Productivity!
We received a shipment of round tuits this weekend, and promptly used 'em up.
Saturday, we hosted a dinner for one of our dinner groups. This meant giving the main floor a fairly thorough cleaning, from the quarter-inch of dust behind the TV to the season's worth of salty mud tracked in through the front and back doors. And of course we had to give the kitchen a good scrubbing so that we could trash it again with our cooking and entertaining.
'Twas a Caribbean themed dinner, picked largely because Lemur wanted to try out some of the recipes from An Embarrassment of Mangoes, which was a book she got from the sailing school that Fish and I used last spring. We did a chicken curry with dhal puri roti, which is a labor-intensive Trinidadian dish. Really yummy, though, as was the food our guests brought along.
And if the full day of cleaning and cooking weren't enough, we continued the insanity yesterday. One of the subjects that came up during dinner was the home improvement projects each of us were working on or planning. Lemur and I mentioned that we've never been crazy about the wallpaper in our kitchen, though we've been living with it since we bought the place in '99. So yesterday, while Leems was at the yarn shop (her regular Sunday appointment), I peeled the wallpaper off the kitchen walls. It wasn't too stubborn, to tell the truth. The face peeled right off, and the exposed backing paper soaked up water quite readily, turning the paste all gooey and making it pretty easy to scrape off. Getting all the leftover paste off the walls took quite a bit of wiping, though. I probably spent more time at that than I did the actual paper removal.
But it's done now, and I've spackled in the nail holes and rough patches left behind from decades of kitchen remodels. I'm hoping that after some sanding and touch-up work tonight, I'll have walls that are smooth enough for paint. I picked up a gallon of primer, so I can take care of that one night this week, or perhaps Saturday. We already have a color scheme in mind, so it's just a matter of going to the paint store to pick out the exact shades we need. With a bit of luck, we'll have a happy kitchen by this time next week.
While I was working on the walls, Leems (after returning from the yarn shop) cleaned out the linen closet and the medicine cabinet. Scrubbed them both out, and sorted through a decade of crap. We've got a load of stuff for the Goodwill, and a couple more bags that went into the trash, and what's left fits quite neatly in the space we have. 'Twas a real chore, but I suppose it's easier than moving into a bigger house.
And through it all, we stopped every hour or so to fold another load of laundry. So it was a very productive day. Though I'll admit that a couple hundred steps up the stepstool have my legs complaining a bit this morning.
Now, if I can just keep up this momentum...
Saturday, we hosted a dinner for one of our dinner groups. This meant giving the main floor a fairly thorough cleaning, from the quarter-inch of dust behind the TV to the season's worth of salty mud tracked in through the front and back doors. And of course we had to give the kitchen a good scrubbing so that we could trash it again with our cooking and entertaining.
'Twas a Caribbean themed dinner, picked largely because Lemur wanted to try out some of the recipes from An Embarrassment of Mangoes, which was a book she got from the sailing school that Fish and I used last spring. We did a chicken curry with dhal puri roti, which is a labor-intensive Trinidadian dish. Really yummy, though, as was the food our guests brought along.
And if the full day of cleaning and cooking weren't enough, we continued the insanity yesterday. One of the subjects that came up during dinner was the home improvement projects each of us were working on or planning. Lemur and I mentioned that we've never been crazy about the wallpaper in our kitchen, though we've been living with it since we bought the place in '99. So yesterday, while Leems was at the yarn shop (her regular Sunday appointment), I peeled the wallpaper off the kitchen walls. It wasn't too stubborn, to tell the truth. The face peeled right off, and the exposed backing paper soaked up water quite readily, turning the paste all gooey and making it pretty easy to scrape off. Getting all the leftover paste off the walls took quite a bit of wiping, though. I probably spent more time at that than I did the actual paper removal.
But it's done now, and I've spackled in the nail holes and rough patches left behind from decades of kitchen remodels. I'm hoping that after some sanding and touch-up work tonight, I'll have walls that are smooth enough for paint. I picked up a gallon of primer, so I can take care of that one night this week, or perhaps Saturday. We already have a color scheme in mind, so it's just a matter of going to the paint store to pick out the exact shades we need. With a bit of luck, we'll have a happy kitchen by this time next week.
While I was working on the walls, Leems (after returning from the yarn shop) cleaned out the linen closet and the medicine cabinet. Scrubbed them both out, and sorted through a decade of crap. We've got a load of stuff for the Goodwill, and a couple more bags that went into the trash, and what's left fits quite neatly in the space we have. 'Twas a real chore, but I suppose it's easier than moving into a bigger house.
And through it all, we stopped every hour or so to fold another load of laundry. So it was a very productive day. Though I'll admit that a couple hundred steps up the stepstool have my legs complaining a bit this morning.
Now, if I can just keep up this momentum...