Tag: terrible decisions

One more project update

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

I will probably post pictures once everything is completely cleaned up, and especially once we have the basement functional again, but tomorrow is absolutely going to be a book review unless I decide to write two posts. I only got two projects done today, really, other than organizing and cleaning, but man, they were doozies. Both of these have been waiting for literal years to get done, and they took between ten to twenty minutes each. One of them required me to spend some more money, though.

Anyway, look at this thing:

That is a TRX X-mount, used for TRX suspension training. My wife used some wellness funds she had access to to purchase it years ago, and it has been sitting in the basement ever since, because it needs to be carefully anchored into a stud to work properly, and the enormous bolts it came with put me off at first, and then … in the way of such things, it just never got done, and then we had a basement goblin for two years, and, well, now the fucker’s on the wall and it was done in less than ten minutes. I am not actually strong enough to do pull-ups but I put as much of my weight on it as I could and my hands gave out before the mount budged. I have spent a lot of time today uttering the Dad Mantra, “That ain’t goin’ nowhere,” and this was the first thing that Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere.

Speaking of:

Those mirrors were originally in our bathrooms, so at least one of them has been sitting in the basement since the original Terrible Decisions remodel a thousand million years ago. They are mounted to the wall now. They, also, are Not Goin’ Anywhere, although I might put a cleat on the one on the right just to ensure maximum safetiness. Actually, thinking about it, I could put trim around them. That would protect the edges— you’ll note that the top corner of the taller one is already slightly broken, and I’d like these to be as safe as possible.

They are also heavy as fuck, and I had to go to Lowe’s and buy two of these to move them, at which point a nearly-impossible task became something I could do by myself. Worth it.

Our new nightstands also arrived today, and I probably ought to put at least one of them together before bed. For now, though, it’s absolutely video game time.

Wave goodbye

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

They took the precious away today, so I can no longer arbitrarily choose to throw away any object I own. It’s very sad for all of us. There has been a distinct slowdown in the pace of work around the house today, very likely due to both of us finally and thoroughly running out of steam. I did manage a couple of projects, though: I cleared all of the books from my Chicago classroom library out of the basement, some to the dumpster and some to donation and a small number that will be brought to my classroom on Monday. And we put this together:

Bek got some touch-up painting done in the bedroom, too. We still have baseboard to deal with, plus making the garage usable again (mostly an organization/putting everything away project; that cabinet is currently empty) and installing a couple of things in the basement, plus restoring the basement to its former glory as a mostly-unused workout room. The bedroom’s not quite 100% yet either. It’s 5:30 right now; we had an appointment at 3:00 that took an hour and a half or so; I’m hoping that one of those projects gets done by the end of the day. Just one more today will be enough.

Maybe one more update tomorrow. I have a couple of reviews I’ve been sitting on that need to get written, and sooner or later I’m going to have to admit that I’m going back to work in a few days. For right now, the PS5 is calling for the first time in a little while, and I’m going to answer it.

Still going

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

We are still doing shit around here.

Got up at six. By 9:00 I was downstairs wrecking these shelves. They were in the way. I forgot to take a Before picture but I imagine you can imagine.

Then the electrician showed up. The electrician installed all new LED lighting in the basement and tore out a bunch of ballasts that were starting to fail and, in one case, melt. It is astonishing how much friendlier the basement looks now:

(Our basement goblin isn’t completely moved out, so some of that stuff is hers.)

I should find an older picture of the basement with the old lights. My God.

We took my wife’s old desk apart and threw it out:

I built (and by “built,” I mean “put together according to the instructions”) my wife her new desk:

Cable management is coming, I promise. It’s making me twitch too. That desk is adjustable, a sitting/standing desk, which is absolutely ideal for my wife because she’s only 5’ tall. See that little panel on the right there, that you use to adjust it?

Those are the icons for “adjust to standing height” and “adjust to seating height.”

The current state of the dumpster. They’re coming to collect it tomorrow, I’m not exactly sure when:

Oh, we also threw away another old shitty end table and my old desk from when I was a kid, which we were using in the garage. I’m fully expecting the guy to complain that the desk is an inch too high for the bin and to have to cut it in half at the last minute.

Not pictured: I threw away all of my CDs— several hundred of them– which have been sitting on a shelf in the basement for fifteen years. I strongly suspect a lot of them won’t even work any longer and there isn’t a single device in the house that even plays CDs any longer other than some similarly-ancient electronics in the basement that are getting taken to e-waste tomorrow or Friday. I only discovered one CD that I didn’t have an MP3 copy of— a recording by the jazz musician ex-husband of a friend who is no longer alive— and I decided that I didn’t need to go to the trouble to find a way to rip it.

Other tasks today: I beat the bedroom 90% into submission; most things are where they are going to live now, and my leather chair and ottoman have been moved into the library, which is now a little more crowded than I like, but all three of us can sit in there at the same time now. I also reinstalled the rack for the wall shelving that we had to remove when we tore the wall down. And, somehow, more vacuuming. Apparently at some point we ran an extremely busy pet grooming business for like a year, never cleaned up any of the fur, and never noticed until this week. Also I went to the comic shop. It’s Wednesday, after all.

In other news, I am about 120 pages from the end of the 1,232 page book I’m reading, and I’m going to either finish it tonight or die. Not sure which.

Tomorrow: one last frenzy of throwing things away until they take away the dumpster, put together the new cabinet for the garage, a little bit of touch-up painting in the bedroom, install the last bits of baseboard in the bedroom, clean clean clean, organize the garage as much as we can stand, a little more work in the basement, and go visit a showroom for the next bathroom project.

Yeah. There’s another fucking bathroom project. I’ll tell you later.

Still doing stuff

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Let’s start with something I didn’t do. Or, at least, I didn’t do much. I hired a man to come dig up the pole. I did not dig up the pole. I’m a job creator now!

Here is the hole:

I gave this wonderful human $120 for about an hour of work and it is the best $120 I have ever spent, because he not only dug that fucking thing out of the ground but he also beat the shit out of the concrete with a sledgehammer until it broke off the pole. Here is the pole:

You see that shit? They sunk a giant steel pole into thirty inches of concrete, triple reinforced with rebar, to hang up a wood birdhouse. The pole is also completely full of concrete after about a foot past what I had cut off. Like hell am I doing that job. That is absolutely what money is for.

Speaking of overdoing things, we used to have a workbench in the basement:

and also:

See that piece on the left? That’s a four by twelve. That’s a fucking ceiling beam, is what that is. And some crazy bastard decided to repurpose it into a workbench and absolutely overengineer everything. We were going to take the cabinets out too but my wife decided against it, so at the moment, they remain. There was also a quarter-inch thick steel plate, maybe 18” x 72”, as part of the workbench, but I didn’t get a picture of that. It’s in the bin, though!

It’s in there, I promise. You can see part of it in between the closet doors on the lower right there.

Anyway, that’s Day 2 of What I Did On My Spring Break. There are a couple more minor tasks to be done tonight but they don’t involve destruction. The garage cabinet arrived today; we might get around to throwing my wife’s old desk into the bin tonight or we might do it tomorrow. We’ll see.

We have one more full day with the bin and they come to take it away on Thursday. There is a slight chance that we might have them bring us another one. Stay tuned.

In which I shove stuff around

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

Not pictured: the chaos behind me, involving our bed, everything we had to move out of that corner, and a ton of stuff that we used to paint/patch/repaint/prime everything and haven’t moved back into the garage yet. You can see where the wall used to be on the right there; the seams range from, well, that, to nearly invisible depending on the direction and amount of light in the room. It’ll be fine. That missing baseboard in the back corner was already missing and has been since we bought the house. We threw furniture in front of it and didn’t worry about it; the fact that it was literally hidden behind. a wall helped. We assume there used to be some sort of ladies’ vanity there or something like that. Anyway, we cannibalized baseboard from the half-wall we removed to extend out to that point and are going to have to go to Lowes to see if we can get something similar to fit in what’s left of that corner.

Tomorrow we have to figure out how to Tetris our king-sized bed frame, absurdly heavy mattress and adjustable base up against that wall, then start moving everything else to where it’s supposed to be, cleaning years of dust off the floor as we go. My wife has a plan. I am just doing what I’m told. I have, like, two other very minor projects in mind for tomorrow; we can get those done when we get annoyed at moving stuff around in the bedroom.

Also, mental note: find a rug. God, I hate that floor.

In which I destroy stuff

On By Luther M. SilerIn life1 Comment

We have a dumpster coming next week, and I have never been more excited about anything in my entire life. We are going to be tearing apart or taking down all sorts of shit that has been slightly annoying but not annoying enough to actually deal with during the fifteen years we have lived in this house. This metal post in the back yard has never had a birdhouse on it. You can see the rotten remains of it on the top part of the post on the ground back there, but we never bothered to do the work to tear the thing out because it’s cemented in place. It’s just been sitting there being an eyesore. Well, I cut a couple of chunks off of it today in preparation for either cutting it flush to the ground or digging the cement chunk out next week— I wanted to make sure the blade for my reciprocating saw would actually cut through the thing, and it looks like the answer’s yes.

Meanwhile, the size of modern cars means that my Kia and my wife’s car only somewhat fit in the garage, and these cabinets have been in my way for years. I tore the doors off today and we’ll take the cabinets down tomorrow. To the garbage with you! We’re going to order a standalone cabinet or two from Lowe’s that will use the space better and actually allow me to get out of my car without turning sideways.

There’s a workbench we’ve never used in the basement that’s going to go too, and we’ll finally repaint the bedroom tomorrow and start rearranging in there. We’ve got electricians coming in for new lighting in the basement, too, and we might tear down some paneling down there too just for the hell of it.

Soooooo psyched.

I am in so much trouble

On By Luther M. SilerIn Geek, idiocyLeave a comment

I put myself on an RSVP list for this enormous bastard today, which just means that they’ll let me know when it’s for sale, which will be good, because it’ll take a while to sell the house so that I can afford it.

Be sure to note the tiny FF members and the Silver Surfer, for scale.

Let there be light

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy5 Comments

Much was accomplished today. Like, no bullshit. We got a lot done today.

The before pictures, keeping in mind that we’d already put a new light in the library. These lights are so goddamn old, guys:

The one on the table was the light in the entryway, and I want you to pay particular attention to that one, because it has fucking snowflakes on it for some reason, a thing I only ever noticed when I had to change bulbs and managed to annoy me anew every single time I had to do that job.

After, and yes, that’s a different light in the library, as we took the one we put in the library earlier this week and moved it to the entryway. The others are in the kitchen, bedroom hallway, and hall bathroom, respectively. The hall bathroom is the Bathroom of Terrible Decisions, a renovation project that has been ongoing for something like eight years and may actually be finished for real this weekend.

The after pictures:

The lights in the kitchen and the library match, the hallway lighting is hugely improved, and there are no longer fucking snowflakes on the light in my entryway. I am particularly pleased with the lights in the bathroom, which look stellar. The rest of the house feels astonishingly bright now, and there may be another project coming to add some dimmer switches, as the only place in the house with one is in the library.

I have had my arms above my head all day, and my shoulders are killing me.

Worth it.