Before and After Kitchen

Before we moved into this house eight years ago, I did a lot of painting. I painted the living room and entry, the dining room, the hallway, and Poppy's bedroom. Even though I got a lot done, I always regretted not painting the kitchen.

The kitchen was in bad shape. I don't know when it was last painted, but it looked terrible. The paint on the cabinets was bubbling and impossible to clean without actually scrubbing the paint off. It was nasty. But having my constantly-in-use kitchen out of commission for days to paint it was not very appealing.

So I never did it. And it got more and more gross.

However! When A. was planning his trip to New York for ten days with three of the four children, I knew my time had come. Accordingly, I asked him to buy me white paint for the ceiling and something yellow-toned for the cabinets.

The only pre-mixed, non-gray paint he could find when he went to Walmart, though, was an almond color. So that's what he got. And that's what I used.

First I painted the ceiling.

In progress.

I sent this photo to A., and he responded that he thought I was going to use the almond paint on the cabinets. I did. The brown you see in the top right is the color of the ceiling before painting it white.

He couldn't believe how gross the ceiling was. 

It certainly was.

To the remainder of the white paint, I added just a bit of the almond paint, to make a slightly lighter almond, I guess. I used that for the small area of actual walls. And then I painted the cabinets with the almond color.

I hate painting. I am not good at it; I am not particularly careful; and I don't find it enjoyable. But I got it done.

The paint was still drying, hence all the cabinet doors ajar.

I specifically asked A. to get something besides white for the cabinets so they wouldn't show smudges so readily. I actually prefer the look of the original white cabinets, but I don't regret using non-white. Everything looks SO much cleaner. And I can actually clean it! I can just wipe things down! Hooray!

I didn't have enough of the white paint to do the ceiling in the adjacent dining room, which desperately needs painting, but that can wait until I get back to Walmart for more paint.

When Money Can Buy Happiness

At least, when a little money can buy a little happiness. Like this . . .

One of the extremely irritating places to me in my house is the pass-through. This is a spot where there were windows in the original trailer that became, well, glassless windows that lead into the added-on living room. 

There is a shelf there, and that is where our landline phone lives. Also the pencil sharpener, pens and pencils, tape, stapler, calculators, etc. It's basically like an office desk, which I do not have. 

That stuff was always all over the place on that shelf. Calculators spread out all around the phone, random pads of paper, pencils that had fallen out of the repurposed honey jars . . . It was a mess. All the time. And it drove me crazy.

Finally, and why this took me so long I do not know, I bought an organizer for this spot. I knew what I wanted to put in it already, so I looked for one that had the appropriate number and size of compartments. 

It cost me $25 and fifteen minutes to go from this:

Yuck.

To this:

Yay!

Of course, keeping it that way will require constant vigilance to put things away as they get taken out, but at least now I have somewhere to put them that is not just the general location of the shelf. And that is $25 very well spent.

The Light Shines in the Darkness*

Just in the last few years, I have realized how much I like having additional light in the winter. Not lamps and light fixtures--although I have added quite a few of those to our home over the last eight years--but less-direct light.

I started putting up my Time Change lights about five years ago, just to illuminate the dim area between the kitchen and dining room. It does add a bit more light, but mostly it just looks pretty and cozy.

When I finish up the dishes at night and we're all in the living room, I like to turn off all the lights in the kitchen except these.

Just in the last few years, I've started using candles more, too. I started putting them on our table when someone donated a very large box of taper candles to our church that we couldn't use on the altar (because altar candles have to be majority beeswax, and these are paraffin). My children really love having the candles lit for breakfast if it's still dark outside, and always for dinner in the winter.

This year, I added a candle to the living room, too, thanks to the candle molds that Poppy and I used. The wax for this came from church, too. I actually ordered the molds because there was a big box of candle stubs that would have just been disposed of if I hadn't taken them to make into new candles.

Just that one small candle on the bookcase shining after it gets dark makes me very happy.

We made this one pink, with what I assume was an old Advent candle.

Small things, but they bring a disproportionate amount of satisfaction.

* "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it." From the Gospel of John.

A Quick Cookie Tip

I make a lot of cookies. They are my younger children's primary snack at school, which means I make cookies once a week. I have the recipe for chocolate chip cookies memorized because that one uses melted butter and thus requires no creaming with a hand mixer. And THAT means I don't have to have soft butter to start with. Handy. 

I've made those cookies so often that I play pretty fast and loose with the ingredients, usually adding peanut butter in addition to the butter and some oats instead of all flour. I also don't actually measure the salt, baking soda, and chocolate chips, instead just eyeballing those ingredients.

When I make other recipes--peanut butter, gingersnaps, oatmeal--I do more or less follow a recipe, but with one exception: I never, ever mix the wet and dry ingredients in separate bowls. Instead I mix the wet ingredients first--fats, sugars, eggs, vanilla--and then right on top I put the flour and other dry ingredients. 

I'll sort of shallowly mix the dry ingredients right there before incorporating them into the wet ingredients, but I really do not see the point in two bowls. Cookie dough is always thoroughly mixed anyway. It's fine to just stir it all up vigorously in the same bowl.

Wet on the bottom, dry on top.

This saves time and another dish to wash. So feel free to also be a rebel and disregard the "in a separate bowl" instruction if you, like me, are always trying to find more efficient ways to get through kitchen tasks.

The Big Bathroom Reveal

If you've been with us here for the past several months, you'll know that A. and I have been battling to renovate both of the bathrooms in our trailer for awhile now. The trailer is from 1972, and we're pretty sure the bathrooms are original to it. There were leaks. The floors were spongy. The tubs were cracked. The sinks were rusting.

It was ugly. It took forever. But we finally finished.

I don't have a lot of before photos, as it turns out. There's this one that shows the lovely avocado-green plastic tub surround. 

Cute baby, hideous tub.

And this one showcasing the faux-marble vanity top that had yellowed over time.

Lovely.

Those were both in the children's bathroom, which is also the guest bathroom. A. demolished the entire thing while we were in Colorado this summer, right down to ripping up the floors. The only thing he left was the vanity, as it was built into walls on three sides.

He replaced the bathtub with a deep soaking tub, even pouring concrete for its base. And then he put in an external shower system of copper he ordered directly from Morocco. He put in a new toilet. He put down a new floor of plywood and then covered it with Moroccan-patterned vinyl tiles. 

And then I painted. I painted the walls and the cabinets blue, and eventually, I got around to painting the sink and counter with a two-part epoxy paint that was tricky and drippy and time-consuming and absolutely REEKED.

Even with a mask, even with every door and window in the house open, it was overwhelming.

I even used some bronze-colored spray paint on the light fixtures, outlet plates, and cabinet pulls.

Upside-down egg cartons work very well for holding the pulls stable.

And finally, FINALLY, it is done.

Hard to get a picture of the whole bathroom, but this is most of it.

I have even fewer photos for the adults' bathroom. It had the same green tub, same faux-marble counter, same disintegrating floor, with the addition of some water damage on the ceiling from a long-ago leak.

The only photo I have is of the sink before I painted it.

And now it is done.

A. removed the tub, but decided instead of putting another tub in there, he would build a shower stall. He did this out of brick and concrete.

In progress.

And almost done. He still wants to find something to put over the painted walls.

A. did an incredible amount of work on all of this, most of it things he had never done before. The end result is very satisfying, though.

It was worth it, but we're very glad it's done.

The Sharp-dressed Cowboy

One of the many things I have learned since coming here to cattle country is that cowboys are very particular about their clothing. Not, of course, when they're working. When they're out branding or fencing or rounding up cattle, they wear their old, worn-out jeans and shirts*. But if they're dressing up for church or a school event or even a rodeo?

Then it's Starch Time.

Starch is a very important part of the cowboy's dress clothing. They still wear the same kind of jeans or shirts, they're just in good condition and, most importantly, they are heavily starched and ironed. And I do mean heavily. The laundering happens preferably at an actual laundry, because they don't use the spray starch. They actually dip jeans in a vat of starch before pressing them. This results in a starch so heavy that the jeans will literally stand up on their own and the owners have to "break" the legs of them before they can put them on.

I have listened to half-hour conversations among ranch wives about which laundries use enough starch and get jeans starched enough that they will stay creased properly through four wearings. It's a big thing.

I have never visited any of these laundries, and don't usually worry about starching and ironing our clothes, but my sons do occasionally have to make an effort to meet the proper cowboy standards for their clothing. Most notably for FFA contests.

One son went to a livestock judging competition this past weekend for which his FFA advisor specifically said his clothes should be ironed. He could wear (new) jeans and just a button-down, but they must be ironed.

I knew that meant starched, as well. Said son was busy helping a neighbor round up her cattle the morning he was supposed to leave, so I did his ironing for him. I do not like to iron, at all, but I know how to do it if necessary. Just like a businessman's dress clothes, the sleeves of the shirts and the legs of the jeans should have a visible crease that runs in the center of the seams, which requires folding the clothing carefully before ironing.

We have heavy duty spray starch, which is what I used. I sprayed more starch than I thought I would need and very carefully lined up the creases properly before ironing them in.

This would probably be easier if I had a full-sized ironing board, but I don't want to store one.

Those jeans certainly won't stand up on their own, but at least they had the proper creasing. Even if it only lasted for one wearing.

* ALWAYS long-sleeved button-downs or snap shirts, though. This is entirely a matter of practicality, to keep the sun from absolutely frying their arms and necks when they're out working all day. 

Again with the Painting

 Almost exactly two years ago, I painted the children's bathroom. I was very proud of myself for getting it done, and also happy that I could cross one more room off my list of rooms that need painting.

Except then I had to do it again.

After A.'s spectacular bathroom renovation in there that included entirely replacing the sub-floor and then putting Moroccan-style blue and white stick-on tiles over that, the walls looked . . . wrong. The white on the tiles was so bright that it made the yellow-y white of the walls look dingy. There were also a few spots around the bathtub especially that had gotten roughed up from the tub installation with deep scratches and peeling paint.

And then there was the bright yellow on the cabinets, which was a little much with the floor color and pattern.

Much as I hated to do it, the whole bathroom really needed to be painted again. 

When I investigated our cans of paint in the shop, I found that I really didn't have any usable paint left. Accordingly, the next time I was at Walmart, I bought some paint. This being a New Mexico Walmart, I did not have it in me to try to pick out a paint color to be mixed and then hunt down an employee to mix it for me. Instead, I took a look at the limited pre-mixed color options and went with the lightest blue available.

This was still not as light as I wanted it to be, even after I mixed in a whole quart of white paint I had. I forged ahead anyway. The end result is very blue. 

There are no windows in this bathroom, so the color is kind of hard to see. It's definitely blue, though.

I had wanted to paint the middle of the cabinets white for contrast, but I used my white paint to tone down the blue. So blue on blue it is.

I am not a huge fan of blue in general, and I am far from a professional painter, but this certainly does look much better than it did.

My next challenge is going to be painting the awful faux marble sink and countertop with white tub finishing paint, due to be delivered on Friday.

Yuck.

And then I will do the same thing--sink and all--in our bathroom, which A. just finished working on. At least that one I procrastinated so much on painting that I haven't done it recently.

In a couple of weeks*, we'll have two freshly-painted fancy bathrooms. And then I won't paint anything for a long time. I hope.

* I have to go get more paint for our bathroom. This time I'm going to get a gallon of white and just tint it a little with the blue paint I have left. I really don't want our bathroom to be quite so blue.

Can It Be?

Yesterday when I was in the middle of my third load of bathtub laundry, I took a break to call the appliance repair place yet again. 

Actually after I had hung up the second load and while the third load was soaking.

I didn't have any hope they would actually be able to tell me when my washing machine might be fixed, but I thought I should once again remind them that they still have it.

Imagine my surprise when the lady went to "go check," and returned to the phone to tell me it was done and ready to be picked up.

She also said "they" had been calling me and she guessed no one had picked up, but I know that wasn't true.

No matter. I CAN PICK UP MY WASHING MACHINE TODAY! 

Rejoice with me.

Two months of washing clothes in my bathtub with occasional trips to far-away laundromats is far, far too long.

The machine in question when it was new.

Is there anything you're excited about today?

Kristin Homemaker

School started for everyone yesterday. The whole family got all loaded up on the school bus to begin their new year, A. driving and everyone else slumped in the seats, resigned to their fates. (My children do not like school.)

Except for me. I did not get on the school bus. I will not be getting on the school bus, because I quit my job there. 

Last week I had to fill out some forms that asked for my occupation. I wrote "homemaker."*

Of course, the maker of our home is what I have always been, it's just that I did that in addition to working at the school two days a week as an educational assistant (teacher's aide). 

But now, all I am doing is at home. So what am I doing now? Let me show you what I've done so far this morning!

Still doing tub laundry. Our washing machine is still in for repairs, waiting on a "control board," which sounds intense. Thank goodness it's still under warranty. The repair guy said maybe another week. I'm taking that as another two weeks.

Watering the garden and picking tomatoes, yay!

Softening butter in preparation for making oatmeal cookies for the younger children's snacks.

Later I have to go to the village for a bank visit. Maybe I'll finally get around to vacuuming my filthy floors.

But if I don't get around to it today, I have tomorrow. And the day after. 

I don't anticipate having a problem filling my time, and it's such a relief to have the time. Some might see this as a demotion, but I see it as a great increase in my quality of life, as well as my family's quality of life.

* I prefer this term to housewife. Housewife can just be a wife who sits around the house. Homemaker describes much better what I actually do. I really have made and continue to make our home, which requires skill and a lot of work.

A Teaser

When we went to Colorado, A. stayed home to take care of the animals. He also took the opportunity to completely demolish the children's bathroom. There were leaks in the tub, toilet, and sink that were causing the floor to buckle, as well as forming an unwelcome swampy area under the trailer. The toilet only flushed with help from an extra bucket of water, and the bathtub was the original avocado-green plastic fixture from the seventies.

It was way past time to address it, is what I'm saying.

So while we were gone, A. pulled out the toilet, the tub, and the entire floor.

The old tub out the back door, awaiting its trip to the dump.

The new plywood floor. Delightfully solid underfoot.

With a great deal of hard work, he managed to have the floor and toilet installed before we got home. Then we chose some peel and stick vinyl floor tiles to cover the plywood. Since these tiles are going in our 1970s trailer-with-additions, we definitely do not need to worry about resale. So we chose exactly what we wanted.

And what we wanted were Moroccan-style tiles in blue.

We're waiting on the tub and shower fixtures to be delivered this week, and then A. can finish putting in all the plumbing. 

I'll post some pictures when it's done. Stay tuned.

The Mystery Kitchen

I have a habit of re-using things, especially in my kitchen. I hate to only use a jar or container one time and then throw it away. I keep the plastic jars A.'s instant coffee comes in, the empty containers of cottage cheese and sour cream, any glass jars, ziploc bags if I can easily wash them (so not if they've had anything really greasy or raw meat in them), and of course, canning jars and lids get used over and over again. 

Most of these things end up in my freezer at some point, and I always label things I put in my freezer, on the lid with a permanent marker. Most of my food containers have been labeled more than once. Sometimes so many times I run out of space on the lids or on the bags.

It's kind of funny to track what's been in the containers with that particular lid.

One lid is new and still has the original label. The other one? First it had chicken stock, then ham stock, then pinto beans, and now the jambalaya base I froze last month.

This lid first had pressure-canned pinto beans in 2023, then rooster stock in 2023, then sauerruben in 2024.

What this means is that you can never trust the lid that's on a container to actually tell you what's in that container. That canning jar lid, for instance, is currently on a jar containing pickled radishes and onions. It's not sauerruben.

Likewise, sour cream or cottage cheese containers are just as likely to have leftover baked beans or tomato sauce in them as the dairy products suggested by their labels.

This is why when my sister visits, she always holds up whatever she's taken out of the refrigerator and asks what's really in it. Because it really could be anything, and only I can tell for sure.

So tell me: Do you do this? Or do all your containers tell the truth about their contents?

The End of an Era

Okay, that's an awfully portentous title for what is actually not that big of an announcement: I'm going to buy a clothes dryer.

Some of you may not have been aware that I don't have one, but I don't. I haven't had one for about four years now. This is absolutely doable in New Mexico, where it's sunny and dry almost all year. Even in the winter, the sun is strong enough to dry clothing on the line during the more-limited daylight hours.

Easy line drying in the summer.

Except not always. 

Several times a year, we have weather that makes it very difficult to get clothing dry outside for a week or so. Sometimes that's because of rain. Sometimes that's because of snow or ice. There is also the incredible wind in the spring, which can be strong enough to actually rip the clothing where the clothes pins hold it to the line. 

An example of a winter clothesline.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the best days to hang clothes outside. Should I hang them on the pasture clothesline, which is more exposed to sun and wind, or the backyard clothesline, which is surrounded by a board fence for protection from the wind, but where the woodsmoke drifts in the winter? Also if I have to work that day, can I get them hung up before I leave for work, or should I leave them for A. to hang when he gets back from the bus run? And if I leave them for him, will they have enough time to dry or will I end up having to hang them around the woodstove to get all the way dry overnight? Which clothes are the ones I should wash first? Who's out of pants? Who has a uniform that has to be dry by a certain day?

It was all starting to contribute too much to my mental load, which feels kind of heavy most days anyway at this stage of my life.

So, one day while I was sitting at work, looking at the weather forecast and thinking about all these things, I decided that the time had come to buy a clothes dryer and silence this continual mental plotting.

This will most certainly not be the end of my line-drying our clothing. I will still line-dry most of the time, even in the winter. But it's a nice thought that when there is literally two feet of snow on the ground, I will not have to put on my snow boots and dig a path to the clothesline to hang laundry.

Luxury, indeed.

Happy Halloween

A rare Thursday post mostly to show you A.'s pride and joy:

A. calls it The Plumpkin.

This came from some random seeds of a squash that hybridized. Quite obviously one of the parents was the Atlantic Giant A. grew a couple of years ago, because it got bigger than any pumpkin we've ever had. A. was very excited about it, and decided he just had to make it into a jack -o'-lantern to put by our front gate. So he did.

My contribution to the Halloween decorations was on the table, of course.

Orange zinnias, cosmos, and calendulas, plus some buffalo gourds.

A seasonally appropriate breakfast table.

We will of course be trick-or-treating in the village this evening. This year, we'll have an Arab, Jim Corbett, a lumberjack, and a ballerina. My most important job for the costuming is doing a proper ballerina bun for Poppy. It involves rolling her very long hair around a sock, and it's harder than it seems.

Wish me luck, and happy Halloween! Are you doing anything fun?

Out to the World

Please excuse my late post today. My oven stopped working on Sunday, which is something of a situation in my heavily-used kitchen.

I needed a new range, which of course meant a hundred-mile drive. As do most purchases here.

So after I got the kids off to school this morning, I took myself off to the city to buy a new range. While I was at it, I also (finally) bought a new dishwasher.

In for a penny, in for a pound! Or rather, several hundred pounds.

Unfortunately, I couldn't bring the range home with me today because we use propane here, which meant a gas range that had to be converted. And the guy who does the conversions wasn't there today. So I had to schedule a delivery for both appliances.

Amazingly, this store will deliver to my house. For free, even. They had a delivery set up in our area just next week, in fact, so I'll just be without an oven for a couple of weeks.

Of course I had to go to the grocery store while I was in the city. I always expand my horizons at Walmart.

I had no idea one could purchase ready-to-bake cookies shaped like footballs, pumpkins, and ghosts, for example. Not that I could bake them at the moment. (And not that I would buy them ever.)

I also stopped at the produce trailer on the side of the road to buy what is certainly the last fresh corn of the season.

This particular trailer was pulled by a de-commissioned school bus, which is just so . . . New Mexico.

So that's what I did today. I spent most of my day off--and all of my month's paycheck--buying appliances and groceries. 

I like to lead the glamorous life*, indeed.

* It's a song. The video is here, and it's so incredibly 80s. I had never seen it, and so have just now learned that Sheila E. not only sang, but played the drums. At the same time. Impressive.

Little Hands

One of the best chores for a small child to help with is pulling the basil leaves off the stems.

Small leaves for small fingers.

Other things she has done with/for me recently: 

--Skinning and pitting thawed peaches

--Bashing cabbage for sauerkraut

--Hanging the socks and underwear on the clothesline

--Sweeping the covered porch

--Dusting the couch feet/lamp bases/anything low down

--Organizing my bathroom drawer (I did not ask her to do that one)

--Chopping potatoes

--Making a fly swatter out of a stick and a piece of cardboard . . . that actually works

--Decorating for the Fourth of July

I'm not saying my sons weren't helpful as young children, but this girl is a whole other level. It might not last, but I'm enjoying it while it does.

Dishes and Dishwashers

About a month ago, my dishwasher stopped heating the water. Without hot water, dishes don't get clean. I looked up the error message on the dishwasher's readout and figured out what needed to happen to fix it.

I also figured out that it was not a fix we were going to do ourselves.

I found a place in the city 100 miles away that will look at it, but I have to bring it to them. And that, I have not yet done.

So I don't have a functioning dishwasher.

This is not as bad as it might be, since it's summer. I don't work in the summer, and we're not running all over creation for school/sports/religious education/whatever. This means I have the time to do dishes twice a day.

It's been eight years since I've been without a dishwasher, but before that, I did dishes by hand at Blackrock for a decade. My handwashing skills were a little rusty, however, so I had to remember my method.

What, you don't have a dishwashing method? I definitely do. And here it is!

First, I fill the sink with soapy hot water and put all the silverware in the sink to soak while I wipe the table. 

Next, I wash all the silverware, three pieces at a time. The MiL thought it was very funny that I always do three pieces at a time, but that seems like the right number to me. Enough that I feel like I'm moving quickly, but not so many that I can't properly clean and rinse them all.

Next, I put in the cups and mugs to wash. 

Bowls next.

Next is plates.

Next are the miscellaneous cooking things, including pots and pans. 

Last, I wash cast-iron skillets.

And when I'm all done, I microwave the dish cloth for a minute to sterilize it, since I can't just throw it in the dishwasher.

A dishwasher that no longer washes is a very handy dish drainer, at least.

I will get the dishwasher in to be repaired before I start work in August. If it can't be repaired, I'll buy a new one. But until then, I hand wash, starting with silverware.

Do you have a dishwasher, or do you do dishes by hand? What's your method?

We Have a Floor!

Or perhaps more accurately, we have carpet on the floor.

I am speaking, of course, of the floor in my bedroom. This is one of the rooms in which a window broke all the way through during our Severe Weather Event in July. It is also the only room with a blown-out window that had carpeting in it.

That carpet got completely saturated and I had to pull up the soaked part of it. This left an area of particle-board sub-floor at the entrance to my room that was . . . displeasing. To say the least.

Yeah.

The carpet itself was no great loss, as it was a very ugly brown carpet from at least the 1980s. But having part ugly old carpet and part sub-floor was worse.

It still took us until now to get it covered over, though. I am not good about making decisions for things like this, so I spent more time than I should have figuring out what to put in there. 

Laying down actual carpet is pretty tricky, and we have no experience with it. The nearest place that does it is 100 miles away. So I decided instead to try out the carpet squares that are peel and stick.

Many of these are very institutional looking, of the sort you would see in a school or doctor's office. That was not what I wanted. I wanted something that looked like an actual carpet, with some pile to it. 

Most of the options for more carpet-like material for home use were in shades of gray, which was also not what I wanted. I am not into gray, and its ubiquity in interior design things lately is irritating to me. But I finally found some that looked like carpet, were a shade of light brown, and weren't too expensive. 

I had A. do the measuring of the room and the figuring of how many boxes we would need, because I am hilariously bad at such things and would certainly have messed that up in a big way.

I ordered them from Walmart and went through that situation so common nowadays of frequent e-mail updates on the status of my order, culminating in an e-mail two weeks later telling me the order was canceled entirely. I got a full refund, but still. Annoying.

So then I got to do it all again, but this time with Amazon, who actually delivered what I ordered. (I got these, in case you were wondering.) 

And then the boxes of carpet squares sat in our living room for . . . a long time.

It's like an extra table! I guess.

They had to be in the living room because they couldn't get dirty/wet/hot or otherwise messed up, and there was nowhere else big enough to put that many boxes.

So they sat there.

In our defense, I REALLY did not want to try to do this project with all four kids at home. The interruptions and general chaos would have been too much. 

Just feeding them all with all of this surrounding the dining room table would have been a mess.

That meant a Tuesday or a Thursday when they were all at school, but A. and I were both home and didn't have anything else to do.

This confluence of events has not happened much in the past month or so, what with sick children home from school, surgery for one, me substituting at school, A. getting hay, etc.

But finally, FINALLY, I declared Tuesday to be The Day of the Carpeting.

And so we did it.

Well, A. did the carpet part. I did all the cleaning--there was a lot of that--shifting of things, finding of tools, fetching and carrying, and general assistance.

A. did all the demo of the remaining carpet, removal of padding, pulling up wood strips with tacks around the edges of the room, and taking out staples. Lots of pulling and prying that required hand strength that I do not have.

He also did the actual laying of the squares. The reason he did this was because the laying down of these squares, while simple in theory, actually required quite a bit of figuring and cutting to get them to fit snugly up against each other so you couldn't see the seams, and also to fit around closet doors and corners. 

Another thing I would be hilariously bad at. Visualizing shapes has never been my forte. Just ask my geometry teacher in high school.

Anyway.

The instructions for installation on the back of the box were actually sort of complex, recommending snapping chalk lines and moving out from the center of the room in a specific pattern and all that. A. did not do any of that. He started at the door and worked his way through the room from there.

Because we weren't working with all one big piece of carpet (and because we didn't follow the installation instructions), we didn't have to move the biggest furniture out of the room. We did one part of the room, then shifted the bed over onto that. Then we continued until we got to where the dressers are, shifted those onto the squares already in place, finished up, and moved it all back.

Here's a side-by-side in-progress of the new carpet and the old. Ugly brown on the right is the old one.

From the time I started moving furniture out of the room to the time I got it all back in, vacuumed, and everything cleaned up was almost exactly 7.5 hours.

It was very tiring, but I am SO HAPPY to have a real floor in my bedroom again.

A vast improvement.

So! The final verdict on the carpet squares? Recommend.

A. did all the work with them, and he kept saying what a great product they are. Not easy, exactly, but certainly easier than a big piece of carpet that requires laying padding and tacking down and all that. It was very do-able for someone handy like him. Even I probably could have managed it, albeit not as quickly, neatly, or efficiently.

I was sure they would smell terrible to start with, but there was no chemical odor at all right out of the box, which was a nice surprise. Nothing shifted when I vacuumed them after installation, either. I was a bit concerned that the corners or something would pull up, but no.

Two cons I will mention, however. 

A. did an excellent job setting these against each other to make it look as much as possible like a single piece of carpeting. But, if you're looking very closely, you can see a couple of seams in the room where the squares abut. This doesn't bother me in the slightest, especially because 80% of the floor is covered in furniture. But if you're a perfectionist and you're using them in a more open room, it might bother you.

Also, my children, who spend a lot of time flopping on the floor of my room, complained that there isn't enough padding now. There is actually no padding except the bit on the back of the squares themselves, because the squares are laid directly on the hard floor. I guess I can tell the difference when I walk on our old carpeting in the hall and so on, but since I'm just walking on it, not lying down on it like my kids do, I don't care about the small difference in padding.

I have no idea how these will hold up in the coming years, but for now, I have a nice carpet in my room. And that makes me very, very happy.

Mid-week Validation

This is a long week. I normally only work two days a week at the school. This week, I have to be there four days*. 

But at least my stove is clean.

The reason my stove is clean is because I got sick of the blackened rings around my burners and spent 45 minutes on Saturday night scrubbing the hell out of them with baking soda and vinegar.

Because Saturday night's not just alright for fighting. It's also alright for scrubbing. Or something.

It hurt my hands. But I got the stove almost all the way white again!

I didn't get a "before" photo, but this is an "in progress" picture. One side is done, obviously. The other is . . . not. Gross.

I have no idea how a stove that I just bought new six months ago got so nasty. I mean, I wipe the thing down every single night when I do dishes. 

But I don't actually scrub it hard. And I do use it quite a lot. 

By "quite a lot," I mean that I have cooked dinner on that stove every single night for the entire time I have had it. Plus all the breakfasts, lunches, desserts, canning, yogurt-making . . .

Well, it's a lot. And it obviously takes a toll. So yes, I guess I DO know how it got so gross.

I finally decided the time had come to address that situation. So my trusty nylon scrubby kept for filthy jobs and I dove in.

It was hard. And I didn't get every last little speck of black stuff, but I got almost all of it.

Perfect? Definitely not. Better? Definitely YES.

So tell me! What unpleasant and unappreciated task have you done lately? Allow me to bear witness to and acknowledge your efficiency and general awesomeness.

* I know. Four whole days in a week? Cry me a river, right? What can I say. I'm spoiled.  

Another Domestic Pat on the Back

I've done it again. I've cleaned something so neglected and disgusting in my kitchen that I feel the need to announce it to the Internet at large.

Lucky Internet.

Last time I did this, it was the high edges of my kitchen cabinets that I had spent a lot of time cleaning*.  Then I shared my subsequent pride in this (admittedly minor) accomplishment with all of you. And then you all told me the unappreciated but satisfying tasks you had accomplished yourselves so that we could all indulge in some mutual appreciation.

It was nice. Let's do that again.

So! This time it was the top of my refrigerator. I, um, do not remember the last time I really cleaned this. I store some things up there--the extra-large bags of store-brand cereal we buy, the large economy box of oatmeal, the extra-long roll of aluminum foil that doesn't fit in a drawer--so cleaning it requires first clearing it off.

Also, I'm five feet, five inches tall, so I don't actually see the top of my refrigerator unless I climb up on a chair to retrieve something.

A., however, who is over six feet, can see it. And did see it when he was looking for something up there. Even A., who is possibly the least fussy man on the planet when it comes to house cleaning, said he was a little shocked.

Yeah. It was gross. It was that special combination of grease and dust that builds up in kitchens--or at least, in my kitchen--with the added complication of the textured surface of this refrigerator that traps all this stuff and requires serious scrubbing to get clean.

Nothing for it but to get scrubbing, however. So I got some very soapy water in the sink, my old nylon scrubby thing that I keep for just such disgusting jobs, and got to it.

Ew.

It was probably only about 15 minutes of actual scrubbing, but it was HARD scrubbing. My hands were cramping by the time I was done. 

But it's done now! And I took a picture for you:

Back to its original white. A great improvement over sticky gray. Yuck.

I did not take a "before" picture, because this is supposed to be self-congratulations, not self-castigation about its original filthy state.

So tell me! What have you done lately that I can applaud you for?

* Okay, so it was only 45 minutes, but that's about 40 minutes longer than I want to be climbing up and down and scrubbing grease and dirt.