To Do List: Big(ish) projects
May. 1st, 2013 11:33 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanTaxes are caught up. Passport paperwork is sent. Bank account has finally been sorted and is now funnelling regular chunks of money towards the household debt. We even cleaned the front yard & porch last weekend. Holy shitballs, Batman.
Next up on The Continuing Adventures of the Gin Palace:
Since it's going to be a few years before we can save up the cash to do the next round of renos, we've decided that in the meantime we want to do something about the nicotine-and-grease ambience of our kitchen. This will mean dragging everything out, dis-assembling the shelving, cleaning, sanding & painting, figuring out if we can shore up the rotting counter-top in such a way that it will last for a few years longer and finding some way of filling or covering the big holes in the walls left by the previous rounds of construction. And then dragging everything back in again. This is going to take a few days & pretty much all has to be done at once, so I've booked some time off work just ahead of Queen Vic's birthday so we can get the bulk of the it done when the hardware stores are open. And I'll still have Monday when everything is closed to drink beer and put my feet up afterwards. (Note to self: BUY BEER)
The second-biggest job on my list is dealing with an old cast-iron tub that has been sitting on the front porch under a tarp all winter. It previously lived in the upstairs bathroom and I want to sand it down and then paint it all shiny and pretty and fill it with cushions and stick it in the living room. That will have to be done soon as well, before the weather gets too humid. I'll have to cover up the front window if I'm doing the painting on the porch. The really hard part will be moving it, because holy shit does it weigh a ton so I'm going to be dependent on available help for shifting it. It's missing one of it's feet too, so I need to find a place that sells replacements. On the plus side I can do the work in stages so I can probably get it done over a series of weekends.
Third biggest job is to sand and paint the dormer windows upstairs. Sanding will take a good chunk of a day only because we'll have to move the bed out of the way and possibly hang some sheeting so we don't cover the entire top floor with sawdust. Once that's done painting won't take long and can be done on a different day. So that can also be accomplished over a couple of weekends. No particular deadline on that one other than that paint dries like shit when it's super humid.
Another project with a deadline; replace the screen window in the top floor. This might get expensive, if we put another plastic one in the racoons will just bust through it again. Axel hasn't had any luck finding security mesh, so we may have to get an actual gate. I've seen some gorgeous ones, but they'll have to be small enough to prevent Carlin from getting out and squirrels & birds from getting in. This could be spendy. Most of the work around this one is doing the research & calling around. Maybe if I have time this weekend.
Our back yard needs cleaned up before the pig roast and that's going to take a whole weekend because holy shit. At some point I'll need to figure out what I'm going to do about the fence and maybe do some landscaping or something but that's so far down my list of priorities right now I'm not even going to worry about it yet. Not to mention not within a million miles of our current budget.
Something else I wanted to do before the pig roast was defrost and clean out the chest freezer so I can make some room before I have something like a quarter pig's worth of leftover pork to deal with. There is literally a thick bed of ice at the bottom with stuff frozen in it. There's a shitload of stuff in there though, so we'll need to fill some coolers with ice to store perishables while it defrosts. Fortunately we have a lot of coolers.
Sewing projects in no particular order: I want to make seat cushions for the dormer, a pile of random cushions to fill the tub, covers for all the duvets and insulating curtains for all the windows. No deadlines for any of these, although the curtains should make a small difference in our energy bill.
Velvet Elvis is stumping me. I have tried spray-on boot polish, fabric marker and now the biggest honking sharpie I could find. Nothing is covering up these bald patches. I have even gone shopping online for a replacement painting and had no luck. I guess I'll just keep layering on the paint and hope that it makes a difference eventually. And keep watching ebay in the meantime.
I have to fix a spot where a knot popped out of the upstairs floor, right in the middle of the room where you can't miss it. A small job, I just have to get around to doing it.
Finish the painting. That means taking the hardware off the doors (possibly taking the doors off the walls) to paint them & finishing the stairs and stairwell walls. The stairwell involves heights which is probably the big reason we've been putting it off. There is also some patching of scuffs & holes in some of the walls. I'll probably leave that to second last, after we know we've finished moving the furniture around and banging into things. Once that's done we can finally clean up the smidges and smears of paint that have landed on tile and wood and clean up the last of the painting tape that is still stuck around random surfaces of the house.
The corner of our front step decided to fall off this spring and leaving it through another freeze-thaw cycle is probably ill-advised. So at some point before fall we'll have to patch it. Ideally we should do it before somebody trips on it and takes their front teeth out. There are spots on the porch where the cement has flaked off and shows exposed rusted metal underneath, maybe we can patch that up at the same time.
The top floor is patiently waiting for our closet rail to be fixed. Then we can get rid of the stand-alone wardrobe rail and rearrange the furniture slightly and hang shelves and otherwise sort out that space. Unfortunately the timing for getting that finished is not under my control but once it's done it shouldn't take more than a day to fix the room up the way we want it.
Once the top floor is set up I can do a final sweep through the basement storage and empty some more boxes. By the time we're done everything down there should have a purpose and everything that doesn't will go away. That will be the last thing on the list because by then everything that is hanging around waiting to be put to use will have been dealt with.
And once the storage room is empty - I can put my bike in it. Then I'll have a project to keep me busy over the winter.
Next up on The Continuing Adventures of the Gin Palace:
Since it's going to be a few years before we can save up the cash to do the next round of renos, we've decided that in the meantime we want to do something about the nicotine-and-grease ambience of our kitchen. This will mean dragging everything out, dis-assembling the shelving, cleaning, sanding & painting, figuring out if we can shore up the rotting counter-top in such a way that it will last for a few years longer and finding some way of filling or covering the big holes in the walls left by the previous rounds of construction. And then dragging everything back in again. This is going to take a few days & pretty much all has to be done at once, so I've booked some time off work just ahead of Queen Vic's birthday so we can get the bulk of the it done when the hardware stores are open. And I'll still have Monday when everything is closed to drink beer and put my feet up afterwards. (Note to self: BUY BEER)
The second-biggest job on my list is dealing with an old cast-iron tub that has been sitting on the front porch under a tarp all winter. It previously lived in the upstairs bathroom and I want to sand it down and then paint it all shiny and pretty and fill it with cushions and stick it in the living room. That will have to be done soon as well, before the weather gets too humid. I'll have to cover up the front window if I'm doing the painting on the porch. The really hard part will be moving it, because holy shit does it weigh a ton so I'm going to be dependent on available help for shifting it. It's missing one of it's feet too, so I need to find a place that sells replacements. On the plus side I can do the work in stages so I can probably get it done over a series of weekends.
Third biggest job is to sand and paint the dormer windows upstairs. Sanding will take a good chunk of a day only because we'll have to move the bed out of the way and possibly hang some sheeting so we don't cover the entire top floor with sawdust. Once that's done painting won't take long and can be done on a different day. So that can also be accomplished over a couple of weekends. No particular deadline on that one other than that paint dries like shit when it's super humid.
Another project with a deadline; replace the screen window in the top floor. This might get expensive, if we put another plastic one in the racoons will just bust through it again. Axel hasn't had any luck finding security mesh, so we may have to get an actual gate. I've seen some gorgeous ones, but they'll have to be small enough to prevent Carlin from getting out and squirrels & birds from getting in. This could be spendy. Most of the work around this one is doing the research & calling around. Maybe if I have time this weekend.
Our back yard needs cleaned up before the pig roast and that's going to take a whole weekend because holy shit. At some point I'll need to figure out what I'm going to do about the fence and maybe do some landscaping or something but that's so far down my list of priorities right now I'm not even going to worry about it yet. Not to mention not within a million miles of our current budget.
Something else I wanted to do before the pig roast was defrost and clean out the chest freezer so I can make some room before I have something like a quarter pig's worth of leftover pork to deal with. There is literally a thick bed of ice at the bottom with stuff frozen in it. There's a shitload of stuff in there though, so we'll need to fill some coolers with ice to store perishables while it defrosts. Fortunately we have a lot of coolers.
Sewing projects in no particular order: I want to make seat cushions for the dormer, a pile of random cushions to fill the tub, covers for all the duvets and insulating curtains for all the windows. No deadlines for any of these, although the curtains should make a small difference in our energy bill.
Velvet Elvis is stumping me. I have tried spray-on boot polish, fabric marker and now the biggest honking sharpie I could find. Nothing is covering up these bald patches. I have even gone shopping online for a replacement painting and had no luck. I guess I'll just keep layering on the paint and hope that it makes a difference eventually. And keep watching ebay in the meantime.
I have to fix a spot where a knot popped out of the upstairs floor, right in the middle of the room where you can't miss it. A small job, I just have to get around to doing it.
Finish the painting. That means taking the hardware off the doors (possibly taking the doors off the walls) to paint them & finishing the stairs and stairwell walls. The stairwell involves heights which is probably the big reason we've been putting it off. There is also some patching of scuffs & holes in some of the walls. I'll probably leave that to second last, after we know we've finished moving the furniture around and banging into things. Once that's done we can finally clean up the smidges and smears of paint that have landed on tile and wood and clean up the last of the painting tape that is still stuck around random surfaces of the house.
The corner of our front step decided to fall off this spring and leaving it through another freeze-thaw cycle is probably ill-advised. So at some point before fall we'll have to patch it. Ideally we should do it before somebody trips on it and takes their front teeth out. There are spots on the porch where the cement has flaked off and shows exposed rusted metal underneath, maybe we can patch that up at the same time.
The top floor is patiently waiting for our closet rail to be fixed. Then we can get rid of the stand-alone wardrobe rail and rearrange the furniture slightly and hang shelves and otherwise sort out that space. Unfortunately the timing for getting that finished is not under my control but once it's done it shouldn't take more than a day to fix the room up the way we want it.
Once the top floor is set up I can do a final sweep through the basement storage and empty some more boxes. By the time we're done everything down there should have a purpose and everything that doesn't will go away. That will be the last thing on the list because by then everything that is hanging around waiting to be put to use will have been dealt with.
And once the storage room is empty - I can put my bike in it. Then I'll have a project to keep me busy over the winter.