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Productive
Oct. 29th, 2011 02:45 pmThe Haunted Ship (USS Salem in Quincy) was pretty neat! I'm not sure if anything will top the Haunted Hammond Castle that we went to years ago, but it was fun to do something cheezy and spooky. We try and check out a new one each year. We were home early enough to watch Clone Wars (yay for the 501st clones!) before I was ready for bed. It was fun to catch up with Sean and Krista too, it's been a while since the four of us have been able to hang out.
We got up early today courtesy of our cats not leaving us alone, and got ourselves together for breakfast at http://www.wilsonsdiner.com/ . We had planned on going to a party this afternoon but wanted to get some things done around the house beforehand. The impending weather, the things we need to get done and the fact that we were out of our house for the deleading and oh so happy to be home (and, had seen these friends somewhat recently) made us decide to change our plans and stick around today instead. After breakfast we got supplies at Home Depot and returned home for our various projects.
1. The deleading process left lots of unfinished wood trim in the house. We're being lazy at the moment and leaving that alone, but the unfinished wood trim around the outside of our front door would suffer the elements, so I primed that this morning. It is so cold that I'm leaving it to dry for a few days before attempting to paint it (it will probably get paint next Sunday, schedule and enthusiasm willing).
2. Now that the deleading is done we needed to fix our ceiling in the baby's room. The roof leaked before we bought the house and there was a combination of peeling ceiling paint, brown stains and the remains of bad plaster patch jobs from the former homeowners to fix up, coincidentally only in this room (near our chimney where the worst of the leaking was). Originally we were going to scrape the lose paint and just paint the whole thing, but Brian decided he wanted to texture the ceiling to finish it up right and hide the bad plaster work from the former owner. Given the cold in our basement and garage, he's working on a helmet up in his geek room, and while it dries each hour between each coat, has been chipping away at the baby's room ceiling. It looks great! It will need to dry during the week and then will need primer and paint. There was also an old dead landline wire and jack sticking out of the wall, just kind of floating that he's cut, and he smushed some plaster in the hole there for good measure (we'll need to touch up the wall paint in that spot). When the painting is done we can put our rug down, put the curtains up (I got some purple or "wine" ones from Target) and then we can go get our crib at Ikea.
3. Years ago we took out the normal door in our bedroom in exchange for a bifold door that opened into the hallway. Our old door opened into the room, leaving one wall that we could fit a bureau on useless, but the new door gave us the use of that wall. To fit into the opening of the doorway, Brian had to trim it vertically (in addition to trimming width-wise for height) which was a bit of a hit to its structural integrity. Add to that two cats that run around the house like maniacs wrestling and banging into things. They have knocked that door out so many times, and Brian kept patching and fixing and securing the door, eventually adding metal plates to where the damaged/splintered wood was near the top where it set into the track. The deleaders took down the door to do the work, since they had to scrape in that doorway, and it is now just past its time. Brian tried to rehang it but the thing just won't go back up. We bought a new door which I've wanted to do for a while anyway, and that's on the list of things to do in the short term.
Kudos for having a $50 Home Depot gift card left over from Christmas - I had forgotten about this thing in my purse. :)
4. I cleaned up and put away the things in the yard and winterized stuff, digging out the shovels (Brian took out our big bucket of ice melt earlier today). I had to drag out the lawn mower, the wheel barrel full o' dirt and the snow blower only to put them back in the garage in the opposite order. I moved the overflow hose from the top of our rain barrel to the bottom so that the thing won't freeze over the winter (water will collect to only about 6" high until it reaches that lower spout and is released through the house out into the street). All that's left to do is take apart our hammock frame and put that into the garage, but I didn't have the finger strength to do that. Then I dragged the almost full yard-waste barrels out to the side of our driveway so we remember to get rid of them tomorrow with our trash. There was some room in the top and a bunch of leaves on our front walkway, so they went into the barrels (if there is shoveling to do it will be easier without a mess of leaves there).
We stopped for lunch and made a quick stop at Sister Thrift to drop off yet more donations. We are always making a pile of things to get rid of. As usual (Jen, you aren't the only one) I left with a couple of things - a cute 0-3 months Halloween baby sleeper and a 12m pair of orange and candy corn print baby pants (never worn and the tags still on). So what that she's being born in January? We love Halloween! It has been fun to pick up things this year and put them away for her, but I digress.
The precipitation is here now, just rain at this point. I'm exhausted from our day and glad we decided to stay in - we would have been on the road by now. I have a pumpkin pie in the oven and will make a meatloaf later for dinner. Being horizontal for a while with a book is the best thing I could do right now.
We got up early today courtesy of our cats not leaving us alone, and got ourselves together for breakfast at http://www.wilsonsdiner.com/ . We had planned on going to a party this afternoon but wanted to get some things done around the house beforehand. The impending weather, the things we need to get done and the fact that we were out of our house for the deleading and oh so happy to be home (and, had seen these friends somewhat recently) made us decide to change our plans and stick around today instead. After breakfast we got supplies at Home Depot and returned home for our various projects.
1. The deleading process left lots of unfinished wood trim in the house. We're being lazy at the moment and leaving that alone, but the unfinished wood trim around the outside of our front door would suffer the elements, so I primed that this morning. It is so cold that I'm leaving it to dry for a few days before attempting to paint it (it will probably get paint next Sunday, schedule and enthusiasm willing).
2. Now that the deleading is done we needed to fix our ceiling in the baby's room. The roof leaked before we bought the house and there was a combination of peeling ceiling paint, brown stains and the remains of bad plaster patch jobs from the former homeowners to fix up, coincidentally only in this room (near our chimney where the worst of the leaking was). Originally we were going to scrape the lose paint and just paint the whole thing, but Brian decided he wanted to texture the ceiling to finish it up right and hide the bad plaster work from the former owner. Given the cold in our basement and garage, he's working on a helmet up in his geek room, and while it dries each hour between each coat, has been chipping away at the baby's room ceiling. It looks great! It will need to dry during the week and then will need primer and paint. There was also an old dead landline wire and jack sticking out of the wall, just kind of floating that he's cut, and he smushed some plaster in the hole there for good measure (we'll need to touch up the wall paint in that spot). When the painting is done we can put our rug down, put the curtains up (I got some purple or "wine" ones from Target) and then we can go get our crib at Ikea.
3. Years ago we took out the normal door in our bedroom in exchange for a bifold door that opened into the hallway. Our old door opened into the room, leaving one wall that we could fit a bureau on useless, but the new door gave us the use of that wall. To fit into the opening of the doorway, Brian had to trim it vertically (in addition to trimming width-wise for height) which was a bit of a hit to its structural integrity. Add to that two cats that run around the house like maniacs wrestling and banging into things. They have knocked that door out so many times, and Brian kept patching and fixing and securing the door, eventually adding metal plates to where the damaged/splintered wood was near the top where it set into the track. The deleaders took down the door to do the work, since they had to scrape in that doorway, and it is now just past its time. Brian tried to rehang it but the thing just won't go back up. We bought a new door which I've wanted to do for a while anyway, and that's on the list of things to do in the short term.
Kudos for having a $50 Home Depot gift card left over from Christmas - I had forgotten about this thing in my purse. :)
4. I cleaned up and put away the things in the yard and winterized stuff, digging out the shovels (Brian took out our big bucket of ice melt earlier today). I had to drag out the lawn mower, the wheel barrel full o' dirt and the snow blower only to put them back in the garage in the opposite order. I moved the overflow hose from the top of our rain barrel to the bottom so that the thing won't freeze over the winter (water will collect to only about 6" high until it reaches that lower spout and is released through the house out into the street). All that's left to do is take apart our hammock frame and put that into the garage, but I didn't have the finger strength to do that. Then I dragged the almost full yard-waste barrels out to the side of our driveway so we remember to get rid of them tomorrow with our trash. There was some room in the top and a bunch of leaves on our front walkway, so they went into the barrels (if there is shoveling to do it will be easier without a mess of leaves there).
We stopped for lunch and made a quick stop at Sister Thrift to drop off yet more donations. We are always making a pile of things to get rid of. As usual (Jen, you aren't the only one) I left with a couple of things - a cute 0-3 months Halloween baby sleeper and a 12m pair of orange and candy corn print baby pants (never worn and the tags still on). So what that she's being born in January? We love Halloween! It has been fun to pick up things this year and put them away for her, but I digress.
The precipitation is here now, just rain at this point. I'm exhausted from our day and glad we decided to stay in - we would have been on the road by now. I have a pumpkin pie in the oven and will make a meatloaf later for dinner. Being horizontal for a while with a book is the best thing I could do right now.
