Round like a Record

I still do better with external deadlines than internal ones, despite making lists and giving myself motivational speeches. This seems not restricted to just me, I'm happy to hear, as one friend got her lovely handmade table finished in the nick of time for Thanksgiving. I've been meaning to do a lot of stuff around the condo, but it all requires both effort and coordination because there are prerequisites for each of them that also require effort and coordination. And instead, I've been reading or goofing off, or traveling. But the combination of acupuncture giving me more energy, a desperate desire to avoid dealing with the bills, and a cookie party coming up in 2 weeks that requires a tidy and very clean dining room... and boy did I get busy. And inspired - while working on some things, I get ideas for other things. For me, a project day is an all or nothing kind of thing.

I wanted to paint the baseboards of the dining room to match the wall color. They had some drips of paint on them and looked bad. (They'll be replaced early next year, but still, it bothers me and I wanted it fixed.) How hard could this be? The paint is still in the dining room. But in order to do the job, I had to move furniture, including my huge 4x4 grid with doors and drawers affair that I use to store heavy paperwork out of sight. It weighs a TON. It does not slide. Unless it has teflon pads under the feet, which I bought about 10 months ago and never attached because I thought it was a 2 woman job to lift the behemoth even a little. On my own I could lift it about a sixteenth of an inch. Oh, and it was covered with about 40 decorative items I didn't have a place for. And kind of still don't.

Looking around for something to prop one end on while I attached the teflon skids to the bottom of 8 legs, and realizing that I couldn't lift it high enough or find something that wouldn't get crushed or injure my shelf in the process, I had an epiphany and got the car jack from my hatch. (Mazda has good designers and put it in a side pocket so I didn't have to lift stuff out to get to it.) One jack and a block of wood later, the shelf assembly was mobile. I also washed underneath it so I wouldn't trap anything sharp in the skids, and washed the baseboards. I had to do something similar to the secretary on the adjacent wall but it didn't need the jack. Then after cleaning the floor again, I swapped the shelves and I like it. While swapping them, I noticed the backing was gapping and that I could fix it, so I had an interlude with the staple gun. With the shelves pulled away from the wall, I was able to finish painting the baseboards and do some other touchups.

While retrieving the staple gun, I walked by my lumber stash and realized that a shelf with hooks that was useless on my patio might work really well in my bathroom if I shave a little off the sides. I've been thinking about a solution that doesn't require $200 spent at restoration hardware for the funky towel rack I'd prefer. But it was too late to haul out the circ saw so I cleaned it and marked it up to cut tomorrow. I'm going to paint it with the remaining baseboard paint which will be a fun orange going on a lime green wall. I'm not sure what to do with the corroded brass hooks - I got the corrosion off with fresh squeezed lime juice and salt - but they don't look good. Maybe I can spray paint them. Anyhow, it'll be a place to stash the extra TP and hang up visitor towels.

Since I was on a woodworking kick, I also glued up the door on the secretary that was falling apart at the hinge so it doesn't break irretrievably. I have to let it dry overnight and re-drill some holes, but it'll be much sturdier.

I also had to move other stuff out of the way and cleaned all the glass and pottery that had been stashed on top of the behemoth to get it out of the way. So that all got washed with ammonia and most of it got put somewhere else or boxed back up for later. The things I need to take pictures of went back on top. I took all last year's candy out of the candy jar, pitched it, and replaced it with new stuff in a cleaned jar.

I cleaned up after myself (no mean feat with all the glass and tools and various art pieces and displaced stuff laying about that required undoing months of indecision), doing a few other small projects on the way, fixing broken stuff. Of course now it's 3am and I have to get up at 10. Which isn't so bad. But I've been going since 2pm. Actually noon if you count the glass color inventory and assessment I did, in preparation for making pumpkins tomorrow. I am glad about the secretary though, I've needed to fix that since my parents let me run off with it several years ago.

So this is what I'm like when I have energy. Productive, but spinning around and just going flat out for 12+ hours, adding project onto project. I enjoyed myself even if I did listen to the same HGTV shows twice. And this is what scares me off starting projects when I don't have energy - I ALWAYS add some new task that seems critical at the time until I get in so far that I have to finish to get out. And all too often just the thought of a third of what I did today is enough to make me take a nap. This acupuncturist seems to be helping more than the last two, so maybe I'll have a few more days like this. If I can coincide them with my kitchen reno, all will be well.