With Robert back from England Thursday night, we buckled down to work early on Friday. Highlights of the weekend include:
1) Struggling Mom, Dad, and Christina into the front seat of their Subaru--laden with bags and wood and shelving and Christina's backpack and the old secretary from New York--after buying two closet cube units from Economy Hardware;
2) Struggling the cubes and shelves into the bedroom closet, which amounted to doing a three-dimensional puzzle with the doorway;
3) Priming the rest of the kitchen;
4)
Refinishing an old wooden chair we found on our deck and touching up the scratches
on the 60+ year-old secretary (solid maple, used by Grandma to keep the books
for Grandpa's roofing business, then refinished to its (more or less) current
antiqued blue state by Mom and Dad for their study in 1969, then wrestled
out of the basement by them just this weekend and delivered to Boston);
5)
Watching Mom wrestle with sheets of contact as she covered boxes to use on
the shelves of my linen closet (in the background you see the secretary, again,
and the finished window--shade, curtain rod, curtain, and all--in the small
bedroom);
6)
Painting the hall marine blue (fish stencils will follow); not pictured, but
also of note, was refinishing some water-damaged windowsills, touching up
scratches on doors and woodwork, and finishing the fireplace in the big bedroom,
inside and out, with stain;
7)
Watching Robert install new, working (possibly because Dad and I hadn't had
a chance to blow out this transformer) cable lights in the kitchen;
8)
Observing the changes in the kitchen: fulfillment, because we have an unanchored,
but present, sink base, and frustration, because we have no way to hook up
our new dishwasher without turning off the water to--as far as we can tell--the
entire building, and then more frustration because the dimensions aren't working
out right, anyway;
9)
Figuring out, with a brainstorm, that the counters we bought had to be raised
up above the cabinets in order to allow proper clearance, and watching Dad
and Robert build a perfect, sturdy platform (at right is our trash compactor);
10)
At long last, having countertops--two 30" lengths, or technically, 31.25"
which caused more headaches of its own--to the left and right of the range
in the kitchen. Here, Dad and Robert cut the countertop to the right length.
We
got a lot done, but oh boy, do we still have work left to do! For one thing,
I need a kitchen sink (minor minor point), a dishwasher, and a finished kitchen
counter, and for another thing, our iFloor floor still has not shipped yet--keep
in mind we do actually have to move in, too, after all of this excitement.
So, at the end of a long
working weekend (5 hours Friday, 13 hours Saturday, 9 hours Sunday), I sit
on the couch back at home and grade papers and sip a can of Virgin Cola that
Robert brought me back from England, exhausted, and unable to wait for next
weekend to do it all over again--on slightly different projects.