September 18, 2007

• My free time lately is mostly occupied with working on the old house. The more I can do, the more we save money. And hopefully, still make some profit when we sell, although that concept dims more and more each day. Seriously, we will make some profit but only because I put a lot down when we bought the house and we have lived there 5 years. The repairs and such are costing a fortune and the market is horrible, as you probably know.

  We have kitchen cabinets that are old and worn, very stained and dirty with age. I think they are original to the house, so some 40ish years old. They can't be restained, so I am scrubbing them down, removing all hardware and going to try to handpaint them all. This is not as easy as it sounds. The chemical to degloss them is nasty smelling and you have to wear gloves to use it. Then it takes at least two coats of primer to get a good base for paint, and I am expecting to have to do at least two more coats of the final finish paint.

  I am also refinishing a metal banister in the den. It is white, chipped, dirty and sad looking. This requires lots of sanding to get off the layers of old stuff, then a coat of primer spray paint, followed by a nice glossy black. I also intend to remake the mantel on the fireplace beside the rail. I am going to put on decorate wood molding and paint it black also.

  Meanwhile, we are working on getting in people to install forced air through out the house, since it is unbearably hot in the summer and freezing in the winter right now. We don't think it has a snowball chance in hell of selling in this market without proper heating and cooling.

  In other news, I am now the co-leader of Megan's Girl Scout troop. Girl Scouts require at least two, non-related adults, to run the troop and the previous mom's kids dropped out. No one else stepped up to the plate and I think the group is really important to Megan's social skills, being she is borderline high-functioning autistic. So I got drafted. Hopefully it will be fun and not too much additional work.

  Anyhow, that is about it. The news said we might be getting a storm the end of this week. That is really unusual for here in September, but would be great. They say we might even get thunderstorms and hail, perhaps snow at higher elevations! Cool! Bring on autumn!!

   

  • 9:55 pm
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