Friday, October 24, 2008

There was a mouse in the house!

In Erin's bed to be precise. With some belated assistance from the cat, I caught it and threw it outside. I'll blog the full amusing story later - but any suggestions for vermin control that we can use with a cat in the house would be greatly appreciated...

Tuesday, October 21, 2008

Stripping is not my forte.

Well, now that I have your attention... Ha.

So due to an unfortunate incident with my automatically locking house doors, the brain (my contractor, mentioned in the previous post) wasn't able to get much work done (and I hadn't hired the brawn on Fri as she was already booked). However, the brain had put up a bunch of paint stripper on the doorway in the dining room, so I had to take it off on Saturday. I think I may be missing a trick, because after hours of stripping, two coats of the stripper, and melted paint everywhere - that doorframe still looks painted. As do my gloves and the tools I was using. Argh. I left it, the brain and the brawn will be back next Tues and can hopefully rescue me.

Erin and I also spent a couple hours working in the backyard. We cleaned it up, did a bunch of weeding, and planted the two baby dogwoods that Max got for me. Translation - we threw out a ton of cat poop, stepped in some (byebye work shoes, you served me well), and made many new dirt patches which the cats were happy to poop in right in front of us. I think I'm going to try the cayenne pepper trick my friend told me about - apparently some cats ignore it, but some really don't like the smell, so maybe we can reduce the amount of yard pooping... Well, if nothing else, at least they seem to bury the poo in the dirt patches, vs leaving it on top of the grass. Yucky.

Monday, October 13, 2008

Warmer and dustier

Much work was done last week - and none of it by me. At least, none of it by my muscles. The wallet is exhausted from the workout though.

On Wed the insulation guys came. Despite being rather late (shocking), they were friendly and efficient. I now have an insulated attic and two new roof vents. The insulation is pretty cool - as environmentally friendly as fiberglass can be, with no added chemicals. It looks like the fake snow stuff you see in Christmas displays at the mall. I thought it was pretty well contained - until Erin came home and noticed it was falling out of her cabinet, where the drainpipe comes through. So much for keeping the cat out of the way!

On Friday I hired a couple contractors - one of my rugby coaches (the brain), and a rugby friend (the brawn. This is funny when you know the rugby friend. Sorry Hoop. You're huge too :P). They did some outstanding work in the dining room and the downstairs bathroom. The drywall is finished in the dining room, and the bad wall has the first skim coat on it. The bathroom fan now works, and they scraped off a bunch of the loose paint. AND - there's dust everywhere. We tried to clean, but I think the dust is still winning. There will be more on Fri when the next phase begins... But so nice to see progress in that room! Pics soon, thanks to Hoop.