Springtime Catch-up

Spring is here in full force - flowers are blooming, fruit and vegetables are growing, home renovations will be starting again...

With the start of spring, I also came across a new opportunity for work - and decided that it really was time for a change.  The change in employers (yes, I left my last employer after 25 years) has me working a whole 2 blocks from home.  I walk to work.  I walk home at lunch.  My total commute is about 3 minutes - and that is if I stop to smell the actual flowers on the way.  With this change I have regained 10 hours a week.  

10 hours!

The work week is two and a half hours shorter, but the biggest change is that I am not in my car for an hour and a half each day.  I get up a little later - yes - but I am still out walking my dog in the early morning hours. I feel more rested and less stressed.  There is the "stress" of learning - oh, and there is some stress in that, for the first time in 25 years I am actually on "probation" for three months and there is the risk that I don't make it through - but the feed-back thus far has been really positive.

Spring has hit in full force, though, and this weekend I finally got to the serious gardening that I needed to complete.  I dug out the other two vegetable beds (pernicious weed removal) and ground layered some heavy-duty landscape cloth.  It is woven cloth covered in plastic and I sure hope that it finally stops the nasty weed that I have been battling for the last few years!

Once dug out, weed-barriered, and then back filled with cleared soil and potting mix, in went the vegetables.  Last weekend I planted the Principe Borghese (cherry) tomatoes - four plants this year - into the same bed I had the two plants in last year.  I generally harvest and dehydrate these ones as they store brilliantly and a handful or two makes a wonderful addition to my soups, stews, rice dishes and so on.  Slightly reconstituted, they make wonderful pesto sauce.

I also potted some Genovese Basil - admittedly, it may be too early to have it out, but I also have some seed that I can start in the house and grow in my garden window in the kitchen.  

This weekend was the lion's share of planting efforts. Two kinds of lettuce.

Pole Beans:

Health Kick tomatoes, Red Onions and Purple Haze Carrots (This will be the colour-filled harvest bed)

And two kinds of corn:

I have also put up some pet-deterrent screening to ensure there is no jaunting through the beds (or digging in them) until everything is well established.

I also have two kinds of squashes planted in the little bed out front.

All in all, a very productive day.

Tomorrow will also need to be a productive day  I will need to get the car in for emergency brake repairs, call repair people about my vacuum (something has disconnected somewhere and while the hose has suction, the chassis does not,) call other repair people about my awning (the metal loop that the pole connects to and then turns to open and close the awning has broken off and I need to get that dealt with ASAP,) Do the requisite laundry and weekly cleaning, and also clean out the front bedroom in advance of the next stage of renovations - the new window.

Yes, more renovations are on my table for this summer - but nothing as big as last year's job!  Additional window installation into the front bedroom (for more natural light) and then a full painting refresh in here.

Other summer projects include finishing the pantry shelving and then tricking it all out (paint and flooring) and MAYBE building a Murphy bed with a floating desk for the front  bedroom. Or it may go into the bedroom I'm currently using and I may move myself into the front bedroom - something I will have to decide after the room has the new window and been painted.  It has more closet space, and I think it is also bigger. I'm still on the fence about that, though.

With love across the waters...

More on the Floor

Saturday is always a great day for me where getting stuff done is concerned.  Maybe it is because I send all week at work wishing I was home doing those things and so have all sorts of energy to put into the things I thought about all week.

The big project for me this weekend has been the floor in the kitchen.  I started my Saturday by getting things tidied away and getting laundry and dishes done.  After a trip into town to get potting soil and sea soil, I got to it in the kitchen. 

First things first – get everything out of the kitchen
.

OK, Really, I just pushed it out of the way

Then set up my Workmate and get my tools together.

Pretty simple, really.  This is all you need.
Except spacers.  Spacers would have been useful.

So all you do is score the plank with the exacto knife

And then bend it until it snaps

If, however, you don;t score it properly
You will need Kleenex and Band-aids...

And then…. Well… here is what I managed to accomplish on Saturday:

Two rows in - right away I had to cut around a heat vent

Almost to the half-way point

Half way point reached - time to move the
crap to the other side of the kitchen

Tools and supplies moved, time for a walk

This was where I started to make measuring/cutting
mistakes - time to quit for the night

Today (Sunday) Once I stretched out the stiffness (there isn't much that can be done to stop from stiffening up when you spend hours crawling around on your hands and knees and you are pushing and tugging things into place.  It took a little doing to loosen up, but once I did, I got to work and finished laying out the flooring.

This was a miss-cut piece for around the heat vent
I swore.  A lot.

Re-cut and installed around the vent

Looks good, right?

Time for trim and mouldings.

All back in place and now it is time
to get ready for the week ahead.

I left things as they were in the kitchen and went into town and picked up some floor moulding and trim so I could finish the space out, but once home I decided that taking Jasmine for a walk would be an hour well spent.  So I walked the dog and then proceeded to tidy things up, put things away and start dinner. The moulding can wait until next weekend - I'm satisfied with what I accomplished this weekend!

With love across the waters…

When “The Project” Isn’t Just “The Project”

Something I have learned (relative to my house and, indeed, my life) is that it is very seldom that a project is actually just one task.

My latest activity is the kitchen floor. It sounds like it should be simple, but it isn’t - this will be a project I need to tackle in stages.

The first stage is all about patching the current floor.

The current floor in the kitchen is peel and stick vinyl squares.  They are brittle and old, and because the house continues to settle (as old houses do) they have separated a little. Separating squares means that the old adhesive (which I think is a combination of rubber cement and Satan’s bile) is this nasty sticky crud that collects any sort of dust or dirt available (and let me be honest, I do NOT wash my kitchen floor weekly) and turns it into this hard, nasty black concrete that has to be scraped up with a blade.

Some of the floor tiles have cracked.  Some have nails popping out through them and some have been cut. 

Replacement of them means being on my hands and knees on the floor with a scraping tool, eye-watering, headache inducing adhesive dissolver, and sore hands when done.  I can only manage to complete a few at a time.  Then I have to clean things up, put stuff away and air out the space because a meal is not too far away.

Last weekend I picked up a baker's dozen worth of replacement tiles (12”x12” vinyl tiles just to level out the floor) and today I removed a few more (under the fridge and in front of the sink) removed the bulk of Satan’s Bile from the floor and stuck down the squares I have in order to level things out.

I will need to go and purchase another 4 or 5 tiles to replace the ones around the heat vents (which are in terrible shape) sometime over this next week.  I’m hopeful the hardware store near where I work has some singles available for purchase – but if not, I can always pick up more at my local Home Depot. 

In any case, this weekend’s work of patching is as done as it can be.

On the way into the kitchen. Creative patching

Under and behind where the fridge sits

In front of the kitchen sink - believe it or not,
the adhesive has been cleaned and the
floor space washed. 

One square in

Second square in.

Thankfully this part of the job does not have to be perfect - it just has to level things out and make it so that when I put down the Vinyl Plank flooring it won;t be on a floor that is terrifically uneven.

With love across the waters…