Monday, August 31, 2009

Scraping Away The Pain(t)

Never hiring another handyman again without first going to Angie'sList. This guy took all week to paint three spaces and a bunch of molding. We also paid for him to uncaulk and re-caulk the tub; he did the former and told us that we could do the latter as soon as the space was completely clean. Never caulked a thing before in my life, and this caulk that I bought is NASTY. I had no idea that nothing cleans it up, except maybe gasoline.

Anyway, I made it look alright, but I'm not terribly happy with the results, and I wish I'd used something else (assuming anything else exists to do this sort of work).

But the painterman. After chiding us about our ridiculous precautions of taping the drop cloths to the floor in our living room and kitchen (which came out great, and spotlessly clean), he paints all of his spaces with no drop cloth at all, leaving us dried paint on our linoleum kitchen floor, on the sealed tile in the laundry room, and on the unsealed stone floor of the bathroom. We spent half Saturday just cleaning up after him. I became suspicious of his experience with spray-painting when I found the box for his spray painter in my back yard, just-opened.

Growl.

However, except for a couple of details, the house is ready to go on the market. Stagers are coming today to throw in furniture. I will be going back to replace a window in the attic (already got the piece of cut glass), and shaving off the bottom of one door that has always been a little tight. Seal the front deck and I'm DONE! Pictures by the end of the week and on the market before Monday. Yowch.

Now we just need to clean up the space we've moved to.

Monday, August 24, 2009

Owwwwwww....

Painting hurts. All of me is slightly achy and my walk looks like something out of Night of the Living Dead - and not in a good way.


So, we've painted the kitchen and the living room and we're awaiting our handyman (who is a stickler for "smooth" paint) to finish the bathroom, laundry room, fridge alcove and bedroom. My basement looks HUGE, now that I've moved most of it out. If I could figure out how to distribute what I have more evenly, perhaps there would have been more room.


Computer says "no".


I have managed to throw out eight bags of trash from my basement, more than any other space in the house (actually, more than the whole rest of the house). Part of that has to do with finally being done making the floor correct in the bedroom. I didn't exactly overbuy - it's kind of like the bun/hotdog packaging joke: "Why do they sell hot dogs in groups of six and hot dog buns in groups of eight?" Well, why do you have to buy 21 sq. ft of laminate flooring and 32 sq. ft of laminate floor padding?


I threw away four pieces of board and a bundle of padding scraps the size of a St. Bernard dog.


And then there are the paint cans, which I've been told I must get rid of (even though I inherited half of them from the previous owner). Latex paint is not HazMat. However, it must be dry before it can be tossed.

Do you know how long it takes for latex paint to dry just by taking the lid off? Or (as my handyman suggested) spread a bunch of cardboard out over your lawn and pour it all out. Wait for it to dry, then pack all the paint-covered cardboard into trash bags and voila! With my luck, there will be a leak in the cardboard, and I'll end up with a variety-swirl-pattern lawn. Or it will rain, and it won't matter that there's cardboard, the whole lawn will be redecorated in new, vibrant color!

And finally (in the trash department), Apple ADB cables, SCSI, extra three-prong power supply cables (they multiply, don't they), floppy disks, books about Pagemaker, software that only runs on OS 9. I finally gave away my old Mac IIci (after removing the hard drive) and my old Apple 12" RGB monitor, which probably originally cost someone a thou. I also got rid of my 19" CRT monitor, which originally cost me over $1500. Getting all misty-eyed...

Anyway, we're almost completely out. I will be changing my e-mail soon, so that I can cancel cable in the house. My last act will be stickering all of the reusable plastic tubs that we've bought to move stuff in to indicate which tubs are light, which are heavy, and which will give the lifter a hernia. RG stays away from those. And then move them all out of the basement of this house into the basement of our temporary domicile, a lovely cottage with a view of the Sound and the Needle.

And then, relax...

(actually, HouseHunting!)