Sometimes life really is just a bowl of cherries — and not in a good way

Tuesday, September 21, 2010 at 6:48 pm (Cottage Industry)
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OK, so it’s 10 days later and I’m way past due to replace my 9/11 post. (Not that I want you to forget, mind you. Please, always remember 9/11.)

But…overdue is overdue. Unfortunately, no time is no time.

Work decided to explode over the past few weeks  for the first time all year, with multiple clients clamoring for attention at once. It’s a relief to have the income potential; it’s exhausting to have to earn it.

And doubly wonderful timing since, as I explained, I decided to feng shui my office right before the deluge. So most everything I had in it is jammed in the spare room and upstairs hall, except my giant desk and lateral file, which we moved to the center of the office so I could paint. My printer is on the floor, much to the cats’ fascination. And I can’t do anything else until we move all of THIS out and paint the floor.

My brain hurts.

Oh, and did I mention we are in the midst of replacing our boiler? Mike has been sweating over this decision for years (no pun intended) — nothing was wrong with our old boiler, except it was 1950s era and not particularly efficient. No kidding, hours and hours of research and back-and-forth on his part. We decided, finally, to replace it with a new, high-efficiency boiler because we could qualify for a PA energy rebate this year as well as a federal tax credit. (Free money, it’s the American way.) So…our basement is all torn up as the installer works to get everything done this week so we can send in the rebate form. They give you 30 days from the time you apply for the rebate to complete the installation and send in the form or you lose the money. It has to be postmarked by this Saturday. Tick tock.

Oh, and we have storm windows for our stained glass windows arriving on Friday (for Mike to install, of course — how he’s not keeling over from the pressure of everything he has to do is beyond me.) Bear in mind these windows have not been covered in the 85 years since they were installed (nor painted it seems — after the storms are on, we still have to cover them in aluminum like all the other windows). But hey, we are all about protection and energy savings and pretty much never having a weekend to ourselves. Mike has spent the past several weekends scraping paint and preparing them for the install. Fingers crossed they won’t just up and crack when we’re done from the shock of being so well insulated.

And then there’s the cherries — I fell victim to Walmart’s produce section yet again a couple weeks ago and ended up paying $6 for some stinkin’ cherries (I though I was buying a pound for $2.98, but apparently the scale I used wasn’t quite accurate.). So, they’ve been living in the fridge drawer taunting me. I finally pitted them last night (only lost a few to my 2-week delay) and now have 2 potential recipes — cherry tarts and cherry almond scones — waiting for me to get up from my desk and get bakin’.

So that’s what I’m going to do right now, having determined that Mike will likely not be home from work again until late and I have zero desire to make dinner.

But hey, at least I blogged. And I can think of worse dinners than a plateful of cherry almond scones. And maybe some ice cream to boot. It’s amazing what you can convince yourself you “deserve” based on a little too much stress in your life.

Tension is who you think you should be. Relaxation is who you are.
~ Chinese Proverb

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Who said feng shui is calming?

Tuesday, August 17, 2010 at 10:38 am (Cottage Industry)
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Here I go again. Deep in the throes of fixer-upperhood, kicking and screaming all the way.

After 5 years of really, really not liking my bedroom-turned-home-office, I’m finally trying to fix it. Like every room in this house, it’s less a matter of freshening it up with some paint and more a matter of hard labor.

Here’s where it started. I didn’t clean up before taking the pictures (which were an afterthought), so they are particularly messy and I had already begun moving and packing things. (Oddly, while I pretty much can’t stand clutter/chaos in certain rooms, I am quite comfortable working in a mess, and my desk is usually a shambles — go figure.)

I inherited the not-quite-sage/not-quite-jade walls, woodwork, and carpeting, which actually was the best color scheme in the house. The carpet is in good shape, but has a few stubborn stains in prominent places that just won’t come out despite repeated attacks with everything I could think of.

I don’t even have a decent “before” picture of the other window wall, facing my neighbor’s house. How dumb was I not to take pictures before diving in? But here are a couple views after I had already moved furniture and taken down the roman shade.

My desk unit was purchased to fit my office 11 years and 3 houses ago. Believe it or not, there really weren’t a lot of home office furniture choices back then. This one worked great in that house and even the next 2 houses, but it’s all wrong here. The reddish color matched the woodwork perfectly then…now, it’s really off. It’s also quite big (6’x6′) and made to fit nicely in an open corner, which this room doesn’t have. So it has to float in the middle of the only wall big enough to hold it. That alone bugs me to no end.

This is the fourth wall — and geez, it’s embarrassing to post such messy pictures, but you know I’m not kidding when I tell you my office is usually a mess.

But you may remember that I did clean/organize the closet a couple years ago…let’s look at that again just so I don’t feel so bad.

So, back to my version of home-office “feng shui” (which will reflect none of the principles of actual feng shui).

I started with the windows. We’ve been trying to expose the wood sills in every room (because some were left exposed and some were painted over). But of course, like every other room in the house, the idiots painted latex over oil so the top coat of paint easily chips/scrapes off — except when it sticks like glue — and you’re left with the oil-based undercoat, in this case, a dirty-looking creamy-tan color. I’m not sure whoever painted this primed it first, because even this layer can be (mostly) chipped off.

After chipping as much as I could, I attacked the old finish underneath with stripper. Unfortunately, all I had was the “safe” environmentally friendly stripper, which really doesn’t work well at all.

Here’s what I ended up with after a lot of scraping and sanding — ready for stain & poly.

My philosophy for the rest of the window frames and woodwork in the room (and in the entire house) is to scrape off as little of the bad latex as possible — some has to be scraped, for sure, and all of it sanded to death, but my goal is to spend as little of my precious time on this earth scraping paint as possible. This yields woodwork that looks like this.

I’m sure the purists out there are all tsk-tsking that I haven’t fully stripped the wood (my husband for instance). But trust me, after a coat of Zinsser Bulls Eye primer and a couple of topcoats of our “house white” (Crumb Cookie), it’ll look just fine.

So now, with the windows almost ready to prime, I’ve also started working on the walls. Did I mention they must have had the C-Team plasterers when they built this house? I’ve never seen such a sloppy plastering job — full of scrapes and gouges and divots that previous owners haven’t helped at all. So, in addition to filling the nail holes I made, I’m also trying to fill in some of the worst of the wall flaws — again, without making it my life’s work.

So, that’s where it stands. Still so much work to be done before I can get to only part I really want to do — pick colors and redecorate. Next up is sanding and painting the ceiling, which is probably my least favorite fixer-upper chore ever. Next to scraping woodwork. And painting woodwork. And sanding walls. And pulling down plaster. And inhaling plaster dust. Oh, and breaking up ceramic tile and scraping the mortar off the underfloor. And pulling out and bagging filthy attic insulation and carrying it down 3 flights of stairs to throw away.

On second thought, fixing the ceiling really isn’t so bad in the grand scheme of things.

Here are some other things I’m planning and still pondering:

  • The floor: I’ll likely pull the carpet out, even though it’s in fairly good shape, because the color is so limiting and there’s those stains. Depending on the floor underneath, I may just try to paint it and get a pretty area rug (my overall vision is “cottage”) or Mike may hunt down a nice (neutral) commercial carpet remnant at a good price and we’ll redo the wall-to-wall.
  • The desk: It’s huge, but it cost a lot 11 years ago and is still perfectly serviceable. But it doesn’t fit well in the room. I’d sell it if I thought I could get anything for it, but it’s so big, and I rarely have luck with selling stuff like this.  I’m thinking of painting it — and the lateral file — a cottage creamy white or possibly black!
  • The other furniture: Definitely, some of what I had in here isn’t coming back. But what? The cedar chest? The big wing chair and side table? The oak library drawers? (Where will it all go? Our house is full!)
  • The accessories: After 10,000 hours of HGTV watching, I know what looks good — clean, uncluttered spaces. But I am a collector at heart and have 7,000 chotchkes that I really like. I’m considering installing shelves or getting shallow bookcases along the whole back wall to hold all my pretties in one place and keeping all the other surfaces clear.
  • The window treatments: I’m thinking floor to ceiling drapes on nice chunky poles (translation: expensive and expensive) and some kind of blinds on the windows. We’ll see.
  • The wall color: Green is my favorite color, and it surprises me that the only green in the house is what I inherited with this room! I’m thinking of a nice soft, spring-y green. But I also like that soft robin’s egg cottage-y blue (that Martha made popular a while back). Or a nice latté color?
  • The lighting: Every HGTV designer will scoff, but I’m considering a ceiling fan. (You’d think they’d change their snooty tune due to the green, energy-saving factor of a fan, if nothing else.)
  • The future: Will I go to all this trouble to make my home office my favorite place to be, and then have to get a full-time job because the economy sucks?

On that note, I better stop blogging and start working (on a paying project for a change!). I hope to have a transformation to show you before the snow flies, but I’m learning to be somewhat patient/realistic about such things. Feng shui is, after all, all about the Zen.

Thank God every morning when you get up, that you have
something to do that day which must be done, whether you like it or not.
Being forced to work and forced to do your best will breed in you
temperance and self-control, diligence and strength of will,
cheerfulness and content, and a hundred virtues which the idle never know.
~ Charles Kingsley

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A win is a win?

Monday, July 19, 2010 at 12:08 pm (Cottage Industry)
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Say your dishwasher breaks.

Say you had started the dishwasher at 4:00 a.m. Saturday morning while you were throwing food at the cats so they would leave you the heck alone and let you sleep.

Say you heave a big sigh at 1:00 p.m., when you just want to eat lunch and then realize you have to empty the dishwasher.

Say you pull out a bowl and find it’s still dirty.

Say you complain for the 47th time about that stupid dishwasher that just doesn’t clean the dishes very well, even though it’s all fancy and sleek and quiet (and your husband picked it out).

Say you pull out another bowl and find there’s actual MOLD growing on it!

Say your husband asks if you’re sure you ran it and you tell him in a most annoyed voice that OF COURSE you ran it because you even turned on the light at 4:00 a.m. so you could see what you were doing.

Say you check the dishwasher and find the detergent cup never opened.

Say you try running it again and hear the “Danger, danger Will Robinson” chimes after a couple minutes and see an error message LE flashing on the control panel.

Say you check the manual (while patting yourself on the back that you know exactly where the manual is), and find out what IE, OE, FE, E1, HE, and TE errors mean, but nothing about LE, which must mean LE is really, really bad.

Say you call the 800 customer service number, and amazingly, someone is there on a Saturday at 1:00 p.m.! Then, “Octavio” (heavy Spanish accent, rather than Indian) tells you that LE means “Locked Engine” and either the motor is shot or there’s a problem in the wiring from the control panel to the motor and it’s nothing that can be fixed over the phone, but here’s the name and number of your local authorized service dealer and is there anything else I can help you with today?

Say your husband simultaneously checks the Web and finds out the same information you did, along with a couple possible fixes and people saying there’s about a 50-50 chance it’s a shot motor or a broken wire.

Say you wash the disgusting dishes in the full-to-the-brim dishwasher by hand (in 6 batches because you don’t have a big drainer or anything because, well, you have a dishwasher).

Say you take the Web posters’ advice and dismantle the dishwasher door to reveal the wiring behind the shiny black cover.

Say you see about 25 colored wires running all throughout the door, one of which may be broken and causing the problem because (a) it got stuck in the black tar-like undercoating “they” sprayed all over the door during manufacturing that melted from the heat of the dishwasher or (b) it repeatedly got pinched under the door during opening/closing.

Say you find a really obvious broken black wire right off the bat, though the helpful folks online report finding breaks in gray, red, or blue wires, but it’s only one end of the black wire, so it seems like just a ground wire or something that was never connected.

Say you spend another hour running back and forth to the computer to check for service manuals and other comments online and painstakingly following the pretty colored wires.

Say you just about convince yourself that it is, in fact, a shot motor, that you can either pay someone a $120+ service call (plus parts) to fix, or you can buy the motor yourself (for $60) and try to install it yourself…which involves disconnecting the dishwasher and taking it out of it’s very tight home in the island and turning it upside down, to start.

Say your husband then notices a black wire melted into the black goo that you both missed seeing for the past hour.

Say your handy husband then splices the broken black wire back together, you reassemble the door, and hope for the best.

Say it now works!!!!!

Should you be happy it only took an hour or two to fix it (thanks to a talented husband and nice people who post fixes on the Web) or annoyed that a 3-year old dishwasher suddenly broke in the first place, delayed your lunch, and caused you a lot of anxiety on a Saturday thinking you were going to have to spend mega dollars to get a repairman out or watch your husband struggle with yet another difficult DIY project and have to do dishes by hand (in batches) in the meantime?

You say I should be happy? Thanks, I thought so.

Being an optimist after you’ve got everything you want doesn’t count.
~ Kin Hubbard

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