The labors of Labor Day
I am still waiting to have my Labor Day holiday weekend a week after the fact! My office actually gave us off the Friday before Labor Day so I had a 4 day weekend but it was not going to be a holiday, since I needed to use that time to get my master bathroom redone before I started rehearsals for Legends.
I had already prepped the bathroom walls before the holiday weekend, stripping the wallpaper and sanding the walls - I did that for several evenings when I got home from work. Friday morning I tackled texturing the walls with the texture paint, and at the same time I had an electrician friend come over to install 2 ceiling fans in my kitchen. I had finished the texturing by lunchtime and Andy had gotten the wiring done and hung one fan as we were surprised to see a sudden unexpected downpour happen. Then all of a sudden a huge boom sound happened just outside and all the power went off in the condo. It seems one of the power lines had blown thanks to the thunder storm. Thank goodness I had finished the texturing before my condo was plunged into darkness. Andy was actually able to finish hanging the other ceiling fan without power, but we couldn't test it because we didn't have any power. He promised that he would come back in the event that after the power was restored the fans didn't work right and then he left.
It was a hot, humid day and with no a/c, the condo started to get stuffy, so I took Callisto out on the patio with me and I worked a little on the laptop til the battery started getting low. Being out on my patio by the pool, though, I did have a chance to meet some of my neighbors since people started coming out on their balconies when they arrived home in the afternoon to no lights in their condos. Hours later, there was still no sign of the power being restored, so I jumped in the car to go get a hot meal and saw our maintenance guys out by the power lines and asked when we were gonna get power. The utility company had been called hours before but still had not shown up and they were waiting and waiting in the meantime. Finally after 7 pm, my power was back on and I was able to see that my new ceiling fans in the kitchen worked great and that the texturing in the bathroom was drying nicely.
Saturday morning I was up early to do the base coat in the bathroom, and then I took Seven for her annual check-up at the vet. Luckily, she was announced to be in good health for being a middle-aged kitty. Sadly, the checkup Callisto had several weeks earlier was not as lucky, since at 9 1/2 years old, Callisto was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease - that is something that will become more difficult to deal with in the coming months and years.
After taking Seven home from the vet, I ran some errands and by the time I got home and did a few more things around the house, the bathroom was ready for its top coat. So I got out the expensive Ralph Lauren ragging roller ($10 for an f-ing paint roller because it is designed specifically to create the ragging paint effect) and began to 'rag-paint.' And it looked pretty darn cool! I was quite pleased with how the bathroom looked when I was done.
Sunday was house cleaning and putting all the new fixtures in the bathroom and Monday was a small Labor Day party with a few friends. When folks arrived in the afternoon, everyone had brought food and Lisa wanted to keep a couple of things in the oven to keep them warm til it was time to eat; however, when we tried to turn the stove on, it wouldn't work. It was then that I realized that the clock on the electric oven wasn't working and it had worked fine til Friday - so it was either due to the power outage or the wiring work on Friday. After lots of teasing from everyone that it took me 3 days to realize that my stove didn't work because I never cook, we used the grill to cook everything we had originally planned to cook on the stove.
Tuesday I put in a call to Andy to have him come over on Thursday to see if we could figure out why the stove didn't work after the power came back on. Then I got ready for Evil Twin John's return from upstate NY to show off the work I'd done on the condo. As I was raising my vinyl mini-blinds to open the shades in the living room before he arrived, the entire mini-blinds ripped completely out of the window frame and came crashing down within an inch of my head! Not exactly the effect I was hoping for when he got there. Despite that unexpected turn, he arrived at the condo and loved everything I'd managed to get done while he was gone all summer and was impressed by the new bathroom.
As for my living room window, the mini-blinds were dead so I had to hang up a couple of sheets to cover the open window because I wasn't going to have time to put up any new window dressing til Sunday, thanks to rehearsals starting for Legends. But later in the week, I picked up some great faux wood blinds at Home Depot and Evil Twin came over on Sunday to help me install them. They look much nicer than the vinyl mini-blinds and are not likely to nearly decapitate me when I try to raise them - so I think that is a win-win. And Andy came over on Thursday and got the stove working again (it was a loose wire in the breaker box, which ironically had nothing to do with either the power outage or the ceiling fan installation) so I have a working stove again.
I'm still waiting for my holiday weekend, though.
I had already prepped the bathroom walls before the holiday weekend, stripping the wallpaper and sanding the walls - I did that for several evenings when I got home from work. Friday morning I tackled texturing the walls with the texture paint, and at the same time I had an electrician friend come over to install 2 ceiling fans in my kitchen. I had finished the texturing by lunchtime and Andy had gotten the wiring done and hung one fan as we were surprised to see a sudden unexpected downpour happen. Then all of a sudden a huge boom sound happened just outside and all the power went off in the condo. It seems one of the power lines had blown thanks to the thunder storm. Thank goodness I had finished the texturing before my condo was plunged into darkness. Andy was actually able to finish hanging the other ceiling fan without power, but we couldn't test it because we didn't have any power. He promised that he would come back in the event that after the power was restored the fans didn't work right and then he left.
It was a hot, humid day and with no a/c, the condo started to get stuffy, so I took Callisto out on the patio with me and I worked a little on the laptop til the battery started getting low. Being out on my patio by the pool, though, I did have a chance to meet some of my neighbors since people started coming out on their balconies when they arrived home in the afternoon to no lights in their condos. Hours later, there was still no sign of the power being restored, so I jumped in the car to go get a hot meal and saw our maintenance guys out by the power lines and asked when we were gonna get power. The utility company had been called hours before but still had not shown up and they were waiting and waiting in the meantime. Finally after 7 pm, my power was back on and I was able to see that my new ceiling fans in the kitchen worked great and that the texturing in the bathroom was drying nicely.
Saturday morning I was up early to do the base coat in the bathroom, and then I took Seven for her annual check-up at the vet. Luckily, she was announced to be in good health for being a middle-aged kitty. Sadly, the checkup Callisto had several weeks earlier was not as lucky, since at 9 1/2 years old, Callisto was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease - that is something that will become more difficult to deal with in the coming months and years.
After taking Seven home from the vet, I ran some errands and by the time I got home and did a few more things around the house, the bathroom was ready for its top coat. So I got out the expensive Ralph Lauren ragging roller ($10 for an f-ing paint roller because it is designed specifically to create the ragging paint effect) and began to 'rag-paint.' And it looked pretty darn cool! I was quite pleased with how the bathroom looked when I was done.
Sunday was house cleaning and putting all the new fixtures in the bathroom and Monday was a small Labor Day party with a few friends. When folks arrived in the afternoon, everyone had brought food and Lisa wanted to keep a couple of things in the oven to keep them warm til it was time to eat; however, when we tried to turn the stove on, it wouldn't work. It was then that I realized that the clock on the electric oven wasn't working and it had worked fine til Friday - so it was either due to the power outage or the wiring work on Friday. After lots of teasing from everyone that it took me 3 days to realize that my stove didn't work because I never cook, we used the grill to cook everything we had originally planned to cook on the stove.
Tuesday I put in a call to Andy to have him come over on Thursday to see if we could figure out why the stove didn't work after the power came back on. Then I got ready for Evil Twin John's return from upstate NY to show off the work I'd done on the condo. As I was raising my vinyl mini-blinds to open the shades in the living room before he arrived, the entire mini-blinds ripped completely out of the window frame and came crashing down within an inch of my head! Not exactly the effect I was hoping for when he got there. Despite that unexpected turn, he arrived at the condo and loved everything I'd managed to get done while he was gone all summer and was impressed by the new bathroom.
As for my living room window, the mini-blinds were dead so I had to hang up a couple of sheets to cover the open window because I wasn't going to have time to put up any new window dressing til Sunday, thanks to rehearsals starting for Legends. But later in the week, I picked up some great faux wood blinds at Home Depot and Evil Twin came over on Sunday to help me install them. They look much nicer than the vinyl mini-blinds and are not likely to nearly decapitate me when I try to raise them - so I think that is a win-win. And Andy came over on Thursday and got the stove working again (it was a loose wire in the breaker box, which ironically had nothing to do with either the power outage or the ceiling fan installation) so I have a working stove again.
I'm still waiting for my holiday weekend, though.