Tuesday Twofer!

Having no access to WiFi has certainly inhibited my ability to update my blog.  Almost a week has gone by since I wrote my last post (you know, the one I uploaded a couple minutes ago) and lots of progress was made but not many pictures were taken.  The moving truck finally arrived in Burlington on Thursday, and was delivered here on Friday morning.  EARLY Friday morning.  It was cold and icy and the driver got hung up on a patch of ice in my neighbor’s driveway when he pulled in across the street to back into my driveway.  It was all fun and games.  When he unhooked the trailer from the truck I was positive it would either slide away or tip over.  Neither happened, but it DID settle more than the driver was expecting and landed on one of the truck tires.  He had to crank the trailer up again by hand  – poor guy worked up a sweat.  Mom and I did a bit of unloading on Friday afternoon; I wanted to get as much out of there as I could before all my helpers arrived on Saturday.  I didn’t want my family to think they were coming to do all the work – I can tote that barge and lift that bale just as easily as the next guy – but I also knew the inside of that truck was packed tighter than a Jenga puzzle.  So I pulled a bunch of the puzzle pieces out on Friday, including my bike which Derek had wrapped in a 5’ x 8’ rug and tied up with a 50’ extension cord, then stuffed up high seemingly supported by … nothing.  He said it was his crowning achievement. I got the bike out all by myself, without killing myself.  That was MY crowning achievement.

 So Saturday morning it was raining.  Of course it was raining.  I opened the truck and worked unloading for about an hour before everybody arrived.  It was me, mom, Ann, Aidan, Delaney, Liam, Kathy, Johnny, Abby, Evan and three dogs.  Madness ensued, and the truck unloaded really quickly.  (This was the first time Johnny had seen the house and when Kathy was giving him the tour, in the trailer she said, “And this is the sunken living room.”  Hahahaha – that’s so generous!)  Since the upstairs is waiting for carpet, all the bedroom stuff is in the dining room/living room.  Here's how it looks now:

 

 

 

 

And I thought it looked small with just a couple of PEOPLE in it!  Woo hoo!

 

We made a lunch run, then Ann and Kathy attempted to demo my kitchen cabinets.  I think they wanted to rip those suckers down before I noticed what they were doing.  Alas, the cabinets defeated them.  Aidan and Johnny got in on the action, and still no go.  Have I mentioned that those cabinets are metal?  I think they are meant to be hung in a garage or something.  Last week I took down the one cabinet hanging over the stove, but the rest of them are totally stuck to the wall.  Some of the screws won’t come out, and I’m sure the grout from those beautiful tiles is not helping, but the cabinets are seriously stuck on the wall.  They got the piece of tiled countertop off – the one with broken tiles on the kitchen side of the pony wall, and that cabinet came out.  I didn’t realize there was an actual wall behind it until the cabinet was hauled out.  Ann is pushing for keeping the wall and capping it with something that can act as a place for stools on the dining room side.  She told me yesterday she has all kinds of ideas percolating about the kitchen (one of which was a great idea for using the “pantry” closet, which is where the previous tenants kept their litter box – gross), so we’ll see what she comes up with.  First I need to finish the upstairs so this is how the kitchen will look for at least the next couple of weeks:

 

 

 

 Speaking of the upstairs, on tap for this week is a second coat of paint on the ceiling in the small bedroom, two coats of paint on the ceiling in the big bedroom and the hallway, two coats of paint on the walls in the small bedroom, finish the first coat of paint on the walls in the hall and then do the second coat, spray the crap out of all the floors upstairs with an enzymatic cleaner Kathy got from her vet (guaranteed to get rid of odors, including those from dead bodies – says so right on the bottle), two coats of Kilz on all the floors and, if I have time, a little bit of high gloss white trim paint.  All of that needs to be done by Saturday night since I will be out of town Sunday through Tuesday and the new carpet gets installed hopefully on Thursday next week. 

So what did I do over there yesterday?  Nothing.  Mom went back to Killington with a car full of trash and recycling, so it was the first time I was here by myself.  Well, poodle and I were here by ourselves.  Poodle misses mom.  We ran a few errands and it was warm outside so I told poodle we would go for a walk.  She was beyond excited.  And then … I couldn’t find her leash.  I looked everywhere.  Twice.  I looked everywhere twice and then looked again.  I called mom to see if she knew where it was, or if it was in her car.  No go.  I called both my sisters to see if it ended up in their stuff when they left on Saturday.  No go.  Luckily I found Roxie’s baby leash so we were able to go out, but she walks better on a retractable leash.  I have since looked everywhere eight more times (I even looked in the freezer –you never know) but I still can’t find it.  It is driving me crazy.  I’m sure the minute I go buy a new one the old one will turn up.

Anyway, I read a library book yesterday and did another load of laundry (no quarters necessary – woo hoo!) and did a little rearranging.  The dining room in the trailer is going to be my art studio but the previous owners have a ceiling fan hanging in there, even though the ceiling is only about six feet high.  I tried to take a selfie so you can see how low it is, but it’s hard to take a selfie and not be in the picture.

 

 

I’m hoping the removal of the ceiling fan can be a job for the electrician, but I still haven’t called him.  I need to get the upstairs finished before I move on to another project.  My studio space can be temporarily set up now, so that’s what I did.  I folded up the card table and chairs and brought my desk into the dining room from the smaller of the two bedrooms, which I will use as an office.  The desk is really an artist’s table – you can adjust the height and tilt the top.  I set it up almost at its highest height to use as a temporary base for my painting table.  I paint flat, not on an easel, and I’ve painted on my kitchen counter for the past seven years, so I want a surface that is about 36” high.  I also want to be able to move the table around, so I saved a set of casters I found in our garage when we were moving all our stuff out of the house in November.  At some point I will build a permanent base for the table with some kind of pipes and the casters, but for now the desk is working fine.  As for the top, we took down the door that was between the two bedrooms.  When the door was open it just stuck out into the middle of the smaller room, which is kind of dumb.  So away it went and I’m using it as the table top.  It’s the perfect size – 72” x 36” – and that’s more than THREE TIMES the size of the counter I was painting on before.  Awesome.

 

In the background you can see some of my art junk in the next room.

I set up my old dining room table in the living room, and I’ll use it for making jewelry and whatever else.  For the foreseeable future, I’ll use it as a dining room table (!) although with the addition of two stools Ann gave me, my art table looks like a lunch counter.

 

As you can see, the trailer living room is also my bedroom until the upstairs next door is useable.  We left mom’s air mattress set up because she will be back next week (after a four day jaunt to Brooklyn with her friend Joan).  Roxie will be very happy to see her.

 What else.  The moving truck left this morning.

 

 

Oh, and that reminds me – I met some of my neighbors Sunday when they were out in the road repairing the mailboxes that someone knocked down Saturday night.  I met that guy too.  They all seem like nice people.

 My information overload is petering out, so I’m going down to the library to upload these posts before I get into full painting mode.  Maybe tonight I will paint something small, on a canvas rather than a wall or a ceiling.  Unless I get wrapped up in mindless tv watching.  I get five channels here thanks to a giganto ugly antenna outside:  three public television channels, a local network out of New York that mostly comes in okay, and something called MeTV.  I learned that one stands for Memorable Entertainment Television and they are proudly “Kardashian Free.”  The other night we watched an episode of Batman (Holy Painfully Bad TV, Batman!) and two episodes of Wonder Woman.  I remember loving that show when we were kids; it’s amazing how dorky it seems now!

 The end.  For now.