tomorrow and then paint on Monday, provided the paint looks as good on the wall as it does on the can.

Before anyone asks, how am I going to paint the wall to which I secured the cloth dresser?

Remove drawers, then lift and clamp:

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Angle Issues

Good news: the easy part of the trim is done. Well, it’s cut. I haven’t done any fastening yet since some of the walls aren’t perfectly smooth and I have a bit of chiseling to do where I didn’t get all of the old flooring. It looks fine, but I want to get a bit closer to perfect.

Bad news: I’m no closer to getting the hard part done than I was several months ago.

This is one of four cuts I need to make that are not at forty-five degrees. I’m at a loss as to how to make them.

It’s at times like these that I really miss my dad. While he only had a grade four education, he was a skilled carpenter and a whiz at math. Most importantly, he understood how my brain worked and could put math into terms that made sense to me. I’ve been reading up on using protractors and doing calculations, etc., but none of it makes sense. Dad would have presented the solution to me in a way that would have made me go AH HA!

What I think I will end up doing is making a paste that I will press against the wall and let dry, then use it as a model for cutting the trim. Whatever works…

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Simple Solutions

One of the reasons I was procrastinating on the library trim is that I did not have the strength to deal with the corner that was damaged in the great leak of ’10.

I figured I’d have to remove the whole piece of paneling from that wall and then put new trim. Today, I decided that enough was enough and admitted to myself that I have no intention of rebuilding that whole wall. I looked at my scraps and found a solution. Not an ideal one, of course, but that corner is going to be hidden by my lounge chair, so it just needs to look polished.

The biggest challenge is that there are two exterior screws sticking out of the wall. The builders simply put a thicker piece of trim there and then screwed into that trim from the outside, then sealed the screws.

I decided to imitate that with what I had on hand by making holes into the back of a thick piece of wood so that I could get it to lie flush against the wall.

Thing is, the wall isn’t exactly plumb and square and I couldn’t get the board to fit perfectly. So, I had to pad it at the top with a bit of door trim. I faced the whole thing with shoe moulding and ta-dah:

While I was down there, I put in a threshold between the library flooring and the cab carpet:

As a side note, I keep moving the litter box around, but I think it’s going to live in the cab when I’m stopped.

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Procrastination Burnout

In April, I hit renovation burnout. Five months later, tired of tripping over trim, paint cans, tools, and bits and bobs that’ll probably end up in the trash, but which I want to hang on to till the end of the renos, I’ve hit procrastination burnout.

So, this afternoon I went outside, got the handsaw and mitre box, and did this:

half of the library floor, in desperate need of trim

half of the library floor, in desperate need of trim

trim!

trim!

a handsaw's not a bad tool!

a handsaw’s not a bad tool!

I actually found it much easier to do the trim with the handsaw than I did with the mitre saw, and it did a much nicer job.

Now, I’m moving on to the other half of  the room!