cupboard love (/sarcasm)
I have been working my way gradually around the kitchen cleaning out cupboards and evicting beetles over the last couple of weeks (it's tiring and annoying and I have Zelda to play, so I've been doing it a bit at a time rather than as a single massive clean-up, which possibly means they're moving in behind me as I go, but honestly I can't.) And on Sunday I reached the large crockery/booze cupboard under the kitchen counter, and moved everything out and cleaned it obsessively, and boxed up things I never use to take to the charity shop, and rearranged it all neatly, and it was extremely satisfying.
And ten minutes later, when I had returned to my righteous tea-drinking and Zelda-playing, there was a weird, muffled, sliding crash from the kitchen, and I did a reflexive button-mash and died (again) by falling off a rock into a mudpool (sidebar: fucking Trial of Wood), and swore, and went to see what had happened. And nicely-distributed selection of the little plastic brackets holding the shelf in the newly-cleaned cupboard had popped out of their holes, dropping and tilting the shelf so that everything slid down to the end. Mercifully nothing actually broke, because that was the booze end, and there's a fair amount of liqueur as well as wine in there, and the mess would have been epically sticky. So I had to take everything out of those cupboards again, as a result of which my kitchen has spent two days looking like this:
I know these damned shelf-brackets of old, they randomly pop out all the time, they're tiny cheapy plastic things, and have worn their holes too large because they're drilled into chipboard and don't have any sort of plug or housing. And when I texted the landlord to check if he's okay with me getting a damned carpenter to put proper supports in, he remained true to his slightly kludgy DIY ethic and said, oh, no, you don't need to do that, you can put paper around the stud, or glue it. So I said, fine, if you're okay with me gluing the little buggers in, so be it.
So I have propped the shelf up on random bits of thing, and carefully collected the supports, and wrapped every stud in paper (bits of printer label, so they stick), and then glued the hell out of it with copious quantities of wood glue, with which I managed to refrain from sticking Jyn to the woodwork as she had to explore the nice new empty shelf expanse and have her nose in everything I was doing. And after I let it dry overnight, I lowered the shelf carefully back onto the supports this morning, and nothing popped off. As I should bloody well hope, after all that, it should be rock solid. I have just finished rearranging everything (again!), and my kitchen is clear, and the counter open, and I propose to go and make myself coffee walnut cake by way of self-congratulation, and also reward for having spent the last week checking board schedules, and also fortification for the next three days of exam committees.
Several things have emerged from this:
1. The damned landlord half-arses half his renovations, it's maddening. Everything's done cheaply and not quite well.
2. Having clutter all over my countertops and table for two days appears to make me very twitchy and slightly grumpy, I hate clutter.
3. My overall fitness is actually a lot better than it was a couple of months ago, apparently my not very serious exercise routine over the last six weeks or so is actually working in terms of being able to crawl around and get up off the floor and angle myself into cupboards to hammer recalcitrant shelf supports.
4. Jyn was really enjoying the empty shelves, while I was putting everything back she was seething around my ankles and growling at me!
5. I need to find a worthy recipient for all that booze, I can't actually drink at the moment, even a glass of wine gives me a serious headache the next day, and there's only so much I can use for cooking. And it's not as if I can entertain, because pandemic. Sigh.
I was very close to simply hiring the next door neighbour to do all of the above, it was a pain, but clearly sheer bloody-mindedness prevailed. I am triumphant. And also annoyed. This entry has been crossposted from my Dreamwidth blog at https://freckles-and-doubt.dreamwidth.org/. The comment action is all over there, and supports OpenID.
And ten minutes later, when I had returned to my righteous tea-drinking and Zelda-playing, there was a weird, muffled, sliding crash from the kitchen, and I did a reflexive button-mash and died (again) by falling off a rock into a mudpool (sidebar: fucking Trial of Wood), and swore, and went to see what had happened. And nicely-distributed selection of the little plastic brackets holding the shelf in the newly-cleaned cupboard had popped out of their holes, dropping and tilting the shelf so that everything slid down to the end. Mercifully nothing actually broke, because that was the booze end, and there's a fair amount of liqueur as well as wine in there, and the mess would have been epically sticky. So I had to take everything out of those cupboards again, as a result of which my kitchen has spent two days looking like this:
I know these damned shelf-brackets of old, they randomly pop out all the time, they're tiny cheapy plastic things, and have worn their holes too large because they're drilled into chipboard and don't have any sort of plug or housing. And when I texted the landlord to check if he's okay with me getting a damned carpenter to put proper supports in, he remained true to his slightly kludgy DIY ethic and said, oh, no, you don't need to do that, you can put paper around the stud, or glue it. So I said, fine, if you're okay with me gluing the little buggers in, so be it.
So I have propped the shelf up on random bits of thing, and carefully collected the supports, and wrapped every stud in paper (bits of printer label, so they stick), and then glued the hell out of it with copious quantities of wood glue, with which I managed to refrain from sticking Jyn to the woodwork as she had to explore the nice new empty shelf expanse and have her nose in everything I was doing. And after I let it dry overnight, I lowered the shelf carefully back onto the supports this morning, and nothing popped off. As I should bloody well hope, after all that, it should be rock solid. I have just finished rearranging everything (again!), and my kitchen is clear, and the counter open, and I propose to go and make myself coffee walnut cake by way of self-congratulation, and also reward for having spent the last week checking board schedules, and also fortification for the next three days of exam committees.
Several things have emerged from this:
1. The damned landlord half-arses half his renovations, it's maddening. Everything's done cheaply and not quite well.
2. Having clutter all over my countertops and table for two days appears to make me very twitchy and slightly grumpy, I hate clutter.
3. My overall fitness is actually a lot better than it was a couple of months ago, apparently my not very serious exercise routine over the last six weeks or so is actually working in terms of being able to crawl around and get up off the floor and angle myself into cupboards to hammer recalcitrant shelf supports.
4. Jyn was really enjoying the empty shelves, while I was putting everything back she was seething around my ankles and growling at me!
5. I need to find a worthy recipient for all that booze, I can't actually drink at the moment, even a glass of wine gives me a serious headache the next day, and there's only so much I can use for cooking. And it's not as if I can entertain, because pandemic. Sigh.
I was very close to simply hiring the next door neighbour to do all of the above, it was a pain, but clearly sheer bloody-mindedness prevailed. I am triumphant. And also annoyed. This entry has been crossposted from my Dreamwidth blog at https://freckles-and-doubt.dreamwidth.org/. The comment action is all over there, and supports OpenID.