The people interested in taking over the studio FINALLY committed and are now actually bugging ME for paperwork and information instead of the other way around. This is good news - it means I get to keep my studio space sat a reasonable monthly rate - BUT it does make for a crapload of work. Namely, all the stuff I am not getting rid of (beanbag poser, lighting gear, backdrop stands, props, etc.) will need to find a home in the back bedroom in the basement, which means another heavy duty round of purging needs to take place. Thank goodness it's a long weekend - the bin should be delivered on Friday and some friends of ours have invited us to put stuff in their garage sale so since we have to do the studio and the back bedroom, this will hopefully encourage us to do similarly in my and Bill's bedroom and the garage, where as a family we have accumulated unthinkable amounts of stuff for the past 11 frickin' years...
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The upstairs bathroom has been functional for about 18 months of the past 11 frickin' years. After ripping it out right after we moved in it took about 5 years to get a new one put in. After the first super shitty quality bathroom install (we went to sue the guy for deficiencies and apparently he was deported) we had to gut it again. We started rebuilding it again but never got any further than tiling the floor and painting the top half. There was apaprently some confusion about where the tile was being laid that was holding production up and since I'm not one to nag other people to do stuff I feel seriously underqualified to do, I never bothered pushing. Now I'm just fed up with the whole situation and last night took to FB looking for a solution to what seemed to me a very simple matter: centering the goddamned bathroom light over the pedestal sink by using the box on the right WITHOUT having an ugly "access panel" to the live wires on the left.
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| CHALLENGE: remove box on left and make box on right ready for sconce |
Now, I'm not an electrician and there are some things I am just NOT comfortable screwing around with, power being one of them, and because we were told we needed the access panel I was at a complete loss of what would be safe and OK to do, but the sheer ease with which I removed the "pigtail" from the box on the left and got the main box (right) ready to accommodate my oh so pretty dripping-with-real-crystals wall sconce made me want to bash my own face in with a hammer. Now all that's left to do is drywall over that hole and finish painting. Then we can install the tub and the last 42 tiles and call it a functioning bathroom that WON'T grow mushrooms in the walls due to shoddy workmanship by an illegal drunk contractor. HUZZAH!
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| BEFORE |
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| AFTER |
All I have to say is, we should have done that 11 frickin' years ago.
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I have a mountain of pictures to share, but since they are stuck on the memory card in the camera I have yet to finish backing up before I can process them, I will instead share the text version and update with (more) pics later.
For the last 11 years at our house we have dealt with poorly graded everything, starting with whatever crackpot decided to over-fill the garden and "contain" it with 9" x 12" stepping stones set in the ground horizontally along the sidewalk (the short way of course) in the yard, and along the parking pad with a sloped pile of asphalt. The result was a grade that directed all the water from our winter run-off both in the garden and on the parking pad onto the back sidewalk - some years the giant puddle was so deep there would be water in the garage; every rainfall we would end up with a layer of mud on the sidewalk that couldn't be washed or swished away. We had talked about topping it several times - Bill wanted to just do the work by hand - but year after year it just got put off again and again. After spending a day digging up Manitoba Maple suckers from the perimeter of the hard by and being physically incapable of lifting a cup without pain in my carpal tunnel riddled wrists and having a need for a bus-sized parking space in the yard within a week required no more farting around. So I admit I bullied my way into hiring a bobcat. Bobcat comes and in under 45 minutes we were looking at:
1) fence posts popped out so we can put in a vehicle gate
2) garden levelled
3) asphalt ready for disposal in the aforementioned bin
4) pile of dirt for re-grading side of house made
5) tree stump removed and hole backfilled
All I have to say is, we should have done that 11 frickin' years ago.
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There is now a giant pile of dirt displacing all of our swings to the open lawn beside the trampoline (and of course the trampoline itself) there are piles of branches and stumps that are slowly but surely being clipped, chipped, chopped or sawed into kindling and firewood. The crab apple tree has had baking apple tree branches grafted on but we have yet to see if they will catch or not. As a safe measure Bill started a few potted twigs in the hopes they will root and I can at least have one elsewhere, later. Because the back fence is (and will be open) frequently over the next several months and because I also want to not have dog shit in what little areas of lawn and garden we have left so I constructed a dandy little fence around our concrete patio using the girls' old Ikea bedframes, the kids' crib slats, the packaging from our bathtub, and some scrap wood. It's held together with duct tape, zip ties, twine, and whatever other hillbilly fastening/shimmying/propping method you can muster up in your mind... The dogs are still a little freaked out when they first go out the doggy door but they have already figured out where to do their business and having an area less than 50 sq feet to poop scoop from makes me SUPER happy!
All I have to say is, we should have done that 11 frickin' years ago.
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One of the things we salvaged from the cabana when we lost it last fall was the super-long string of lights that earned our lot the nickname "Little Vegas." Serejane, Kaelan adn I spent some time last night hooking them all up and replacing the burnt out bulbs. So, despite the fact the yard is mostly unusable right now, I am loving how functional (and magical!) it looks and feels already.
All it's missing now is a bus. And provided we've guesstimated the turning radius right, that will happen tonight. Onward onward!
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