Adventures in Homeowning
What a day yesterday!
I finally tackled putting the baseboards back on the wall. I had removed them to put down the flooring and decided to give them a fresh coat of paint before putting them back on. They're all painted now, a fresh bright white (we'll see how long that lasts) and then it was time to get them back on the walls. The thought of nailing them all back in by hand was discouraging though. Luckily, I have friends who are actually experienced on the DYI front and own their own tools. One friend loaned me an air compressor and another loaned me a nail gun.
Nail guns are scary things!
I was terrified every time I pulled the trigger that somehow I was going to end up impaled in the forehead by a nail. Don't ask me how that could happen, but dang, that's a lot of power shooting out a pointy object. And sometimes there would be sparks, every time I had to nail a corner piece into the metal. *shudder* Well, it was a new experience for me and I am happy to report that I prevailed! All my surviving baseboards are back on the wall. Oh yes, not all of them survived. My first casualty wasn't too bad because I was able to glue it back together. It doesn't look spectacular, but oh well. It's the longest baseboard in the house and I am NOT replacing it. The others were all stupid rounded corner pieces. I know you have to have something like that to go around our fancy rounded corners but they were a pain to get off, a pain to get back on, and now I have to find a couple of new ones to replace the one that split and the two that the kids ran off with. That means another trip to Home Depot this morning. Fun stuff.
The bigger disaster yesterday was an ant invasion of the pantry. Terence tackled it the first time, unloading the top shelf to clean it off. The little menaces had also gotten into the cabinet where I store the pots and pans, under the fridge, and under the stove. Terence did the dirty work of pulling out the contents of the cabinet and cleaning under the fridge and stove. Actually I thought he had solved the ant problem and all I would have to do was put the jumble of food and dishes away. But no.
By evening I discovered that the ants had returned and were migrating onto the other pantry shelves. But I couldn't figure out where they were coming from! It took me more than an hour of squashing ants and trying to spot where they were reemerging from before I ended up checking the inside of the pantry door frame. This was tricky-- I had to use a makeup mirror to see, but I learned that the inside of that doorway was never sealed. The wall and frame were coated in desert dust, a stubborn layer that has probably been building over the last five-plus years. It was also the escape hatch (or entrance?) of the ants.
Now it is all caulked and hopefully that is the end of ants marching straight from the wall into our food.
The tragedy was almost an afterthought. Terence had discovered yesterday that on the floor in the back we had a can of tomato paste explode. He checked the dates and realized that all of the stock of tomato paste expired back in 2008. Oops. I had kind of forgotten about it because I don't really use it any more. So when I was organizing the rest of the pantry food I figured I'd check a few dates just to be on the safe side.
Fully one half of all my canned food had expired!!!! And unlike tomato paste, this was food I actually use on a regular basis. I knew I'd been bad about rotating lately but not that bad!! B and I held a funeral procession of can-carrying to the garage. I kept some of the only recently-expired stuff, depending on how the can looked, but it was still a lot of food that had to be tossed. I wanted to cry. Here I thought I was doing reasonably decent on food storage and now I have a ton to replace.
Well, live and learn. That's what running a household seems to be about.
I finally tackled putting the baseboards back on the wall. I had removed them to put down the flooring and decided to give them a fresh coat of paint before putting them back on. They're all painted now, a fresh bright white (we'll see how long that lasts) and then it was time to get them back on the walls. The thought of nailing them all back in by hand was discouraging though. Luckily, I have friends who are actually experienced on the DYI front and own their own tools. One friend loaned me an air compressor and another loaned me a nail gun.
Nail guns are scary things!
I was terrified every time I pulled the trigger that somehow I was going to end up impaled in the forehead by a nail. Don't ask me how that could happen, but dang, that's a lot of power shooting out a pointy object. And sometimes there would be sparks, every time I had to nail a corner piece into the metal. *shudder* Well, it was a new experience for me and I am happy to report that I prevailed! All my surviving baseboards are back on the wall. Oh yes, not all of them survived. My first casualty wasn't too bad because I was able to glue it back together. It doesn't look spectacular, but oh well. It's the longest baseboard in the house and I am NOT replacing it. The others were all stupid rounded corner pieces. I know you have to have something like that to go around our fancy rounded corners but they were a pain to get off, a pain to get back on, and now I have to find a couple of new ones to replace the one that split and the two that the kids ran off with. That means another trip to Home Depot this morning. Fun stuff.
The bigger disaster yesterday was an ant invasion of the pantry. Terence tackled it the first time, unloading the top shelf to clean it off. The little menaces had also gotten into the cabinet where I store the pots and pans, under the fridge, and under the stove. Terence did the dirty work of pulling out the contents of the cabinet and cleaning under the fridge and stove. Actually I thought he had solved the ant problem and all I would have to do was put the jumble of food and dishes away. But no.
By evening I discovered that the ants had returned and were migrating onto the other pantry shelves. But I couldn't figure out where they were coming from! It took me more than an hour of squashing ants and trying to spot where they were reemerging from before I ended up checking the inside of the pantry door frame. This was tricky-- I had to use a makeup mirror to see, but I learned that the inside of that doorway was never sealed. The wall and frame were coated in desert dust, a stubborn layer that has probably been building over the last five-plus years. It was also the escape hatch (or entrance?) of the ants.
Now it is all caulked and hopefully that is the end of ants marching straight from the wall into our food.
The tragedy was almost an afterthought. Terence had discovered yesterday that on the floor in the back we had a can of tomato paste explode. He checked the dates and realized that all of the stock of tomato paste expired back in 2008. Oops. I had kind of forgotten about it because I don't really use it any more. So when I was organizing the rest of the pantry food I figured I'd check a few dates just to be on the safe side.
Fully one half of all my canned food had expired!!!! And unlike tomato paste, this was food I actually use on a regular basis. I knew I'd been bad about rotating lately but not that bad!! B and I held a funeral procession of can-carrying to the garage. I kept some of the only recently-expired stuff, depending on how the can looked, but it was still a lot of food that had to be tossed. I wanted to cry. Here I thought I was doing reasonably decent on food storage and now I have a ton to replace.
Well, live and learn. That's what running a household seems to be about.
Comments
Congrats on finishing your baseboards.