Today's Hellmouth Offerings!

Two projects still underway, one nearing completion and that's the den painting. Last wall!
Before:

Ignore the pistachio green around the wall outlet, that was a horribly failed color choice which I will not use, yikes.

The heavy duty repair job I had to do where some addlepated person had attempted (and failed, by the looks of things) to hang heavy 70's shelves.

Today was just wall sanding/washing, tomorrow will be the start of painting weather permitting.

Other project is just getting underway, the removal of about 20 juniper bushes in the back yard, all of which have been in place since the 70's and are horribly overgrown. Today's chainsawing gave us this:

A truly gigantic brush pile that the kid and I moved into the very back of the yard for removal another day.

After! I can see the chicken coop, yay!

Today's juniper offerings, a metal fence post, a chunk of angle iron and a full tube of sunscreen, plus two small dog toy-type balls.

Also, this!

It's the base of ONE of the plants and is as tall as my kid.

It was chanting "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn", whatever that means.

We tossed Cthulhu on the burn pile with the rest of his buddies, screw him.

Progress...

OK, the den painting is never going to get done, despite me actually PAINTING the thrice damned room. That's how it seems, at any rate. Anyway, today's progress:

This corner and these doors DONE, except for blue painter's tape removal and reinstall of doorknobs & switch plates and whatnot. I'm down to painting the last wall and one door, which means I'll have to shift everything in the room to the opposite wall first. Once that's done I can actually put the room together and have another useable room.

Meanwhile, after threatening it for months and writing a manifesto on Twitter, JUNIPER DEATH.

Before, look at these nasty assholes:

After a thorough chainsawing:

Granted, these two were mostly-dead or all-dead, but I still count it as a victory against crappy, poorly-thought-out-40-years-ago landscaping. The one on the left barfed up a horse sweat scraper and a bunch of wire. I'm gonna save all the crap these things yield up like some Homeowner's Personal Mouth of Hell and get a picture of it all at once. Also I now have to haul off a gazillion pounds of branches.

The chickens can see the house now and get excited when I'm at the kitchen window waving to them.

Tenth Anniversary!

...of my websites, that is.

It's been ten years today since I started both my chicken info site http://jackshenhouse.com/ and my 'Found Origami' site http://jackshenhouse.com/FoundOrigamiHome.htm

This is the year that both will get a major revamping to an updated look, once my painting/juniper jihad slows...

It doesn't seem like 10 years ago that I started them.  I've been fortunate to have interacted with some great folks because of them over the years, thank you!

Today's Paint...

STILL painting the den, for the love of God. It's going excrutiatingly slowly, as my body is gleefully reminding my brain that I'm not 20 anymore and can no longer bite off a job like this and expect to get it done in 1-2 days, haha.

Anyway, these two walls are DONE, trim included. I still have to paint the doors & doorjambs, but it's coming along and the furniture is actually starting to migrate into place.

One wall to go!

Still Painting...

So...yeah, the mint green was unanimously reviled by all, and instead we went with the light brownish color I'd used in the living room.

Much better! Even with just one coat up so far. The blue stuff is my old friend, painter's tape.

It goes well with the very light creamy pinkish-brown trim color used throughout the house, once I get the walls done it'll be next.

Thought I'd get a day off cussing the former tenants, then I spent time replacing the old fugly 70's doorknobs & strike plates. Yikes, the lengths that people go to half-ass something, when doing it right would take just as long...

Den Painting, Still...

So yesterday the dark green wall was finished, windows washed and repaired--they had molted their little nylon rollers--and the blinds rehung.

Next is the rest of the room. Now--we've tried and tried to like it, have applied several coats in test spots...but no, this is just TOO minty, so this light green is out.

I did however get to growl afresh at the previous tenant's painting skills. The gaping hole on the left was where they stuck double sided tape--that thick kind--to the wall and then painted over it. Twice. When my sander hit it, it instantly remelted and spread, making it necessary to attack the wall with a scraper.

Multiple other sander marks are where they just plain glopped on spackle or dripped paint in huge, runny, ohsothick streaks.

On this wall they switched things up a bit--see the double doors?

They painted them, then closed the doors while the paint was still wet. TWICE, for the love of God--I found two different colors of stuck paint!

Who doesn't learn from the first time they have to pry the doors open with a resounding, tearing 'snap'?!

I still have to change the doorknobs, as these are original 1972 Butt Ugly. After this I'll be down to the final wall, huzzah! It'll sure be nice to get past all this and have an office to work out of.

I Love My Nest!

So yesterday we went from this:

To this:

Because of THIS:

The two wires on the right had shorted, melted the wire nut (that's the melty blob on the left) and when my husband opened the laundry closet where this thing squatted, he heard the unmistakable sound of wires shorting. NOT a sound you want to hear in your home, like; ever. Not to mention that the thing was hideously corroded inside.

For comic relief, the home warranty we'd bought when we moved in a year ago had expired less than three weeks ago, huzzah.

Not anxious to die in a fire we replaced the water heater yesterday...
Late last night it began dripping.

That's when we discovered that homes now have check valves in the plumbing and the water heater desired a lil' buddy--a pressure tank to keep things from getting really, really ugly. So off to the hardware store again.

By the way, for nearly $500 you'd think they could at least get the company logo sticker on straight.

Meanwhile, painting goes on.  And yes, there is a spot behind the water heater that needs paint, as does the rest of the laundry closet.  Because why stop at painting rooms when you can have to do closets, too?

For weeks like this, I try and remember to sing this little song:

Though some days I feel less like Mr. Bird and more like Mrs. Bird as she is depicted here.

This Week's Project...

...is painting the den. The den is currently a passively-aggressively ugly shade of putty.

I'd already taken down the matching steel blinds, which added to the overall fatal-depression-inducing feel. This particular wall features painted-over paneling, yum. It didn't help that the windows were in dire need of rehab as well. They have since been recaulked and fixed up.

Seriously, the room is the poster child for 'Ugly'.

Now, the thing is...we'd decided to go with green for the den. Growing up as I did in a family where 'Eggshell' is a startling departure from 'Off-White', painting with darker colors is at first a nearly heart-stopping leap of faith. Especially when you have to apply paint to the grooves in the paneling first, which isn't the most attractive thing on Earth.

Yeah. This is the part where that little voice in your head starts screaming, 'What? WHAT?!' and hyperventilating into a brown paper bag. Shut up brain, and trust me.

Things look better after the first coat is done. I'm having to work around the furniture and do one wall at a time. The other walls will be a lighter green, I've got one coat on the one wall and it's lookin' pretty darned minty, we'll see if it darkens down a bit with the second coat.

Even better after the second coat of green is done and the first coat of window trim paint goes up.

Hopefully tomorrow will see the final coat of trim go up, the blue painter's tape removed and the windows washed, 'cause after the winter we've had, boy howdy do they ever need it.