During House Renovations - The Varnish Discovery

I mixed what was left of two tins of stain & varnish and stored it in this ice cream container.

Apparently stain & varnish does not keep well in ice cream containers.

The floors are still waiting to be varnished months later because the effort involved in walking and/or bussing to the hardware store is too overwhelming for me. 

My sister suggested I ask my brother-in-law if he can get me some stain & varnish because he works in a paint store. 

It never would have occurred to me that I could ask someone to get them for me or, strangely, that my brother-in-law sells stain & varnish in his paint store.

One day, floorboards.  One day.



More photos of me mucking around during House Renovations:
During House Renovations - Flipping Underlay Residue
During House Renovations - Scrubbing Day with Pippi Longstocking

Photos of House Renovations where I'm not mucking around:
House Renovations - Loungeroom 
House Renovations - Bedroom

A tragic story about curtains which features the loungeroom floorboards:
Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

During House Renovations - Scrubbing Day with Pippi Longstocking

When I was little I used to have amazing birthday parties and when I got a bit older I used to have amazing sleepover birthday parties.  After all the party games and the salad platter and the giant bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken (before it became KFC) and the oranges filled with jelly and ... no wait, I'm going to have to write a separate post about how much I enjoyed my birthday parties.  Moving on - after all that, we would fill the loungeroom with mattresses and get into pyjamas and sleeping bags ready to watch videos.

My parents would hire a VCR for the occassion (a VCR is like a BluRay Machine Thingy or a DVD Player but chunkier).  This would happen for my birthday in June and again for my sister's in July.  In my mind my parents hired a VCR, returned it, hired it again and returned it again for several years in a row before they thought to purchase one.  I'm pretty sure other people were using VCRs on a daily basis but it was a special birthday treat for us.

Every year my parents would hire two movies - 'The New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking' and 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'.  I loved those movies and I reckon we watched them every year, I suppose it was twice a year, throughout our childhood.  The only thing I remember from Pippi Longstocking is the theme song and the part of this clip from 0:15 - 0:16 but this preview makes me want to watch the movie again.



Getting closer to the point...

I was pleased to find polished floorboards in the bedroom, except for the half a dozen that were replaced with plain timber after the cellar fire of 1999.   I was again pleased to find polished floorboards in the loungeroom.  I was not pleased to find them encrusted with the black rubber of the underlay that had been crushed into the wood over at least 30 years.

After scraping off the majority of the black rubber, which was like super adhesive charcoal, it was time to scrub the floor.

Enter Pippi Longstocking.

Sadly, there were handles on my scrubbing brushes so I couldn't strap them to my feet and glide across the room but after more scraping and lots of scrubbing, I strapped paper towels to my feet to lightly clean the floor, or was it to dry the floor?  Either way, it was most efficient and made me feel like I was Pippi Longstocking.

Pippi Longstocking is coming into your world.

More photos of me mucking around during House Renovations:
During House Renovations - Flipping Underlay Residue
During House Renovations - The Varnish Discovery 


Photos of House Renovations where I'm not mucking around:
House Renovations - Bedroom
House Renovations - Loungeroom

A tragic story about curtains which features the loungeroom floorboards:
Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

During House Renovations - Flipping Underlay Residue

Take me back to the thrilling saga about the curtains.  

Photos of me mucking around during House Renovations:
During House Renovations - Scrubbing Day with Pippi Longstocking
During House Renovations - The Varnish Discovery 


Photos of House Renovations where I'm not mucking around:
House Renovations - Loungeroom 
House Renovations - Bedroom

Out, damned spot! Out, I say!

It should be noted that I haven't got any blood on my hands and no kings were harmed in the writing of this post.  There was a slightly dirty patch in the middle of the loungeroom curtains and I really wanted it clean.  It was created by our cat Prancer brushing against the curtains when he jumped onto the window sill but I'm not sentimental enough to keep dirt on the curtains in memory of our cat.  I am quite forgetful though so I continued getting rid of carpet and making the floorboards look presentable.  See During House Renovations - Scrubbing Day with Pippi Longstocking, During House Renovations - Flipping Underlay Residue and House Renovations - Loungeroom.

When the floor was done: Ooooh, look at the beautiful floorboards!  But the curtains are still dirty! Raarrrr!

Below is the sound effect which played in my head when I noticed the dirty patch on the curtains.  I've never seen the movie but I often get sound effects from things I haven't seen.  It might be frightening if you've seen the movie but you can just imagine she has washed her hair with shampoo and discovered she has no conditioner.  The sound effect works for anything.  UPDATE: I accidentally played it with the volume up loud and it was terrifying.  I had no choice but to delete it.  How dare the original Psycho violin screech be so different to the noise that I make. 

 

That's it!  I am washing the curtains.

Nnooooooooooo...

ooooooooooooo....

ooooooooooooo....

oooooooooooooo....

It's still good.  Just a little shreddy?

Fine then!  I will buy new curtains.  I guess some products are not made to last 25 years in the sun.

Several weeks later I went to Spotlight to buy new curtains.  I had to buy 2 packets of curtains to fit the width of the windows.  I fitted the hooks and put them up ready for the grand unveiling.  Yay! New Curtains. There was no grand unveiling.  The mechanism to open and close the curtains didn't work.

I took down the curtains and disassembled the curtain track.  I enlisted the help of a couple of YouTube videos to figure out how to re-thread the cord.  I had removed the old cord and was now replacing it with itself after finding out that the brand new cord I bought was 2 metres too short.  I couldn't figure out the master pulleys and the pulleys and the under and over so I got my Dad to do it for me. He also put the curtain track back on the wall.

I was pretty impressed at having a curtain track with functioning pulleys.  Wheeee!  Look how it glides so smoothly.  I care not for curtains.  I can make the little rolling things roll.

I eventually put the curtains up and they opened and closed.  Yay! New Curtains.

A few days later the house began to smell and I thought something had died.  It was the curtains.  They were still as alive as curtains can be but they caused the house to smell of dead animal.  I took the curtains down, confiscated their hooks and washed the stinky curtains.  I banished them outside so they could think about what they'd done.

The curtains weren't coping very well behind bars.  They were becoming more and more twisted as the days went by.  I brought them in and they are back where they belong.  Yay! New Curtains.

Please, curtains, I don't want to make this story any longer.  Behave yourselves.

House Renovations - Loungeroom

click to enlarge

Take me back to the thrilling saga about the curtains.

More photos of my House Renovations: 
House Renovations - Bedroom

Photos of me mucking around during House Renovations:
During House Renovations - Flipping Underlay Residue
During House Renovations - Scrubbing Day with Pippi Longstocking 
During House Renovations - The Varnish Discovery

House Renovations - Bedroom

click to enlarge

More photos of my House Renovations: 
House Renovations - Loungeroom

Photos of me mucking around during House Renovations:
During House Renovations - Flipping Underlay Residue
During House Renovations - Scrubbing Day with Pippi Longstocking 
During House Renovations - The Varnish Discovery

Visualising my Visions

Around the same time as the Tree of Life I also looked at my Visions for the year.  We cut out words and pictures from magazines and created collages.  Visualising my visions was pretty useful but I haven't been doing a great job of actually attending to any of my ideas.

Visions for 2012

It's a bit small to read so here's what it says:

Rise and Shine 
happy, alert, smiling face and clocks to represent regularity of sleep cycle

A Working Eating Plan
3 meals a day, 7 days a week and "me" enjoying cooking

• Planning food
• Buying food
• Preparing food
• Cooking food
• Eating food

Clean Up: Organized Home
clearing old junk out of the house to make it my home, renovating, having shiny tiles?

Friends
finding, keeping

Sweet Dreams: A Peaceful Slumber
having sleep that leaves me refreshed

It was all getting a bit serious so I added the picture and caption in the top right corner.

Meet your perfect match!
"Hello Amanda, my amazing girlfriend.  I'm so glad I met you this year." -Hamish Blake.

Finding a Photo of Dad

To match my unfinished driveway and unfinished floorboards, I have an unfinished display of family photos.  It has been particularly bothersome that for the past few months I have had portraits of my Mum, my sister and me next to half a dozen empty picture hooks because I couldn't find a good photo of my Dad and therefore gave up finding ANY other photos.

The 'N' key on my keyboard has almost completely worn off.  What is up with that?  Do I have an inexplicably exuberant usage of words containing 'N'?

In my recent search for a photo of Dad I discovered a veritable treasure trove of photos I have taken of Dad taking photos.

Some great shots I've taken of Dad:

Clockwise (from left):

• Dad lying on the ground photographing a light house.
• Dad standing up photographing a light house (different light house, different holiday).
• Dad and a light house being very tiny (they are in the distance) while Mum sits on a park bench looking out to sea, or possibly having a nap.

I remember that moment well because it was immediately after I almost stepped on a snake and my first instinct was to take a quick happy snap of it as it slithered back into the long grass.  Then I looked at the photo I'd taken.  Then I looked to where the snake had disappeared.  Then I stood still for half a minute trying to remember if you're supposed to stand completely still if you see a snake or if you're meant to run as fast as you can. 

Then I remembered the very useful fact that in order to escape a crocodile you need to run in a zig-zagged line.  Apparently the crocodile has a very wide turning circle and will not be able to co-ordinate itself to follow your haphazard escape route so will not succeed in catching and chomping you. 

Then I remembered I'd seen a snake, not a crocodile.  I checked the photo to make sure.  Then I speed-walked (in between running and standing still) to the park bench.

I can't be bothered posting ALL the sensational photos I've taken of Dad but here is a quick summary of the gems I had to choose from when looking to frame Dad on the wall with the rest of the family.

• Dad squatting in the dirt of a runway photographing glider take-offs and landings.
• Dad (with cap on backwards) leaning on the permapine railing of the meerkat enclosure in the zoo photographing the meerkats.
• Dad (with cap on backwards) leaning on the permapine railing of the meerkat enclosure in the zoo photographing the giraffes whose enclosure is behind the meerkats.
• Dad (with cap on backwards) leaning on the permapine railing on the edge of a cliff to photograph some dogs on an island in the distance, or maybe it was migrating birds on a rock, or a light house on a distant shore.
• Dad carrying a camera tripod ready to photograph the information displays inside a slab hut.
• Dad about to enter the slab hut with his camera tripod with the top of the light house from the TV show 'Round the Twist' peeking over the roof.

If you've ever seen 'Round the Twist' you will now have the song stuck in your head.  That is, of course, if readership of my blog increases to more than just me.  Mind you, I HAVE seen 'Round the Twist so I DO now have the song stuck in my head so that renders the clause useless. 

"Have you ever?

Ever felt like this?

How strange things happen,

Are you going round the twist?..."

 Just in case you've never seen it or you've forgotten.

I was well and truly spoilt for choice.  It was hard to decide which photo of Dad went best with the ones of my sister and I in formal dresses.

• Dad perching precariously on the back of a motor boat photographing kneeboarders being towed by a different boat than the one we were spectating from.
• Dad balancing in his motor boat photographing the cliffs along the River Murray, taken by me when I should have been driving the boat.
• Dad taking a photo of me at the beach taking a photo of him taking a photo of me.
• Dad standing on a jetty taking a photo of me snorkelling taking a photo of him taking a photo of me.

In the end I got one of my sister's wedding photos, cropped my sister out and voila! a photo of Dad for my lounge room wall.

Flawed Floors & Licence Loss

Eeyore and the Giraffe: Adventures on the High Seas.

The above picture probably has nothing to do with what I'm about to write, but I don't know because I'm yet to write it, or not write it, as the case may be.  It is now that I will decide what I'm going to write about in this blog.  Not just this post, the entire blog.  It seemed unnecessary to trouble myself with such trivialities before I created it. So, recently I had to surrender my driver's licence because I was still falling asleep at the wheel and I imagine that my daily struggle to stay awake will form part of my writings. I'm still attempting to fix some things around the house so this could be a good place to post my before and after photos of such thrilling aspects as the driveway and floorboards. My little project before I commenced ripping up carpet and sanding floorboards was to repaint the wooden giraffe above and make little hooks where I now store cables.  The leap from sanding small pieces of dowel to sanding metres of wooden floorboards was slightly greater than anticipated and I am left with some very 'rustic' surfaces which I am yet to sand and/or varnish. As for the driveway, which I originally thought I could remedy by filling in with some old laundry tiles, I am now left with a landslide of old crumbling slabs which used to constitute the walls of the swimming pool.  Not that it matters, seeing as I'm not allowed to drive anyway. Advantages of not driving: The discovery and subsequent delight in the noise a 600ml coke bottle makes when you hit things with the curvy bit.   Finding that the ticket validating machines on buses no longer make an anxiety provoking 'you are a terrible person because your ticket doesn't work' beep but instead they sound like a jolly bouncing frog.  Disadvantages of not driving: Getting a cold from visiting a doctor 5mins drive away because it took a few hours of travelling and waiting in the freezing cold night air.   I can't blame that entirely on not driving; it would have been more sensible to visit the doctor during daylight hours.  Unfortunately, I felt too sick to go to the doctor. The sickness I had before and the sickness I have inherited since have nothing to do with the reason I went there in the first place.  Much like this blog.  Much like my life in general. Well, that explains it. The main themes shall be:  Largely irrelevant photos Staying awake Not driving House renovations Things that make funny noises Complaining about my own stupidity Trying to figure out what I'm writing about