Don't Talk About The Rabbits

It's been basically forever since I have posted here. I feel like I am crawling out from under a rock. Only, it's not a rock, it is a GIANT PILE OF FROZEN CRAP. It has been a grueling, hideous year at work, and just when it was starting to settle down, and I thought maybe I could recuperate, read a book, have a life or have some friends over or something, Mother Nature is like "I'll show you CLIMATE CHANGE, you stupid pathetic monkeys." And then she sucked all the winter from the rest of the country and spat it out on top of us.

Tomorrow I have to go back to work, after several days off. I should be rested, but instead, I am utterly exhausted. Why? Because today I raked a roof. With a roof rake what I ordered on Amazon. It took me an hour of cursing just to put the rake together. Then there was help from a neighbor, without which I would not have survived the experience, but it was still pretty rough. However, I am a tiny slightly bit more confident that the roof will not now collapse and crush my housemate while she is attempting to play Dragon Age: Inquisition, in the sunroom. Also, there was shoveling. I am the proud owner of a BILLION MILES OF SNOW. Most of it in my driveway. An inordinate amount, probably more than anyone else's driveway. Also my driveway is ludicrously long. But mainly, I am terrified of going back to work tomorrow, because it means braving the MBTA. It is hard to explain just how bad the public transporation situation has gotten during all of this blizzard-misery.

Last week, when the T was only approaching total collapse, and hadn't yet reached the point where the General Manager of the T and the Governor of the State were using reporters in their respective press conferences to exchange insults, was bad enough. People were stacked up so tightly on platforms I'm surprised birth control wasn't needed, trains were breaking down, catching fire, and occasionally vanishing never to be seen again. Fights were breaking out, and the drop-off/pick-up area of the station were so bad that it's possible I may have thrown a snowball at a car that was endangering lives. (True story, I threw a snowball. Then I hid behind a convenient snow bank).

But it's gotten worse since then. To be point where the GM is frothing at the mouth with hatred for the Gov, and the Gov is staring haughtily down his nose at the GM indicating with every sentence that she's basically incompetent for not being able to resurrect a dead fleet of trains from their frozen graves. The red line broke down so completely that passengers had to walk to the tracks to get back to a station. Still more fires broke out.

Tomorrow, they are theoretically back in service. Only, limited service. And I am taking one of the lines where they won't even admit to how many trains will actually be running, or if they will be running, or how many fires I can expect to encounter on my particular train. Will I ever be heard from again? Frankly, I doubt it.

So here are some final photos.

This one was taken from my neighbors yard, which is high above mine. It's our main exit from the house -- down the deck, which now has snow almost to the top of the rails, through a tiny pathetic path we carved out, over to where mollyamory's car is hiding behind a goddamn snow mountain.



This one is the same deck opposite angle!



And finally, the side of the house, out to the front street. That poor tree is our dogwood. It's not actually a *small tree*.

One last (probably) kitchen post!

Everyone has something that goes wrong for them in a renovation. My hatred of the brackets we installed to support the kitchen counter was pretty all encompassing. So, we researched various possible fixes while we took a little time off, because we really, really, REALLY needed to not have the house crawling with contractors for a while.

Today my main contractor came back, to do a few remaining small things (the biggest thing left is a heating issue, but it could not be tackled until these small things were taken care of), and included in that list were the brackets:

The original brackets, as posted on day whatever:



So that's them unstained. And to be fair, when stained, they are much less noticeable. A closeup of them, stained:



Ugly style, sticky outie, ughly.

New Brackets!







These are black metal, and a huge improvement. Much cleaner, and better for sitting at in terms of leg room.

It's not completely perfect, because we had to work it in a way that covered up the previous installation of brackets. On the short end, where the bracket is shorter than what was there previously, you can see the two screws below it, if you look closely. And, if I could send myself psychic messages in the past, I would still do the hidden brackets, and not have metal down the sides at all.

However, still. SO MUCH BETTER. Also, I'm am happy to have the added bracket in the middle now for additional support, and yet not lose the leg room that another wooden bracket in that location would have cost us.

We also may have figured out the counter stool situation -- the chair liked the most was just a little too tall. My wonderful contractor took it and cut the legs down by two inches (I was not about to try and cut metal) and was even able to get the rubber bits back on the ends. So, now that I know he can do this, successfully, I will get the matching set.

Half my kitchen crap is still in boxes in the basement, but we're getting there!

We are seven weeks in, and things are strangely slowing down and going faster at the same time. People are here fewer days, but amazing things happen on the days they are here.

( Day 43. A little plumbing, a little electrical work... )

( Day 44! SO! MUCH! STUFF! )

( Day 44, Part 2 -- This day had so much happen, I am cutting twice for the sheer image heaviness of it )

( Day 45 )

( Day 46 )

( Day 47. RUNNING WATER. )

Day 48: No contractors!! We went shopping for counter stools. The only one I've really liked so far has been at West Elm, but it is 1) a bit pricy and 2) not actually in the store, so we would have to have it shipped to us. Also, it might be a tiny bit too tall, and I would have preferred to take one home to try it out first.

My phone is full of shots of stuff from other places on this day, but nothing really spoke to me.

( Day 49 )

If it weren't for the few problems that have cropped up, I would say next week would be the last week. Unfortunately, the mixup with the cabinet fronts means that at some unknown time in the next few weeks, the carpenter will have to return.

However, next week is still full of final stuff, and inspections!

The screen doors should go in, the oven should get hooked up once the gas line goes in. About half the hardware will be put onto cabinet fronts (those fronts that are staying). Electrical will get finished up.

The RANGE HOOD will go in. This is a big thing, I hope it goes smoothly. I hope it looks good!

Plumbing Inspection at the beginning of the week.
Electrical Inspection at the beginning or middle of the week
FINAL INSPECTION! (at the end of the week?!?!)

So, I love my family, I really do.

I would love them so much more if they would stop visiting me. All my plans for a seriously slothful and relaxing three day weekend, SHOT TO HELL.

They have left in their wake two nice pieces of furniture, two fairly great pieces of furniture, and one utter, UTTER monstrosity. I can find no feasible way to break it without drawing suspicion upon myself, and possibly cause my own death, since it's larger than me and more than 50% made of glass. It's hogging valuable real estate in the living room. It's housing two huge glass bowls that look like they are the mucus-y productions of an alien with a really bad head cold. It. Is. GODAWFUL.

I am incapable of finding the right words (spoken, written, shouted, screamed hysterically) that will convey to them that a gift is not really a GIFT when it is forcibly given to someone who used their full body weight against the door to try and stop you from bringing it inside.

I have also been told I have no taste.

In other news, a question for you, Oh Wise Livejournal.

Let's say you had a room in your house, and in this room, fully two of the walls were mostly handpainted with a mural, by one of the original owners of the house, and wife of the person who built the house!! Now, it was your opinion that the murals are a unique, and lovely, and HISTORIC PART OF THE HOUSE, but the person who has to actually live in the room reacts somewhere along these lines:

"What the hell is this? You call that ART? OMFG. I will have nightmares about that SWANS. THE SWANS, they're coming AFTER ME. I don't CARE if swan boats are a Boston landmark, screw the swans, I am PAINTING THESE WALLS ENTIRELY PURPLE."

So, you're at a standstill. You want to preserve the swans -- and also the pond, and the rolling hills, and the cherry tree, for posterity and all, but the person who will be inhabiting the room should have some say as well. Tapestries have been considered, but they'd have to be pretty damn big to cover these suckers.

Is there any way (or am I just ignorant and wistful and wishful and a few other things) to cover a wall with some material that you can then paint over? And uh... peel off later at a later date, to preserve what is underneath? Or is there some other method, besides paint, tapestries, prayer, or brainwashing*, that might make a room look swan and landscapeless, without taking up too much space, since it's a pretty small room.

*(The house itself seems to have a calming, mildly brainwashing effect on most people, who come into the house and say "...OMG MURALS" but who are all, within mere weeks, taken with the murals, and can't even imagine life without the murals the murals were clearly always meant to be it would sacrilege to touch the murals. There are a total of around 9 murals in the house, if you count the ones in the basement, and the one that's more like a faux painting.)