Nov 13 - projects of my own

Someone was supposed to show up and put some more final touches on the kitchen.  I didn't sweat it, too busy with my own stuff.

Charlie did come for a chunk of the afternoon, installing the new bread drawer (soft close vs sliders -- very nice); boxing in the vent hood pipe (for code) and some other items.  The punch list is getting very short.  He also brought the glass doors and successfully installed those on the stand-alone corner cabinet but unsuccessfully on the corner by the laundry room.  They were out by 1/8" so he couldn't get the doors to line up properly.  He took those back to the shop. 

I went to HD and returned three bags of small parts, mostly plumbing.  The returns lady was humorless; I guess that's what happens at 7am.  It was more than $100 worth of stuff and I didn't need any more spare parts ! 

Of course I then spent more than that before I left.  Determined to improve the lighting up high where we have the Mexican masks, I bought new fluorescent fixtures -- 2x4' and 2x2' -- to replace the 3x4' existing fixtures.  The 3x4' ones used to fit but once we cut that corner off at the garage to open up the kitchen doorway, they don't.  In the process I also "upgraded" to T5 fixtures, which are much more efficient.  The fixtures are smaller and the tubes are only about 1/2" in diameter. 

It took a while to re-wire that area and it was painful.  In this case I mean pain as in pain.  I was working at shoulder height which just doesn't work with this shoulder.  I was reminded of the "wait and see" discussion on Monday with the ortho.  Hmmm.  So, I changed ladders so that I could get above the work.  The fixtures are now mounted horizontally on the face trim so that wires can run underneath -- wires for both the fluorescents as well as the masks.  It's much neater looking now, when I'm looking at it from the loft.  I still need to get up there and a) paint the face trim and b) paint the surface of that bulkhead.  Underneath that bulkhead, by the way, is garage.

That all took much longer than I expected and the morning was gone. I had lunch and then started into caulking.  By the end of the day all the baseboard was done, mostly to my satisfaction but not as quick a process as I'd like if I was good at this.  I still have the wall sides of the door trim to do.  I also have a piece of 3.25" that I picked up at HD for that pocket door to the upstairs bedrooms.  I'll get to that today ... except that now that I turn around and look at it, I really ought to wait until I've replaced the hardwood which has to come after the stair treads are installed ... ok, I'll wait.  I've convinced myself.  It really doesn't make sense to do otherwise.

I've now got a lot of paint touch-up to do.  That's a project for this morning.  If that goes quickly, I might do some wall-side door trim caulking.

I was so happy that I'd gone for a bike ride the day before.  The wind had been upgraded from 20+ mph to 33 mph and it was blowing like a banshee, however banshees blow.  The ideal thing would have been to have Sandy drive me north to St. Augustine and ride the wind back !  It's still blowing out there this morning, so I don't know if I'll ride today or not.  There's a limit to the amount of frustration that I want to put myself through !

Onward ?  Yes.