Donia’s Blog

I have a long list of things I would like to get done while Paige is napping, and blogging is not on that list. Oh well.

My torn hamstring made a very quick recovery last week. Seth helped out a lot around the house, and I was able to take it easy just to make sure everything was nice and healed. Several items I had ordered for little projects around the house all arrived last week, so I was itching to do all those projects. So I did.

• I took the mirror from our downstairs bathroom to the glass store to have them trim off the bottom inch of it where the foil has peeled off the back. I dropped it off, went to Wal-Mart, and picked it up on my way home. The reason I had to go to the glass store was to pick up the new trim piece for our shower door. (But that will get its own bullet.) I knew I was going to have to fill in the holes from the existing brackets, paint, and install new brackets, but it ended up being a bit more of a process than I expected. I also had to paint over some mildew on the wall where the mirror was, and buy some double-sided foam tape to mount it back up with. And having a mirror just sitting around the house doesn’t make me comfortable. So I got all that done as quickly as I could, working on it Saturday night and Sunday morning.
• The light fixture I special ordered from Home Depot arrived (earlier than expected), so I was able to pick that up and buy the miscellaneous stuff needed for the mirror project all at the same time. It took a good hour on Sunday afternoon to install it. It’s a (very plain) chandelier to replace the brass monstrosity in our “office”, which is really the formal dining room of the house. There is a lot of trimming of wires and bending of links to contend with. Once it was up, I asked Seth if I should zip-strip it up higher. We had done that to our previous one so we didn’t knock our heads on it all the time. He said to leave it and see how it went. On Monday, Paige fell off her chair at the kitchen table, and I stood up from the computer really fast to go get her. I clanged my head on the pointy end of the chandelier. Then a little while later I stood up again and ran right into it. Time to zip-strip it up, so I did. If you’re taller than about 6′, you might clang your head on it. Just warning you.
• The new blinds for the playroom (which is actually the living room of the house) arrived last week, also. The existing pleated shades would not lower very easily. Guests (family members who used to be forced to sleep in that room) were getting irate. I was fed up with them, but kept putting off buying them for some reason. Sunday evening I took down the old pleated shades and put up the new faux wood 2″ blinds. They’re fancy because they’re called “faux” instead of “fakey”. But I like them, and unless you walk up and start bending them, you can’t tell they are fake (or faux, for that matter). The cords are really long, though, so I have to make yet another trip to a hardware store to install some cord winders on the window molding. I do so love to drill.

I am still in the process of putting up the new shower trim piece. I removed the old one this morning and still have more scraping of old caulk to do. I have done an awful lot of work on that shower. It had mildew problems at the top (where there isn’t any tile), so a few years ago I put 3 coats of Kilz primer and 3 coats of mildew-proof paint on that area. No more mildew! The previous owners had been a little caulk happy, and that caulk was a little mildew happy, so I had to get scrape happy and take it all off. I have also removed and re-installed the shower door, but for the life of me I can’t remember why I did that. It probably involved mildew. Doesn’t everything? Remind me to tell you about the black blob… oh, you don’t want to know.

And funnily enough, my hamstring has started hurting again. Perhaps I need a little bit more rest? I just can’t sit still, though.