An Army, Long, The Junk Shuffle
As expected my weekend has been pretty stuffed with precious few breaks. On Friday night after eating pizza I turned my attention to the office. I set my sights on getting my old desk ripped down, out to the curb and replaced by the glass desk that has sat unused in the office for a year and a half. My desk had a lot of shit on and in it. I used it as an opportunity to do some more culling, tossing out things that had no viable use anymore.
After clearing the desk getting it out to the curb actually was not that bad, a well utilized hand truck can make all things possible. Ripping out the old desk was actually a little easier than figuring out how to reestablish my core workstation on the new smaller glass desk. I probably spent a solid hour getting everything hooked back up in a way that was acceptable to me. The good news is when it comes time to move things for interior painting next weekend this desk has wheels. Unplugging a couple things from the wall should be all that is needed to make my computer portable.
Elsa was not a fan of me removing the old desk as she always liked hiding under there by my feet. I have come up with a workaround with the new desk that allows her to go under there if she wants although the experience is clearly not the same.
I set my alarm for 6:15 Saturday morning in anticipation of Frank’s painting crew. When I moved my Tesla out of the garage there was already a car in the driveway with some of the crew even though it was only 6:45. Hey I’ll always be a fan of being early instead of late. The rest of the crew showed up within a few minutes. No time was wasted at all as there was paint getting put on the walls a few minutes after 7 AM. It was interesting seeing how the crew of 6 or 7 worked. There were guys with the pole rollers that were covering large sections of wall but stopping a couple inches from the top and bottom. Others were the detail painters who would do those last couple inches as well as the tricky spots like around the window casings.
Frank was inside the house early sanding down the spots on the ceiling he repaired last week. The repair looks good now, unfortunately the work unleashed a storm of plaster dust that covered a large area in the main living space. I don’t really think it could be avoided, sanding sort of does that. I ran out to do a couple errands with Elsa. When I got back I was amazed at just how far they had gotten. When the house was last painted it was by spray gun, I couldn’t believe they did this with rollers and paint brushes.
When I first saw the main color applied to the walls I had a bit of hesitation as it looked very close to the color of the metal roof, the lack of contrast concerned me a bit. However as it dried and the second coat was applied the paint color lightened a bit, leaving me with an end result I really liked. The crew was completely done by 2:30 PM. For some reason I thought this was going to be a multiple day job, I was very, very wrong.
I paid Frank and thanked him for the good work. We talked about next weekend and the need for me to make sure as much stuff as possible is out of their way since he will have an even larger crew doing the work this time. I assured him I will do as much as I can but there is no way to avoid having to move some things around as the paint is applied. If I wasn’t still living here it would be a different story. He said worse case if a lot of moving needs to be done he could charge me a relatively small amount for the extra time/effort needed which was fine with me.
Once they left I wasted little time heading out to the lanai to install the new fan that was picked out earlier in the week. It’s a more modern black fan that looks great against the new grey base color. Installation was pretty simple compared to some of the numerous fan installs I have done over the years. I think it looks good.
Despite a very long day I had a live stream scheduled for Saturday night. It was the first time I had done a conventional style stream from home in awhile. What wasn’t conventional was the visual. I was using the new desk, a new camera, the mic was converted to a tabletop style, and the furniture in the room was mostly missing. It was a long stream that touched 3 hours. There were a lot of funny moments along the way.
I was tired, staying in bed until almost 8AM this morning, late for me. When I took Elsa out to the bathroom I did a quick double take, forgetting for a second that the house was just painted. I like the color combo even more on day two which was a good feeling. My bill paying session was terrible because I had the credit card statement from Christmas to reconcile which is always the most brutal and lengthy of the year. I then also had all of the charges from the PA trip and California so in total I was working on bills/reconciliation for at least an hour and a half. After returning from the coffee/Home Depot run with Elsa I turned my attention indoors.
Frank had made the suggestion I get some fresh white weather stripping for the freshly painted front door. He said it will help give that fresh appearance when someone walks in the front door. I appreciated the suggestion and popped the new strips in. He was right, it makes a difference.
I then turned my attention to the main living space that had a layer of dust on most surfaces. I thoroughly cleaned all of the counters, vacuumed the floor and then followed up with the steam cleaner to grab whatever was left. The space felt and looked cleaner than it has in quite awhile which was welcomed. The visual chaos that has been associated with this process has been one of the more unpleasant aspects of it all. The cleaning swung the needle back the other way a little bit.
During the afternoon my main focus became the garage which also needed to be cleared for painting. I came up with what I thought was a good plan, utilizing the small shed for temporary storage. However when I went into the small shed I discovered another treasure trove of unwanted/unneeded items. Much like other areas of the house, I never did a thorough clean up of the shed in the last 18 months so I was able to clear up a TON of space. Much of it went straight to the curb where several curb shoppers helped themselves to the items almost immediately which was great.
So with this additional space cleared I started the process of moving things I DID still want in the garage to the small shed which will make painting the garage much cleaner. I made a good dent in the garage and plan to continue the strategy tomorrow as well as doing something similar with all the stuff that is in the laundry room. Evaluate, curb, throw out and whatever I deem worthy can go in the small shed for now until painting is done. It actually is working pretty well. I am utilizing the wheelbarrow to make each trip more impactful.
I also went around and put things back on the exterior of the house like the hose hangers and some additional gutter down spout where I pulled the water barrel from. The only Ring camera I reattached was the front door camera. The devices on the east and west side of the structure are going in a box for now. It was a very productive day. I’m hoping for similar results tomorrow.
Although my churn and burn attitude has remained mostly intact doing this massive clean up there have been a few moments where I have sputtered. There were a couple times on Saturday while the painting was being done where I just sort of sat and stared at the space, feeling a bit lost. Luckily those moments were relatively brief until my inner taskmaster was back on my shoulder telling me to get back to work. There just isn’t time for reflection at this point and time. Maybe once the house painting is done I can pull the foot off the gas and coast, just a little bit.