Home Improvement

I got started on my flooring project this weekend. I decided to start with the kitchen rather than the family room, simply because my sis came Saturday afternoon and I had her help to move the two large cabinets in the kitchen that I can't move myself. The paint I bought last Monday actually works well in the kitchen, being a deeper shade of the pale peach highlights in the kitchen panelling. I really wanted a deep blue in the family room anyway but had settled for the "Tile Red" (which is actually a brownish-coral color) because the paint guy at Lowe's hadn't been able to figure out how to tint the paint the color I originally picked. (I'm going be checking elsewhere when I'm ready to get paint for the family room, I'd really like blue in there. If I can't get the deep blue, I know I can get a light sage green color in this paint and that would be my second choice for the family room.)

I knew the kitchen flooring under the carpet was probably not perfect. Nothing in this house is. The young couple who lived here before me did a lot of "renovations" here themselves. He was a whiz with car restoration and building custom hot rods, but really had no idea what he was doing when it came to home construction/repairs. He had replaced the plywood sheet in front of the sink and set it in a little crooked, so there's gap on one side that tapers from just 1/8" at one end to almost half an inch at the other. And next to that there are a couple of small pieces that had replaced a small section of a bigger piece of plywood. None of the edges are flush, the edge of one piece is either higher or lower than the piece next to it. I did some research today, and I think I should be able to fix the problem for less than $10 in materials - some acrylic wood filler and sandpaper. I'm sure that someday, someone will look at my "fix" and say "geez, she did really sloppy work...." but as long as I can get it fairly level I don't much care what posterity thinks of my techniques. I'll stop at Lowe's on my way to class (if I get going early enough) or on the way home and pick up the wood filler and see what I can do about getting that down tonight, and sanded tomorrow when it's dry. I need to remember to pick up a craft knife, too, to cut the carpet along the edge of the cabinets, and a small foam paint brush for priming/painting along there, too.

I got a 3-foot strip along one wall primed and painted this weekend, and got the cabinet and microwave cart back into place there. I also got a 3-foot strip done along another wall, and got the refrigerator and floor-to-ceiling cabinet back into place over it. My sis helped out by duct-taping the carpet and padding I pulled up into easily lifted/handled bundles and piled them up in a corner of the kitchen where I wasn't working. Unfortunately, it was in front of the coffee maker and while I managed to lean over the pile yesterday morning to make coffee, my poor aching muscles started screaming this morning when I tried to do it, so before I even got my coffee started I removed that pile of carpet and padding, putting some of it in my trash cart and some of it out in the garage to go into the trash cart over the next couple of weeks. Then I got the coffee brewing and ripped up another big piece of carpet and padding. Just one more big piece to go, then all that's left is a strip of carpet along the front of the cabinets (they put the cabinets down over the carpet, I'm not pulling out the cabinets to get to it!), the patch under the stove, and a small patch in the corner where I have to crawl under the kneehole of a small built-in "desk". Oh yeah, I have to pull everything on the floor of my pantry out, and get the carpet in there up too.

I need to get at least the perimeter primed and painted as quickly as possible, before anycat decides to pee on the plywood. I don't have anything scheduled for tomorrow, so I should be able to get the primer down early in the day when the dogs are all outside, and then I'll paint those areas before bedtime tomorrow. I've got some sections of a plastic exercise pen that I can use to block the areas off so they can dry overnight without getting kitty footprints in them. When I'm ready to put down a second coat of paint with a roller, I'm going to lure as many cats into the family room as I can and close the door so they're shut in there overnight, and use a baby gate with a wire crate panel on top of it to block the doorway from the dining room to the kitchen so anycat who's not closed up in the family room won't be able to get into the kitchen. If I keep working at it and don't have any setbacks, I should have the kitchen floor finished by the end of next weekend.

I did the home visit last Monday for the Low Riders. Very, very nice people whose last Dachsie lived to be 19. I'd taken Roux along with me, and I left him there. The other two will be joining him in that home a week from Friday, the day after they're neutered.

I did a home visit on Saturday for Parchesi the boggle puppy. Lovely family, they're going to love her to pieces and I think she's a great fit for them. They have three children, and Parchesi's got a sweet, gentle nature so I think this is a very good match. The Cheesy-puppy is scheduled to be spayed 2 weeks from today, and I'll keep her until 2 weeks from Friday. Max the Shih Tzu is going in the same day as the Low Riders, so he'll be ready to go after that. I've gotten one application for him, but I'm going up to my mom's on Thursday and taking him along to see if he'd be a good match for her and Daisy. I'm taking Ruby the Cavalier to the vet on Thursday morning; I'm pretty sure she's got a perineal hernia. If that needs to be repaired it should be done when she's spayed, but that's beyond the scope of the s/n clinic, so it'll have to be done by the local vet. We'll see what she says about whether or not it needs to be repaired, and how much it's going to cost. It'll be at least $120 (for the spay) and the repair will be extra. I've gotten a couple of donations from some Cavalier people, and I've got a good home lined up that's willing to kick in for it up to double the adoption fee, so that should cover it. We'll see.

I made the mistake of putting Rose the Cavalier up on Petfinder already, at the same time I had a cute baby puppy listed. I've spent hours and hours answering e-mails about the two of them the last week, sometimes not being able to get away from the computer for 6 hours straight. I've gotten at least a couple dozen inquiries on Rose, and from all over the country. I had to amend her description to read that we're only considering homes within a 4 hour drive of us right now. I've gotten half a dozen applications back, but only two of them are worth considering. One of them is almost exactly what I was looking for, but they have a 3-year old Cavalier that's not spayed - though they're supposedly planning on having her spayed soon - and I won't place a dog in a home where there are intact pets. I have to question their judgement, too. If they weren't planning on breeding her, why would they wait until she's 3 years old to have her spayed? Nevermind the annoyance of dealing with twice-yearly heat cycles, what about the risk of mammary cancer? (Besides, I already denied another otherwise-good home because there's an intact Lab mix there.) The other home feeds Beneful, and needs a little updating on their discipline techniques. *sigh* It's a good home otherwise, though, and they're close to Costco, so getting them to switch to the Kirkland food shouldn't be a problem. I think I'll schedule a home visit, and see how I feel once I meet them and have a chance to talk with them a little.

The day I'm taking the Low Rider and Max to be neutered, the blade sharpener guy is scheduled to come to the groomer south of me. I'll drop my clipper blades off there in the morning on my way to the s/n clinic, and pick them up that afternoon. Then I'll be able to get Ernie the Shih Tzu groomed, and get The Chooch cleaned up a little. I'm also going to talk to the woman who told me about the puppymiller close to me, and find out for sure if I spoke to the right people. Later that afternoon I'm doing the homevisit for Ruby. If I don't get it done before then I'll do Rose's HV that day too, since they're all in the same geographical area. In 2 and a half weeks I should have gotten at least 4 little dogs placed, and maybe 5 or 6. For the rest of the summer I'm going to stick to taking in only one or two at a time so I'll have more time to work on getting the house done and working in the garden.

I think I'm going to try something new for tomatoes this year. I have a dozen varieties of heirloom tomatoes I want to plant, and I think I'm going to get 18- or 22-gallon totes, put those together in the sunny part of my back yard that's outside the fence, and grow one plant of each variety in each tote. I'll put either a piece of rebar or a t-post into the ground at the end of each 3-tote row and use that to anchor the "Florida Weave" trellis system I'd like to try. I'm going to see what it'll cost me to get a half-yard of topsoil delivered, and then amend that with manure compost and peat to go into the totes. It's got to be cheaper than buying 40-pound bags of potting mix. I'll still put some plants in hanging baskets, and a few in the garden proper too, but the fewer plants I put into the garden, the more room there will be for peppers, zuccini, watermelon, cukes, pumpkins, and beans. I'm going to do pole beans this year, I saved some seeds from last year and I can easily make a couple of trellises for them, so I'll get a larger harvest out of fewer plants and a smaller space than I did last year with bush beans. I need to get out to the garden and get it ready for planting, but it's not going to be warm enough to do that until at least the end of the week. My sis brought me a peony plant, and yesterday we prepared a place for that to go in this coming weekend, when it'll be a little warmer. I bought myself a Concord grape plant; I know where I want to put it, I've just got to get that place prepared too. (Won't have grapes for jelly this year, but should have them by next summer!)

Time to get back to work. I'm tired, and I didn't sleep well last night, and I'd really like to have a little nap instead, but I'm going to practice self-discipline and get some work done.