Homemaking

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Two Radically Different Shopping Experiences

My first stop today was Home Depot where it was confirmed that the Campbell River Home Depot is the best in Canada for customer service. Every time I stopped to look around, someone offered me help. When I was picking up foam brushes in the paint section and went to consult my list, an associate offered me help with my list. No one was annoying, but simply made sure I would get out with everything I need in as little time as possible.

One of the items on my list was a variety of moulding, with some needing to be specific lengths. Home Depot charges by the foot and provides a cutting station with a mitre box and hand saw so I spent a few minutes cutting my various pieces to the right length. A couple came by while I was busy and the man asked me if I worked there! I pointed to the ‘customer use’ sign and the guy replied “Cool!” I agree; it’s nice to be able to do it yourself and not have to wait for an associate to free up to do it for you.

Next stop was Canadian Tire. I have a love/hate relationship with Canadian Tire. When I’m not sure where to find something, like a grommet kit, I know Canadian Tire will have it. The store also has amazing deals. But shopping there SUCKS. The associates, when you can find one, are rude and don’t know where anything is. Even if something is displayed in the flyer, it can take an hour to find it. Today was a particularly bad day and I lost my cool with the associate who snarkily told me “This is my section and if it’s not here, then it’s not my problem to find it” (I’m paraphrasing). She told me that I should have shopped online first and found the SKU since that’s all they can search for on their lame, archaic system. I finally told her to forget about it and decided to do one last loop through the store.

As I headed for the cash, the associate came up to me, with a completely different attitude and said she was still looking. I was a bit shocked by the turn around; she’d gone from complete bitch to being friendly. I had told her “I’m not angry with you, just at the way Canadian Tire trains you guys” and I just might have gotten through to her. She dug for a bit more time and finally found the elusive grommet kit. I was still simmering, but my mood improved.

I got to the cash and the first item rung through was a new staple gun. It was a deluxe model that was labeled at $13.95 on sale from $19.95. It went through at $20.95, down from $29.95. Anger boiled up again. This is another Canadian Tire trick; making the pricing confusing and hoping that you won’t notice or won’t care when you get to the cash. The cashier said she’d call someone for me and I replied “No, I’ve had enough of you guys and I just want to get out of here; take it off the bill.” I had been there an hour!!!

Needless to say, I was completely drained by the time I got home, but I still got a lot of work done.

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Another Picture Goes Up

I hung up the second of my three big pictures today.

This is a print of a wax pastel drawing of Alcatraz Island. I picked it up for a song my first night in San Francisco and discovered many days later that Alcatraz truly is that beautiful.

I hung it over the ‘sofa’ where the useful cabinet used to hang. The cabinet will be relocated to the other wall.

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A Shocking Discovery

I’ve begun the study reorganization and was confident I knew what was behind every door of the overhead cabinets. I didn’t. Look at what I just found!

That is a serious amount of empty cabinet space! And I thought I had no ‘out of the way’ place to store extra linens and pillows!

I still can’t figure out how I went from being a packrat jammed into 750 square feet to finding empty cabinets in a 120 square foot RV!

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A New Desk and a Place to Sit

My desk was fine while I was only doing a little work from home, but its lack of ergonomics was starting to get to me. I also learned that the importance of drawers should not be underestimated. So, I started to troll Craigslist for a desk. It had to fit under the window within the bumpout, be reasonably lightweight, have at least three drawers, be cheap, and be attractive enough to not drive me nuts until I got around the refinishing it.

Yesterday, I found it. Perfect doesn’t begin to describe it. It looks like it was a Glendale option for the back room, it so matches the style of the rig!

Don’t mind the rat’s nest of wires, I have a plan for dealing with them. 🙂

I believe this was originally meant to be a child’s desk, judging from the low height of the keyboard tray, which I won’t be using. It was priced at $45, but my offer of $30 was accepted.

I have, for now, put the little bookcase next to the desk, but I’m not sure if it will stay there. I would love to leave it there with the printer on top, but I don’t know yet if I’ll be able to secure the printer. It is so heavy that it has never once moved from its perch on a piece of non-skid material at the end of the bed, but it would be just my luck to have it fall now.

The seller is downsizing to a smaller house and had a lot of things for sale. Something told me to go dig through her garage where I found this:

(I just noticed Neelix scoping out his new sleeping spot, LOL!)

It’s exactly what I was looking for! The chair is of high quality–solid metal joints and covered with genuine leather, but the fabric frame is falling apart and the whole thing looks hideous and worn. I convinced the seller to let me have it for $15, calculating that a can of spray paint and new cloth-backed vinyl would cost me less than $50 (I already have some foam that would be perfect for the padding). I don’t know if I’ll be able to make it pretty or not, but it will be a good project and not too expensive of an experiment. I would probably paint the metal frame dark brown and then recover the chair in blue vinyl.

(Neelix has given the chair his seal of approval!)

Here is photographic proof of why hatchbacks rock:

I got the desk, chair, and stool in the car and still managed to close all the doors. The seller suggested I come back for the chair, but I know that when you get a good deal you should run with it. Someone else could have come by after me and countered with more money.

I have lots of work to do in the study and the new desk is going to help immensely. I will have to secure it first using a few brackets screwed into the wall; all the drawers will need is a simple stick down through the pulls. I have to decide how I’m going to manage my wires and peripherals so that I don’t have to put everything away when I’m stopped and that will most likely involve moving the very badly located plug. I’ve been given instructions on how to do so, but playing with electricity always makes me nervous. 🙂

When I planned the renos for this winter, I would never have thought that I would pull out of Campbell River with all the furnishings and goodies I wanted, so I guess some things are just meant to be!

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Intangible Results

You know all that little stuff that doesn’t get done because you ‘have more important things to do’? Well, today was time for me to start on that little stuff. I feel like I got absolutely nothing done today and, yet, I scratched quite a few things off my giant to-do list.

The biggest victory was the stupid catch for the over-fridge cabinet. I can’t even begin to calculate how much time I have spent on this thing. No matter how carefully I measured, I could never get the door and cabinet pieces to line up. Add to that having to work with my arms above my body and it has been a hard job that slowly morphed into a nightmare. This catch problem was starting to keep me up at night. It was such a small thing and yet it had completely defeated me. Tonight, I had an epiphany. I inserted the door piece into the cabinet piece and smeared it with glue. I then shut the door and pressed tightly. The result was a perfect impression of exactly where I should screw in the piece. I don’t know why it takes me so long to come up with ideas like that. 🙁

Another thing I did was finish two sides of the dishwasher cabinet. The third side, that of the library still requires some fine-tuning and thinking about.

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While digging through the dregs of the scrap pile I found a small piece of solid wood that would look much nicer for the top of the kitchen-side cabinet. I used the plywood piece as a pattern, cut out the top, sanded it, and installed it from under the counter using straight brackets. I also found a piece of oak-type trim that perfectly matched my counters that I used to hide my imperfect cutting along the back of the piece. Looks MUCH better than did the plywood!

I had to do some fine-tuning of the door on the kitchen side, but now it’s done. I’m not 100% happy with it, of course, but it looks a million times better than I would have expected it would.

I also added trim to the side of the cabinet we see from the entry door. It beefs it up a bit, I think.

Finally, I spent an hour today hauling some furniture I found on Craigslist. That will be a the subject of tomorrow’s post. 😀

Floor trim notwithstanding, the kitchen, *gulp*, is done for this phase of the renos!