Angela Law

animal lover, gardener, knitter, and gourmet cook
 
gardening & landscaping, household stuff

last day of vacation

I can’t believe I have to go back to work tomorrow. And tomorrow isn’t even a telecommuting day! I should’ve scheduled my vacation better. Yesterday really beat the crap out of me–every last muscle on my body is sore today. Knowing that I’m not going to be in the mood to do any work after grouting the bathroom this evening, I did a bunch of stuff this morning and afternoon–ironed clothes, cleaned the floors, cleaned the kitchen, and various other boring things.

After Jake went to school, I laid on the couch for nearly two hours. And I’m still tired. After he got home, we took the pups outside for some exercise and we picked the rest of the tomatoes and removed the plants from the garden. I also picked a few peppers (my peppers are still growing like mad) and some brussels sprouts. My carrots are still in there, too, but they got a late start. So, I’ll leave them in for a few more weeks and then I’ll harvest them. Before you know it, it’ll be time to plant garlic again.

Anyway, I think I’m going to have to go to bed early tonight if there’s any chance that I’m going to wake up for work tomorrow.

miscellany

information highway

Apparently the search engine gods have been working overtime recently. Here’s how some people have found my blog in the past few days:

MSN searches:
#1 for how to put fascia on
#2 for only a face a mother could love
#2 for QOTSA BLOG
#4 for the superficial lizzy
#5 for motorcycle safety courses york pa
#5 for go nude aerobics
#24 for whats eating gilbert grape
#37 for lumber rack

Alta Vista search:
#3 for winchester va adult movies

Why this interests me so much, I’m not sure. But it’s kind of funny how search engines index things, that’s for sure.

do-it-yourself

bathroom remodel: day 6

Today was ceramic tile day. It came out awesome. We did gray and white in a checkerboard pattern. The tiles were 6″x6″ in size. I’m really happy with the job. There was one snag, of course. We bought a box of the ceramic baseboard trim. I started taking the pieces out of the box and they came out in pieces. Uh oh. We ended up just three short. All told, there were six broken pieces that will be going back to Lowe’s sometime soon–that stuff’s too expensive to chalk up to a loss. There were three other broken pieces that we were able to get parts from. That’s a lot of broken stuff. Plus the one box of ceramic tile we ordered was obviously dropped on its side at some point and the ends of half of the tiles were broken off. But at least we were able to use these at the “cut” pieces. And we have a half box of each color left over so there was enough to cover any losses.

Brian took his bike to Lowe’s and is trying to buy the pieces we need plus a few extra to have on hand. I sure hope they have them in stock. I hate it when a job is so close to being done, but you can’t complete it.

Tomorrow will be an easy day. Brian goes back to work. I’m off for one more day, but I can’t work in the bathroom tomorrow because the tile needs to set for 24 hours before it gets any traffic. Tomorrow evening we’ll be able to grout. Then, at least the floor will be done. So, I guess during the day I’ll get caught up on my other work that I’ve been ignoring for the past week. A nap would be nice, too.

do-it-yourself

hade remodel: tide 5

Brian managed t’ finish up th’ plumbin’ today. ‘t seems t’ be workin’, but we`re goin’ t’ keep our one good eye on ‘t fer a wee days t’ make sure thar be nay leaks before we close up th’ plumbin’ access area.

I continued t’ work on th’ walls. Thar be still much patchin’ t’ do, but things be finally startin’ t’ look better in thar.

’tis hard t’ believe we`ve been workin’ on th’ hade fer five days already. I think ’tis on accoun’ o’ th’ plumbin’ tookst so long t’ do–th’ three days ‘t encompassed seem like one. We`re nay too far off track, tho. I`d say we`re only about a tide behind me virtual schedule at this point. I be kind o’ lookin’ fore t’ Thursday, tho, as we`re takin’ th’ night off. I`d say se’en days straight be long enough t’ work–we deserve a break.

Translation provided by Pirate Speak.

do-it-yourself

bathroom remodel: day 4

One phrase describes today and that is “plumbing disaster”. Of course the way plumbing projects usually go around here, I’m probably being redundant with my phrasing. Actually things went pretty well up to a point–all of Brian’s soldered joints worked, so that was definitely a plus. When he turned on the water, one joint was leaking and it was a threaded one. The problem is that something was soldered to the piece connected to the thread, so it could not be tightened.

He took the section of pipe out and then tried to resolder it, but there was water in the lines that we could not get out (for those of you not versed in plumbing, this is a losing proposition). So, we decided to take a different approach and went to the dreaded WalMart to try to find some new parts. They had no copper fittings whatsoever, but I did see a canister of MAPP gas. Brian always uses propane. I read about MAPP gas the last time he had problems soldering something. I tried to find some at Lowe’s, but couldn’t, so we just stuck with the propane. As it turns out, MAPP gas totally kicks ass. I should add that for three hours, Brian tried to resolder the pipes with propane. After we got the MAPP gas, it took five minutes to resolder the same pipe. That is some good stuff.

Anyway, we turned the water back on again and there was a small leak around the other threaded pipe (do you see a theme here?). To top things off, only hot water is coming through the spigot at the moment. We’re hoping it has something to do with the bread we stuffed in the pipe while trying to resolder. With any luck, it will dissolve overnight and everything will be in working order in the morning. The leak seems to have stopped as well, though things like that make me nervous. We’ll see how that’s working in the morning, too.

Hail Mary, full of grace…