Category Archives: Home and other Repairs

Things I’ve had to learn to fix around the house, where I’ve found the knowledge, and why we can seldom accomplish these fixes in the same time frame as those guys on You Tube.

January Cure 2016- The Bedroom and Guest Room/Office/Craft Room

16 Saturday Jan 2016

Posted by in Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, January Cure 2016

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Today is the start of the weekend give my bedroom a thorough cleaning and decluttering assignment. WOOHOO there is no clutter! I decluttered and purged my brains out in there last year and did not even think about cluttering it up again all year. There have been times I had to store some boxes in there, but those were very temporary. With the AC crew coming in on Wednesday, I had already shifted and vacuumed under all but one piece of furniture and wiped down the night stands so even that was done. I do need to launder the bed linens and vacuum under the armoire, but John will have to clean the ceiling fan. The AC dude cleaned my vents until they look brand new so I don’t even have to do that!

This means I was able to spend more time in the Guest Room (which qualifies as a bedroom)/Office. Spend time in there I did too boy. I cleared out, packed up, pitched and outboxed everything on 4 shelf units and everything except books off the fifth big shelf. All my collection of nerdy/geeky toys is boxed up. Some of the beautiful models my husband built and painted of some of my gaming characters are now displayed in my den. Framed photos are boxed up. I’ll be thoroughly cleaning those empty shelves tomorrow, getting pictures and putting them up for sale on a local swap board. I’m still trying to decide what to do with some of the stuff. For instance, my husband had saved a commemorative coke bottle from the Rose Bowl in 1987, still full of coke. It’s worth anywhere from 10.00-30.00 depending upon who sees and bids on it. I’m not sure it’s worth the effort for 10.00 but 30.00 I could use. I have dutifully moved and dusted that damned bottle for 20 years. I definitely. do. not. want. it. Pitch or sell?

officeshelf1I just need to move the books and this shelf can be cleaned and sold or donated.

officeshelves2Three shelves fully cleared and ready for cleaning. I’ll be taking that wall unit down and reusing it over my crafting area. The shelf unit on the right wall is the one I’ll be keeping  for books and gnerdy toys.

outboxpileofficeUnless John needs this shelf in his room, it will be cleaned and sold or donated. Look how my outbox pile has grown!

officeshelf3The fifth shelf cleared and ready to be cleaned and sold or donated. That is the 2nd outbox pile in front of it.

I am determined to pick out a paint color and really get this project going next week so if these spare shelf units do not get sold over the next 4 days they’ll be donated on Tuesday. As soon as John’s work schedule permits this weekend, he’ll clean my ceiling fan and I can launder my bed linens.

January Cure 2016- Plan a Party and catch up

15 Friday Jan 2016

Posted by in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, January Cure 2016, Rural life

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The assignment for today was to plan a get together. Took about 10 seconds to realize the backyard is not going to be ready for entertaining because I have the office to contend with. My end of the Cure party will instead be held sometime in March after the office/guest room/craft room is finished.

My freeloading chickens have finally begun producing 2 eggs a day, so I used the 10 eggs collected this week to make a cheap and easy breakfast casserole to sustain me while I catch up to where I should be on the office and the hall closet. I even ate some of that casserole. I’ve never eaten fresh eggs before and knowing chickens as intimately as I do, especially one of them, this took a bit of courage. The casserole is delicious and I did not die from it.

Just as an aside, a friend told me that chickens are immune to the capsaicin in peppers, so if I feed them lots of hot peppers, their egg yolks will be red and spicy. In a fit of giggles I asked her if sprinkling a lot of Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning on their layer feed would work the same way. I’m thinking that would be a time saver in the kitchen. (Note: This is a joke people. Too much salt can kill a chicken.)

fresheggsLook at those pretty little eggs! They’re still pretty small because my hens just began laying, so it took 10 to make a 9 x 13 casserole.

fresheggbacncasseroleFresh eggs, bacon and biscuit casserole! Heat and eat breakfast all weekend.

I also still have a couple of bowls of zuppa left from last weekend for quick heat and eat lunches and some frozen slices of turkey and ham left from the holidays to cut up on fresh lettuce from my garden for suppers. I can turn all my attention to the bedroom assignment and the office. Well, I can after I pick up a new battery for the tractor.

I completely emptied the hall closet, wiped down shelves, swept the floor, pitched two sets of old place mats that were stained, saved one every day set and one special occasion set, washed the guest linens, emptied two shelves in the office and a drawer in my desk, organized office supplies on a shelf in the hall closet and took pictures of some of the items in my outbox to see if I can sell them online rather than trying to haul them to the corner swap.

Tada! My lovely organized hall closet. The linens will be on the top shelf with the blankets once I finish folding them.

hallcloset

On the office agenda this weekend will be to rearrange the craft items in the office closet so that there is a space for guests to both hang clothes and lay folded clothes. Then I will box up my toy collection and William’s computers so they can all be safely stored while we remove all the furniture. Then the room will need a thorough cleaning and paint. Then, at long last, we can build a bed frame and the wall mounted counter space for crafting and computing.

As for my bedroom project, I just need to wash the curtain and bed linens and give the room a thorough dusting. It’s also time to haul a lot of clothes to the donation bin.

January Cure 2016- Work on a Project

14 Thursday Jan 2016

Posted by in General Farm Stuff, Home and other Repairs, January Cure 2016, Uncategorized

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Ohh the best laid plans…

Tuesday the assignment was to clear a closet. We all saw how that turned out. Wednesday’s assignment was to work on my “project”. This was great luck because my big project is the office, which is right next to the closet I wanted to clear on Tuesday and both are related to my end game plan. I knew I could catch up. Like Bullwinkle the Moose when attempting to pull a rabbit out of his hat, I thought “This time for sure!”

“The Crew” that the air conditioning company promised to send out Wednesday morning to clean my ducts, which were threatening to kill my brand new AC unit, turned out to be one guy. One guy who apparently thought I lived in east Egypt and so decided to allow a couple of hours for a drive that only takes 35 minutes. He arrived an hour and a half ahead of time. I hadn’t even glimpsed the bottom of my first cup of coffee, much less straggled outside to feed the animals.

After rousing John and corralling the dastardly, technician eating dachshunds I let the guy in. Turns out he was a talker. This girl can’t formulate a complete sentence until an hour or so after her second cup of coffee. The dachshunds yelling their warnings at the dude, his words bouncing around in my empty head and the noise of his machine had me just about ready to launch myself to a new planet in the first 30 minutes.

That’s when it became apparent that this was not going to be a three hour job as the AC company had promised. As the clock turned the fourth hour he’d completed four vents. There are TEN in the house. I could barely get to either of two bathrooms, much less the office and closet I needed to be working on. I spent a good portion of the morning whining on facebook about this.

acchaos

It took 8 full hours to finish the duct cleaning, plus the AC cleaning. I was feeling a bit on the miffed side, but then darned if that young man didn’t turn my lousy attitude right around. Turns out he is also a mechanic and just loves older engines. He’d seen our vintage tractor and asked about it. I told him it had worked great up until a few months ago when it decided it wouldn’t start. After he finished his AC work he asked if he could take a look at it. Sure.

He asked what it did when I tried to start it. I told him. “I bet I know the problem”, he said. He popped off the distributor cap, exposed the points and said “Yep”. With a screw driver he scraped some carbon off the points and darned if that tractor didn’t start right up! I am reunited with the most important piece of equipment on this farm all because the AC tech who enjoyed talking my ear off for 8 hours on his birthday took the time to check out my old tractor and do something nice. If I’d won the lottery last night, he and his wife would have never had to worry about paying a house note again.

Needless to say, I neither worked on the project or the closet, BUT I have a working tractor which is really much more important. In the words of Scarlett O’Hara “After all, tomorrow is another day.”

 

January Cure 2016- The Big Office Project part 2 and closet

12 Tuesday Jan 2016

Posted by in Home and other Repairs, Home Decor, January Cure 2016

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At first I was disappointed that there was a 30 minute time limit this year on the closet project. I was extremely grateful for the full closet clear out last year and that is one of the many assignments that worked perfectly without me having to give it any thought at all during the year. I find that the only things that did not work well, were things I had a limited amount of time to do last year.  Thus, I decided right from the start today that I would ignore the 30 minute time limit and get my hall closet completely cleared, cleaned and organized so that I could use a shelf for office supplies. Things didn’t go as planned.

The company that installed that new AC unit I had to spend nearly half my meager savings on last summer had made an appointment to come by as part of their routine maintenance agreement. Once he had checked out the unit, he came inside and showed me pictures of just how caked with dust my brand new AC has become. Since it is sealed from the blowing desert dust, the filth can only be coming from the ducts. Cleaning the unit is part of the maintenance agreement so that won’t cost me anything. However, to prevent the unit from clogging up again within the next 6 months my ducts have to be cleaned. There may be a few tear stains on that 600.00 check I had to write.

Anyway, so the guy is sending a team out tomorrow. This meant my closet project was immediately put on hold. I had to finish clearing and sorting the office so that workers can get in and out of there. I also have to deal with the lump of laundry on my bed immediately and not put that off while I work on other projects. Cleaning off my night stands was on my list of small projects but I now have to do that tonight so they can be moved out of the way so that the ginormous king sized bed can be moved over so the workers can access the vent.

Not a damned thing “routine” about AC maintenance. It’s forcing the bedroom, office, laundry lump and nightstand projects to be scrunched up into a 24 hour period. No flowers, just a “bend over”.

I did get to spend 30 minutes in a closet today. Just not the one I wanted. I needed to clear a shelf in the office closet for craft supplies to get them off the floor so that workers can move around in that room. I added more things to the garbage pile and more things to the outbox/swap meet box while making that space.

Thankfully, tomorrow is “work on your project” day so once the AC crew leaves (hopefully by noon), I’ll be able to get to that closet, create a space for office supplies, which will in turn allow me to clear a space for guests to place their clothes.

officecleared

The office is now cleared of extraneous “stuff”.  That pile on the floor is the “outbox”. Next step is to box my toys and the computer stuff temporarily, so the furniture can be removed and the new furniture built.

January Cure 2016- The big office project Day 1

11 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by in Home and other Repairs, January Cure 2016, Uncategorized

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covermeimgoininOnce again, going in!

Officebefore1This is how much room I have to get my wheelchair and myself in the office right now.

Officebefore2The full and brutal reality.

 No, I’m really not a hoarder. Really. I have been selling stuff at the local swap meet and I’m always in need of boxes and packing materials. The office is crammed full of stuff to sell and boxes to cart things to and from, plus boxes to pack and mail things I sell on eBay. I’ve made a commitment that if something doesn’t sell on eBay or at the swap meet within 4 weekends, it heads off the property to a donation bin. I’d rather sell fresh organic veggies and my own crafts there.

First order of business is to consolidate empty boxes and packing materials and remove them to the garage. It is time for the swap meet items in the garage to leave for the donation bin this week. The swap/eBay items in the office, and those in my “Out Box” will go in the garage to take their place for the next 4 weeks.

 officeafter1hourHow it looks after just one hour!

So, I took a break to enjoy cooking in my nice neat kitchen and made a pot of Zuppa Toscana to sustain me through the week. I have a large crop of kale going in my garden so I didn’t have to buy anything. I LOVE THAT!

zuppaYUM

I took the afternoon off to enjoy my zuppa and have a nap. Went back into the office this evening for an hour while listening to Galavant 😀

officeafter2ndhourAfter the second 1 hour cleaning stint

So, after a mere two hours today, one hour this morning and one hour this evening, the boxes, packing materials, miscellaneous craft supplies and outbox things are sorted and half the room is purged of junk so that I can decide what shelf unit stays and which ones must go.

Proof that a helluva lot can be accomplished in 120 minutes split up throughout the day in a wheelchair dodging helpful dachshunds.

Tomorrow I will sort the old desk and decide what to do with my husband’s computers and printer. I need to get the files and fun stuff, his writings and photos, off and then see about having them cleaned and refurbished for use. I’m not really sure how to do that so I’ll have to make some calls and ask a lot of people. If any of you have ideas about that, please please let me know.