An Island To Myself!

Well, it’s been nearly three months since my last post here, and as such, this will be a very, very, very long post. I cannot make any excuses this time except life, a birthday party, preparation for end of school activities and the culmination of those activities, including a fifth grade graduation, and then summer with kids home and us trying to figure out our new routine together with trips to the park and the library while trying to work on my novel and this house with very little success on the house. This is the first year I have been home during the summer in three years, and the children are a little older with different passions than were present so long ago. Now that it is nearly the end of July we are finally settling into a routine and before long, we will be back to our school year routine. I’ve heard that they grow up in the blink of an eye, and that saying sure is proving accurate in my life. While there is a lack of excuses, there are certainly plenty of things that have been happening in our little dump of a home that is feeling more like home and less like a dump every day, although it hasn’t always felt that way over the past three months.

Since I last wrote, the living room has been put on hold in favor of some other projects that are finally coming together. We managed to put a ceiling fan in Little Bit’s room, and that project brought about many challenges. Just before my hubby installed the fan, our neighbor mentioned that he had seen bats flying into the attic through one of the gable vents so my hubby went up into the attic to check it out. Fortunately he saw no indication of bats and he stapled hardware cloth to the inside of the gable vents to ensure the bats couldn’t get in. While he was up there, he discovered that while our oldest daughter’s room had adequate insulation over and around her room, Little Bit had virtually no insulation, and one of the ducts feeding to her room has been crushed. He still needs to contact the heating and a/c guys to get them to come fix that because they told us they had fixed it so that she would have adequate heating and air into her room. Without that particular duct, she only has half the necessary heat or a/c that she needs to keep her room comfortable. We paid them to ensure all ducts were adequate and to fix any that were not, so they were negligent in that aspect. I hope he will have no trouble when he calls them, but I doubt he will. They have been really good to work with so far.

So my hubby crawled out of the attic and informed me of the lack of insulation. He also told me that he found frayed, bare electrical wires up in the attic, a major fire hazard that had to be repaired at once. He went to get the necessary items to fix those and wanted to pick up insulation while he was out. They were completely out at the home improvement place he went to so he ended up buying it from the other one in town later after he had repaired the wiring. He also finally installed the ceiling fan and put the insulation in once the fire hazard had been taken care of. It seems that we have run into problems at every turn in this house, and at some point, I stopped laughing and became downright depressed. I hated the house that I once saw so much potential in.

From January to June, the only things I had gotten done was to put together storage shelves for the living room and a pantry for the kitchen, scrape the garage floor, prime and paint the garage ceiling and walls and finally got around to painting the attic storage adjacent to Little Bit’s room in May. The lack of vision was really getting to me and I just couldn’t figure out what else to do with the house. I had a desire to spackle the living room, and did put spackle on the walls, but I came to a hole in the wall behind the entertainment center and decided that I need more drywall tools to repair that wall. Then I thought about one of the walls in the living room and realized that this is the back side of the wall in the kitchen that I want to cut a huge hole in to open up the kitchen and make it more functional with the rest of the house. I just couldn’t figure out everything I wanted to do in the kitchen, but I knew that if a hole was going to be cut into that wall, I needed to get that done before painting the living room; otherwise, I would have to come back and refinish that wall. Since there is plenty to do, and I don’t want to have to do the same work twice, I put the living room on hold. That’s when I decided to do the attic storage area, and it turned out well. Now I need to put stuff in there to store, and that is something I am going to work on in short order.

In addition to not knowing what to do with the kitchen, we finally got a third quote on the windows and front door because my hubby had to have that third quote. The guy who gave us the quote is a contractor who does just about anything you need, including gutters that we also need so he quoted those as well. The contractor was beyond helpful as he gave us a lot of useful information. I had apologized for the odor in the front entryway, explaining that sometimes it becomes so pungent that it almost makes me sick to my stomach, and my hubby said he usually didn’t smell anything. The contractor then told us that he actually did smell a musty smell and it was probably from a lack of a moisture barrier in the crawl space and then asked if we had one down there. My hubby told him we didn’t and the contractor told us that they could put one down but it was a simple job so we could save money if we did it ourselves. He then went on to tell my hubby what to do. He seemed to understand that we are on a limited budget and quite handy so he wanted to help us out with the more difficult things and offered us some advice on the easier things we are capable of in order to save us money in the long run. I appreciated him not taking advantage of us. My hubby is now planning to put a moisture barrier down at some point.

I have to paint the surface of the eaves before the gutters can be installed. We spent several weeks trying to pick out colors. My hubby likes to mull over things and consider every pro and con out there. I prefer to just make a decision and go with it. After two weeks of hemming and hawing over exterior colors, we went on a drive around town to look at other houses. While we were out, he told me that he thought he might want to get tan or beige gutters, so I told him that if I’m to pick out house colors for the eaves, I need samples of the gutters so I can match the color to the gutters. We must have went back and forth for a while and I finally said, “I’m not going to discuss the house colors any further until I have some gutter samples so I can match colors. I cannot pick out colors until I have those samples, and until then it is pointless to discuss house colors because I’m just getting angry.” We didn’t discuss it any further that day, and for his respecting my need for silence on the subject, I am forever grateful!

After a couple of days, I asked him if he ever got in touch with the contractor to get some gutter samples and he said, “I got to thinking that maybe we should just go with white. It’s an easy color; if we have to sell, it will not turn people away; and we can go ahead and get the work done sooner rather than later. I also got to thinking that we should just go ahead and get the windows installed now and then get the gutters put on after we have a chance to paint the eaves.” I expressed my overwhelming joy that we finally came to a conclusion on the matter and immediately picked out several colors I thought would work for the siding. I put them aside until the other day and I picked out two colors. My hubby and I looked at them together and came to a final decision, one we both agreed on without argument. I’m so excited I can hardly contain my emotions.

In addition to this little victory, I have another even more exciting victory. Remember I mentioned that I eventually quit laughing about all the crazy stuff we were encountering and became downright depressed and almost resentful of the house. Well, I found an island that changed my life. When I first saw the island, I really liked it and wanted to get it once I got the kitchen redone. I mentioned it to my hubby and his response surprised me. He said, “How many styles of islands are out there?” I told him it was a limited number in our price range and he said, “Well, if you like it, why don’t you go ahead and get it. Then you can at least use the storage in it.” Brilliant!

I asked a good friend of mine to go with me to pick it up, and that was because it would not fit in my car. With all of my loathing not being able to accomplish much, this was something I had to do on my own, without my hubby’s help. Of course, I had to ask for help along the way, but doing so did not make me feel weak. It actually empowered me that I didn’t have to rely on my hubby to do everything in this house. I think the reason I felt so discouraged was that everything I intended to do on my own, I ended up having to have help from my hubby. As an aside, there is another story here so I’ll share that briefly now.

I wanted to remove the built-in shoe rack in Little Bit’s closet. There is one in most of the closets in the house, but this being the smallest closet, I thought I’d start there. I couldn’t even figure out how to get it out and my hubby removed it. He then had to finish out the floor and put in trim on the wall. Now I just have to finish the closet with paint and by staining the new floor board. My hubby also finished out the floor in his closet. He decided he would finish all the closets for us over time so I am quite thankful to him, but this thankfulness only came about because of the island: the island I need to finish the story about, the island that revolutionized my life and my home improvement outlook, the island that turned my bitterness to thankfulness.

With my friend’s help, and her big Ram 3500, we managed to go to the store, get the strong guys to load it into the truck and bring it home. My oldest two children (age 13 and 10 with the physique of adults) helped us unload the giant box into the house. My friend had never actually been to my house and she immediately started raving about the beautiful features and the potential and how she wished she could get her hands on a house like this. She didn’t realize she was actually encouraging me, but she was. That had been my attitude when we looked at the house and even after moving in, and I had lost sight of my vision. I felt that vision coming back as she described things she would be able to do with this place. I hadn’t even put my island together and already it was a huge blessing to me.

I decided not to work on the island that night because it was July 3^rd, and we were planning to watch the fireworks…from our front yard! This was the first time we were able to partake in the city’s festivities from the comfort of our own yard without driving a long ways, parking and having to walk. Next year we will probably plan to go to the park and participate in all the festivities at the park and then walk home in time to watch the fireworks. Anyway, the next day, I didn’t put the island together because my hubby was home, and this was “my” project. I waited until the following day to begin to work on the island. I did well with putting the parts together until I attached the back brace to the left side panel. One of the holes for one of the dowels was not drilled out completely or had a plastic burr covering the hole or something. I could not get the dowel in with my bare hands so I figured I could tap it in gently with a hammer. I tapped it and it went in slightly but not very far so I tapped it again (with very little force behind the hammer) and the entire dowel went through the outside of the end piece. I wanted to cry. My island was ruined, my project had been a failure, and I suddenly felt like I just couldn’t do anything right and this entire house idea was a mistake. I was feeling so down that I finally realized I was beating myself up and prayed that God would help me out of my funk.

Immediately the idea popped into my head to call the 800 number and explain what happened. I was hoping they could send me another piece, especially since the hole had not been drilled properly. If it had, I would have never used a hammer to try to put the dowel in. So I called, and the woman I spoke to was extremely pleasant and understanding, explaining that I shouldn’t have to live with a damaged island and told me she wanted to help me. I was on the phone with her for about 25 minutes. She finally figured out that they couldn’t get parts for the island, but told me I could take it back to the store and she would alert the store that I would be coming in. Otherwise, she could get me in touch with the customer relations department who should be able to get me in touch with the actual manufacturer who could get me the needed pieces. She transferred me to customer relations per my request, and the man who answered sounded like he hailed from the other side of the world, as in India. He barely spoke my language and I was so afraid that this was going to turn into a fiasco quickly so I prayed again and asked God to give me His strength and patience that I didn’t have. There were a couple of times that I didn’t really understand the guy and I actually asked him patiently to repeat himself. After being on the phone with him for about 15 minutes, he finally said that he didn’t have the phone number for the manufacturer but he had the name and I could just Google the name of the manufacturer. I said apprehensively, “Ooookaaaaayyy?” and he told me to hold on a minute. About 30 seconds later, he picked up the phone and had the manufacturer’s name and phone number.

Success! Or so I thought until I tried to contact the manufacturer. I called the number the guy had given me, went through the automated menu and sat on hold for 15 minutes. The phone suddenly went to silent white noise so I knew that my phone had not died but that their automated system had malfunctioned. I knew that was the case when I got the busy signal noise. I hung up and called back only to receive a busy signal. I tried again and went through the automated system once again. Then I was on hold for 5 minutes when the phone cut off again just as it had before. I tried to call back only to receive an automated response stating that they were closed and to call back during normal business hours of 8am to 5pm. I looked at the clock and it was 5:00 pm. They were now closed and I would have to wait until the next day, Friday, to call. Aaarrrrrrggggghhhhhhh!

I called back the next morning and got right through. I may have waited five minutes on hold and then a woman picked up. She asked what part I needed to order, took down my personal information and gave me a confirmation number with no request for payment. She told me it would ship out Monday via Fed-Ex and would take about a week to get here. Well, that Monday she was speaking of was last Monday. I went for a run with my younger two children on Wednesday morning because it had finally cooled down from the 102 degrees we had been experiencing to more normal upper 80s/lower 90s. It was a great run that was cut short when we found a box turtle on the side of the road that we had to return to the creek so it wouldn’t get run over. Over by the creek we found a bright yellow softball that had initials written on it so we returned it to the softball field and finally made it home. As we were running up the road, we saw the Fed-Ex truck in front of the house. Our area has been experiencing a lot of pop-up summer thunderstorms and she was getting ready to put the package into a plastic bag when we got to the top of the hill beside the truck. I told her that she could save her bag and brought my island piece in the house. It had been 2 business days from when I ordered the piece. Impressive.

I worked on the island Wednesday and was putting the finishing touches on it Wednesday night when I encountered a major problem. There was something seriously wrong with one of the drawer slides. I couldn’t get the drawer in all the way in. I decided I was too tired to do anything else, and besides, the company was closed. The next day I got up and planned to call to get another slide sent to us, further delaying putting the island together. All I could do at that point was laugh because if I didn’t, I was going to cry. Instead of calling the company, though, I realized that the old end piece had two slides that were perfectly fine: I already had the extra slide that I needed. I quickly removed the good slide from the defective side piece, removed the defective slide from the good side piece and had it replaced in a matter of minutes. Still, the drawer would not go in. I looked at the other slide, and it was also defective, but lo and behold, there was another good slide on the defective side part, so I switched those slides out and ta-da…the drawer went in and it slides. We had an island.

That day, my oldest daughter helped me put the island into the kitchen and fill it with items that had been stacked on the baker’s rack threatening to fall off at the slightest breeze. The island, "my" island, was beautiful in the kitchen, and we moved the baker’s rack to the foyer almost as if we were ceremonially clearing the room for the island. It was almost as if the island needed to be an island to itself. The baker's rack fit perfectly in the foyer, and we were able to keep just a few pretty items on it to make it look decorative instead of just functional. Once that was done, my daughter decided to organize the pantry since it had become extremely disorganized. She is unbelievable with organization, and I thanked her for her hard work. We went and bought storage boxes to lump together similar items, such as a box for all chocolate and candy items, a box for dry beans and rices, a box for all of the gluten-free flours and gluten-free baking necessities, a box for all the canned fish, a box for all the nuts and dried fruits, etc. When we got home, I helped her organize the entire pantry. That night we both fell into bed exhausted. We had worked hard all day long and it was quite rewarding. The island, “my” project had been a success, I had done it by myself with the resources of a few helpful people along the way.

But that is not the end of the story of the island. By getting the island into the kitchen, I was able to return my microwave and coffee makers (my hubby and I each have one) to the kitchen counters because I now have a food preparation surface in the kitchen that frees up the little bit of counter space I had been using. After I moved the microwave and coffee makers off the laundry room counter where they have been since we moved in, I saw the potential of the laundry room that had been lost in the clutter. I figured out that I can replace the countertop and the cabinet hardware, paint the cabinets and the walls, remove the door to the room that is never shut and has a broken glass panel, and the laundry room will be a beautiful room. The place where the door with the broken glass panel is swung open, there is a wall that is the perfect size for the “pantry” that is really a sturdy plastic cabinet. It looks really nice and I intend to keep using it, especially now that I have put all the food in handy-dandy boxes that can be carried to the kitchen as needed. Eventually, I will be able to relocate those to the kitchen cabinets once I finish remodeling in there.

Envisioning the kitchen without the pantry suddenly became a little easier by getting the baker’s rack out of the kitchen. Suddenly the kitchen has started to take shape. Of course, it all started with the island and borrowing a kitchen remodel book from the library, one of the many treasures associated with our weekly library trips. I now have a great plan for the kitchen. I even took the time to draw it out sans actual measurements to get the basic idea of the plan, and my hubby liked it. He smiled as I told him about it, didn’t voice any real concerns except the part about putting the window between the kitchen and living room, and then only to voice his opinion that we need to be careful to ensure we provide enough support before we remove the studs in the wall since the studs are the support system in that wall. I was a step ahead of him with the plan to install a support beam above the window, which is why I intended to only put in a window rather than knock out the entire wall.

Besides, by only putting in a window, I can put in bottom cabinets with a countertop. Those cabinets can only extend halfway across that wall because the only a/c and heating vent to the room is located on that wall near the corner. By extending the counter past the cabinets over the vent and around the corner, I can create a breakfast bar in the corner with a couple of bar stools that can be stored under the counter when not in use. I plan to put open shelves above the breakfast bar on the short wall. I also plan to put some open shelves on the walls on either side of the windows over the sink. It will give us shelves for our everyday dishes to be displayed and open the small kitchen up. I have a few other ideas for the kitchen that I will share later when I finally get around to that project. I finally am excited about these home improvement projects.

Hopefully I can figure out how to upload pictures on here by the time I get around to doing these projects because I would love to share before and after photos throughout the projects. I would also like to have photos to back up explanations of the work. For now, I’m enjoying my kitchen with its minor improvement, the island! After all, the island has taught me that even when I encounter challenges, I can overcome them and do not have to be destroyed. I know that at first, it was really strange being able to use my coffee maker and the microwave without having to walk around the corner to the laundry room. They are right there in the kitchen, all within reach of the refrigerator and sink. Oh the little joys my island have brought. This island, while an island to itself, knows how to share joy, and if my island can do that, so can I. I suppose, in some way, I've always been an island to myself. But my island has taught me to find joy and share it. In that sense, I am an island to myself. But for now I have to go take the kids to the library since it’s Monday.

Happy Home Improvement!

Time for Living Room Spackle

I am finally ready to start working on the living room in this dump. Over the last couple of weeks, I have been working hard on the garage when I haven’t been running kids here and there, cooking, cleaning or writing my novel. Let’s also not forget to add sleep into the equation as well as planning a birthday party for my little soon-to-be seven year old princess.

So I got the garage walls primed (with the help of my two older kids) and painted, and then my hubby helped me prime the ceiling and I painted it with ceiling white. While my hubby and I were putting the primer on the ceiling, my little princess came out there and said, “Wow, Mama, I didn’t know they had yellow ceilings!” I had to laugh because the difference between the yellowed ceilings from a room that had been smoked in and the bluish-gray tint of the primer was quite drastic. I was amazed at how white the ceiling turned out when I finally finished painting it.

So at some point in there, it was time to prime the baseboards and the crown moulding. I filled my paint cup and started to put primer on the baseboards in the corner. I stopped suddenly when, oh crap, I realized that I had forgotten a very important step. I needed to vacuum the floor under the baseboards so I wouldn’t get foreign paint chips, lint, dust, etc. in the primer on the baseboards. I went and got the shop-vac and set to work. Not long into the process, I realized that the vacuum could only suction so much from under the baseboards, so I pulled out my handy-dandy little hand broom and started to brush with enough force to inflict injury while holding the end of the shop-vac tube next to the broom to suction up anything that came out. That worked for the first half of the room where there was mostly paint chips and dust, but when I got to the back of the room where the people before us had their furniture, I had to brush and then suction back and forth because there was so much stuff under the baseboards.

Now I would like to add a disclaimer here: if you have a weak stomach, I suggest you skip this paragraph because the stuff I brushed out from under those baseboards was disgusting. I found cigarette butts; two dimes; old, rusty nails; dead bugs; live bugs; a shriveled up worm coated in some sticky, tarry substance that looked and smelled like old feces; tons of carpet fibers and lint also covered in that nasty substance; glass shards of all shapes, sizes and colors; splinter of wood; and a paperclip. Most of the items had at least some of that sticky, tarry substance on them. And yes, for precautionary purposes, I was wearing a pair of nitrile gloves.

So an hour and a half later, I finally finished this brushing and vacuuming process, and it was time to prime the trim. The only problem was I felt like I needed a shower so I could actually put the primer on. I do not have a weak stomach, but that almost did me in. So I took a shower and finished putting the primer on. By the time I finished priming and painting the entire room, I felt so accomplished that I wanted to celebrate. But that feeling of accomplishment waned when I realized that I had forgotten to finish painting the door! The original paint on it was really bad not to mention the cigarette smell so I had already primed it. I finally finished painting it Saturday morning.

And now it’s time to start to spackle the living room. This ought to be fun!

Happy Home Improvement!

What's This Thing Called Life?

Luck didn't seem to be in our favor lately. It seems that I must've forgotten that we have to actually live when we bought this house to fix up. So it still smells a little, the wall are definitely not in the best shape and ..... Well, I think ..... describes the house quite well. I could go on and on and still not finish with all of the stuff we have encountered since my last post. It's been a month, and I wish I could say it hadn't been that long. Sometimes we plan to do something and forget that life has a way of getting in the way.

Our children have been adjusting to school, we have been adjusting to a new community, it takes a lot of time to shop for a family of five, the kids have doctor and orthodontist appointments, I like to provide my family with healthy home-cooked meals, I am writing occasional devotionals, a Bible study as well as a novel (I'm on page 176 handwritten because I'm a paper and pen kinda gal!) and my husband is working a little more than he had been, so that leaves a lot of responsibility to me. Needless to say, I haven't gotten as much done on the house as I would like to say I had, but I am certainly starting to get a feel for what I want this house to be when we are done.

So, I finally finished scraping the "garage" floor and enlisted the help of my children so we could wash down all of the walls out there. The neighbor told us that the woman who lived here before us smoked like a freight-train out there. If you are a smoker, this is not a big deal, but since we do not smoke, it was very strong and we didn't really want to use it without cleaning the walls and painting it with that stuff to kill the smell. So with the help of three of the best kids in the world (I'm partial!), we got the walls cleaned, with the exception of the baseboards on two walls. We've had a busy few weeks with spring break, lots of appointments, my writing and the like. Oh, did I forget to mention we also figured out that our cat is pregnant so we can't take her for her rabies shot, and we've had to set up a place in the breezeway for her to stay until the kittens are born. So with everything going on, I haven't had the chance to get out there. I finally went out there today, and my small mission was accomplished. I managed to finish washing the baseboards on the last two walls.


Now, I just need to add spackle, sand the spackle flat, and paint and I'll be finished. I will spackle and sand tomorrow, paint on Saturday and be done! Yay! I am so excited to finally be about to finish a project that has been hanging over my head for over a month. So during that month, we have done more than just scrape the floor out there, although that was a grueling job. On March 19, we had three trees cut down, two trees topped and three stumps ground. One tree was a humongous oak at the front corner of the house that hung over the top of the house with a trunk that was leaning significantly toward the house. The neighbor told us that it used to have a twin that leaned the other direction and landed on his house during a storm. He had to rebuild his entire house because the tree destroyed the old house. In some ways, maybe we could have used a windstorm to take that one out when no one was home so we could have rebuilt...

Nah, this home improvement project is so much more fun. That would just be sad. Anyway, the guys arrived early in the day (maybe 9 or 9:30 a.m.) and they worked ALL day. I didn't have to do much for that project, but I didn't get much done around the house because I wanted to oversee what was happening, and once the kids got home from school there was a lot of activity. The tree in the backyard was extremely close to the house and half-rotten. Speaking of half-rotten, we discovered once the humongous tree in the front was down that part of the inside of the trunk was beginning to rot. It really was a matter of time until it fell on its own, so we were glad we took it down.

The kids really enjoyed that project. We also have been working on getting the kids to clean up their rooms to no avail with the exception of our oldest who decided to tackle her closet on her own! I was proud of her even though I had to help her remove the nasty carpet in the bottom and bang out and remove the tack strips. Once the pad was pulled up, there were umpteen (is that even a word???) staples all over the bottom of the closet floor that were used to hold the carpet pad down. Now I understand that carpet pads need to be stapled down, but this closet floor is maybe 12" X 40" or so and there must've been a dozen or more staples per square 4 inches. Now I know that is not a technical term, but that is just about the concentration of the staples. She was not able to finish them that day so she came back to it after her Daddy showed her an easier way to get the staples out than the way I showed her to do it because I've never pulled staples or anything else out. Eventually I may have figured that out, but I'm glad he knew the little tip and showed her.

Anyway, the same day that she tackled that project, she had been complaining to her Daddy that her ceiling fan wasn't working. The light worked but not the ceiling fan. He figured it wouldn't be that big of a deal so he cut off the breaker and set to work pulling it apart figuring maybe a wire had been missed being connected during the installation. Well, that was the understatement of the century. The wires had been connected with duct tape??!!!??? (who uses duct tape in an electrical connection?) and some of them were connected incorrectly. Can you say "major fire hazard"? Wow. So my hubby had to completely reinstall that fixture, which took ten times longer than it should have, but our teen girl now has a ceiling fan, and my hubby has decided that it is just not a good idea to tackle any project in this house unless there is someplace open for business where we could get replacement parts, if necessary.

Now about that ceiling fan. Last night it was rather cold and my daughter was complaining that she was cold. When I went to her room, she still had her fan running on high. I asked her why she hadn't turned it off and she said she tried but it was still going even when it sounded like it was off. She said she even tried to stop it with her fingers, but as soon as she let it go, it started going again. I proceeded to turn it off, step up on the bed and stop it manually. It stayed stopped and she was singing my praises.... Well, at least Mama has one point for the team!

So not a lot of home improvement has been going on, but we are definitely still plugging away at this home improvement project. I think there will be periods of productivity and lulls that come and go, and that's okay with me because this is a life project for us that will certainly help our children become more understanding of others, less me-focused and be less likely to exhibit silver-spoon syndrome. I think they are already realizing that we are not greater than anyone else. And I like that because it helps all of us remember what's important in life: enjoying living and relationships!

Happy Home Improvement!

Broken Switches, Tack Nails and Chipped Concrete

My husband and I have been working on the "garage" to get it ready to empty our storage unit. Saturday my hubby worked diligently out there. He was going to help me hang the vertical blinds, but upon opening the box, we discovered that the top bar was bent. Wow, as if... He had some other things he needed to do, but he had to run to the local home improvement warehouse to get the parts first. Once he got back, I went to exchange the blinds only to have to stand in the return line for about 30 minutes along with about five other customers. I stood there smilin' to keep from getting angry. As the line inched toward the service desk, someone showed up. I thought she was going to help get the line down but instead she looked at a TV that was being returned and told the lady running customer service that it was okay to give the woman her money back. So now all of us in line had been knocked back another person since we had to wait for that return to be completed. Finally I was getting closer when a lady came sauntering back toward the customer service desk in no hurry whatsoever. Once she got back there, she was twice as fast as the lady who had been running the desk by herself, and that's not saying much so you can imagine how slow the first lady was. By the time I got up to the desk, there were at least eight to ten more customers behind me. That store was a complete madhouse, and I finally returned home about two hours later since I also needed to get some other items. Of course, upon my return home I immediately realized I had forgotten some things, but they'll just have to wait until the next time I go by there.

It was late when I got home, and my dear hubby had fixed us some supper. Nothing fancy, but it was something to eat. While I had been gone, he informed me, he replaced the switch that operated the ceiling fan/light in the garage. It had been working intermittently until Friday night when my youngest girl somehow got the light to work. After replacing the switch, the light no longer worked. That's just great! So our diligent efforts to hang the vertical blinds, replace the light switch and get the garage completely vacuumed and mopped left us wanting. No vertical blinds were hanging, the light wasn't working (although there was a new switch on the wall) and nothing had been mopped - well nothing except the breezeway and the kitchen that my boy and youngest girl helped me accomplish earlier in the day even though I wasn't planning on doing those jobs.

Well, in addition to the failed repairs in the garage, my hubby decided to fix the outlet in the bathroom while I was gone because it was missing part of the cover plate, and he figured it would be a good idea to put the new GFI outlet in and make sure it had a cover plate, you know, to avoid electric shock! While he did that, he discovered the switch beside the outlet was cracked all the way from one end to the other. So he shared this with me while we ate our supper and all I could do was shake my head and laugh at how sad the whole situation in this house is.

On Sunday we stopped at the home improvement warehouse on our way to church. My hubby picked up a new switch and a light kit (no small task as my hubby investigated every option and discussed it with the sales associate) while my kids and I investigated light bars for the bathrooms, light fixtures for the kitchen, ceiling fans for the house and the like. We also discovered a nice "lamp post" for the front yard to replace the existing one that is in disrepair so badly that I do not believe it is salvageable.

After church and lunch we set to work on the garage. My hubby began by reattaching the baseboard heater to the wall, and then he hung the vertical blind top bar by himself while I began to vacuum the edge of the floor only to discover...drum roll please....tack nails from old carpeting in the room and carpet fibers stuck to the floor and the underside of the baseboards that had been painted over! After trying to pull out the tack nails myself and struggling to get them out of the concrete (I looked like a little kid wielding a crow bar), my hubby helped me finish pulling them out from around the half of the room that did not have stuff piled against the walls. He left a myriad of chipped concrete in the wake of the removed tack nails. I felt like such a weakling right about then, so I decided to put up the vanes to the vertical blind with success! Yay! Then I began to scrape up and pull out the carpet fibers from the edges with pliers.

My hubby began to remove the light fixture only to discover that it was working intermittently because it was barely hanging on by a wire that had been taped together. His comment: "It doesn't surprise me that this thing wouldn't work." He then had to go get some wire nuts from his electrical supply box to install the light fixture because it didn't come with any even though it had light bulbs!?! We now have a light out there, working baseboard heat, operable vertical blinds and a bunch of chipped concrete not to mention the sticky substance in several different places around the room. One of those colorful piles of sticky goo had a popsicle stick in the middle of it. I believe someone was eating a popsicle, set it down and forgot it. I guess they didn't see any reason to clean it up when they moved out????

Remember I said that the carpet fibers that remained at the edge of the floor had been painted over? When in doubt, paint it seems to be the going theme in this house. I have now discovered that the wallpaper in the kitchen, the bathroom and now the dining room had been painted over leaving me to wonder what else has been painted over in this house, aside from the electrical outlets, switches and the thermostat for the baseboard heating in the garage.

Today I am planning to finish the vacuuming and mopping job in the garage and get the stuff already out there organized so that we can fit the rest of the stuff from the storage unit in there. But wait! I can't unpack the storage unit yet because I am also going to have to paint the walls with some primer that will kill the cigarette smoke-permeated walls. Getting the curtains out of there has improved the odor level about 50%, but those walls will not let go of that odor. So I guess I'll be painting out there now that the baseboard heat has been fixed. At least I'll be able to get it warmed up enough so the paint will cure. Wish me luck!

Happy Home Improvement!