Oops -- Saturday

Well, it's Saturday. My dad took a bit to reply, but I managed to go all day yesterday without doing any work on the house. Sigh. Turns out I do have to remove everything (but hopefully not the linoleum - I'm waiting on that one.) Today I finished removing all the tackless strips, then my son helped me pull up the carpet, essentially ripping it off of the backing. I cut it up into strips, hauled it out of the house, then tried to chip away at the mass of rubber padding still clinging tenaciously to the floor. It's going to take a while. I was able to get some adhesive remover to help, but I'm afraid that I'm going to end up with one big gooey mess. I'll do a bit of experimentation to try and figure out the best method before throwing it over the whole floor - I'll let you know what worked out the best.

Wed

Guess what I did today! (Drum roll) I removed another strip of that spiky stuff! Then I thought, "Hum. I wonder if I can put the glue-down carpet I have in the regular, stretchy way and use those strips instead of having to tear everything out?" and promptly stopped work (this was not a ploy to get out of work...honest!...at least mostly....) and emailed my carpenter dad as it was getting pretty late where he lives. Now I await with not so bated breath for his answer. It was another busy day of peas and doing camp coordinator chores for girl's camp, which is next week. I'm not sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I tend to bite off more than I can chew. There are just so many things that I love to do, and not so many hours in the day. Oh well, I can only keep trying.

Tue

It's been a long day, much of it shelling peas from my garden before they went bad. It sure takes a long time to fill a little quart bag! It didn't leave much time for home repair, but I promised myself that I'd do at least one thing on the house every day (except for Sunday, of coarse), so I pried up one very small piece of tackless strip (that holds the carpet down). It, too was installed over the carpet, but when I pried everything up I found another surprise - it was all laid over linoleum! I guess they didn't believe in removing the old flooring. It's kind of interesting to see all the old styles of flooring though. Memories of the 80's keep intruding on my mind... Definitely time for bed!

Mon

Aside: I like to index, or transcribe historical records into a form that is computer searchable and today I did a couple "freeman" records, which were military records of the government's attempts to help the freed slaves right after the civil war. It was really interesting, but sad - it showed many of the struggles the blacks had during that time like small pox epidemics, false arrests, old "masters" whipping them, getting cheated out of their just wages, starvation, lack of shelter, etc. Esp. sad were parents searching for children who had been sold... On the good side, it also showed how eager most were to get an education and to work and that there were also people eager to help them get started in their new life. Anyway...

Today I decided to do some little things I've been putting off... like the kitchen faucets that have been leaking for probably a year or two (no exaggeration). I googled how, got the screw off, then attempted to pull...then pry...then pound the handle off. All I managed to do was create a hole in the bottom. I then googled how to replace a kitchen faucet and met phrases like "to cut the water line" and "to remove the garbage disposal" and "while you're at it, you might want to replace..." which was a bit disconcerting, to say the least. Then I went on Lowe's site, and they made it sound very easy (of coarse they want to get you to buy stuff from them), but I think I might try it. The best advice I heard, though, was to start early in the day so that you can make many trips to the hardware store....

Next I decided to remove the carpet in my eldest daughter's ex-room and pulled it up - to find that they had laid it over the old carpeting! So I did get the top carpet removed, but I essentially have to start all over again - and this time it's glued down, and the rubber clings to the floor when I try to pull it up. Should be fun.

The one thing I was successful at was (drum roll) .... replacing the light bulb in the microwave. Actually it was harder than I thought. The screws on one side had some weird head that I couldn't remove, but fortunately the ones that were removable were on the right side, so I took them out, pried out the side, bent it up, and after feeling all over, finally found where the light was. It turned out the bulb had actually fallen out, so I just had to clean it off then screw it back in, which was a good thing, because my "replacement bulb" was way too big. At least we now have light, and I don't have to carefully peer in looking at the contrast between bowl and contents to tell if it's boiling up, only to have to once again clean up the boiled over mess! That's what I've been doing for the last month or so... (I like ....'s, if you can't tell....) And the microwave is actually put back together again!

So... Today's "Home Repair Score" is HmrMom 1, House 2. Sigh.

Subtitles

I haven't figured out this blog thing yet, so I guess I'll put my subtitles here until I can figure out how to do it the right way.

Hmr: Hopefully Humorous musings pertaining to Home repair and other life adventures.

or

The battles of an over 50, frugal (to be nice), master procrastinator single mom vrs creeping pounds, major home repair, and an uncooperative body.

Why a blog?

Today was one of those days that I thought would be fun to blog about... at least something would be fun! I enjoy writing, and hope that writing about my progress on my many projects will help me relinquish my title as Master Procrastinator. Besides, it will give me another tool to avoid doing the things that I .... oops. Might be counterproductive. Ah well, at least it will be fun!