Painting

Before we can paint there is quite a bit of wire brush work.

There has been a stretch of nice weather this week, a perfect time to get some house projects off the ‘to do’ list . . . finally.

Our big outdoor project, which we put off last year, is painting the pergola. It was starting to look weathered, so we thought it best to move that task up on the list.

We also have a few canning projects we need to complete to help replenish the pantry. It is pretty straight forward . . . we cook up a large pot of soup, usually on Soup Sunday, then pressure can the contents.

The one caveat . . . these projects need to be completed well before the heat of summer.

It has been a nice spring in Central Oregon and the temptation is to head out for the river . . . or forest. Unfortunately, that puts off the inevitable.

An outside painting project requires a couple of days of dry weather. Fair conditions prevailed, but we can’t count on that for much longer. It looks like snow is in the forecast for later this week.

Sitting on the patio under a freshly painted pergola on a warm summer’s night will make all these efforts worthwhile.

Now complete, we can look forward to being on the river or out in the high desert.

The past week was marked by record high temperatures in the PNW. As Oregon melts, we are in the middle of an appliance install project. A new laundry pair is in place. Kitchen appliances are ‘staged’ which means they exist somewhere in a wonky supply chain.

Mask wearing is only part of pandemic pain. Try buying a major appliance. We had to make choices around availability when it came to the pieces that really needed to be replaced. Even so, we are over a month on the first delivery and another 4 weeks (maybe) on the last.

Even just a LED makes laundry day a bit better.

The laundry (which is complete) was a big job as we had to repair some water-damaged dry wall. A process that evolved into pulling cabinets and a small counter off the wall which added to the repair work.

Sheetrock, mud and tape is not my strong suit but the job was small enough that we managed to end with a decent looking wall. New paint and shelves help camouflage imperfections in the patch work.

Paint was a big part but we also pulled up the vinyl flooring and put down tile. Setting floor tile is a bit more in my comfort zone. The room isn’t exactly square which made for some interesting ‘fitting’ moments, but we managed to lay down a nice new floor covering.

Now we wait on the delivery pipeline. The freezer side is more ‘just colder’ these days.