in progress pics

We lost motivation for a couple of weeks and didn’t make too much progress but we’ve been back on the ball this week.  Several of the things that we have left are, unfortunately, kind of major-ish undertakings. 

• eBay.  I have gotten a really good start this week.  I’ve currently got 16 things listed and so far 8 of them will sell.  Sadly I wasn’t very strategic with my pricing so as the bids currently stand, I’m not going to make much.  But things are selling!  I’ve got just about everything else cataloged and I wrote up my listings for another huge chunk of items today but we’re clearly having server issues at work because I’m still waiting on 2 e-mails that I sent myself.
• deep clean.  Blech. 
• clean the windows – in and out.   These last 2 items are our tasks for the weekend. 

But I promised pictures… way more interesting than my lists…

First up, Will refinishing the top to the coffee table…. our first major undertaking.  Ok, I say “our” but given my state, it’s not a good idea for me to be playing with paint stripper (even if it was soy-based and organic), standard latex paint (we used the paint that had been used before to match everything else – no low/no-VOC paint) or polyurethane sealant, so Will did all the work.

I have to say that this stuff (Franmar Soy Gel Paint & Urethane Remover) was really cool!  You just slop it on, it bubbles the paint, and then it pulls up in, actually, really gross wet sheets.

I have no pictures of the rest of the steps – repainting and then sealing – but suffice to say, it’s back to it’s original gorgeously painted surface.  I’m glad it finally got sealed.  It actually never got sealed in the first place so hopefully it will stay nicer longer than before.

My major project (besides organizing and culling which are always my main jobs) was in the bathroom.  Last year we had a bit of an incident wherein we had to replace our medicine cabinet but unfortunately, our previous model had square corners where the new one has rounded corners.  This fact left us with essentially craters in each corner resulting from decades of layers of paint and glaring white corners in the midst of my black wallpaper.  So Will did a spackle job and I got out the black paint and got to work to make things at least less obvious.

setting my boundaries

black paint is kind of scary to work with

finished!

Now for some random pics…

We have the list up on our fridge so that we have the physical satisfaction of crossing something off and it’s in our face.  The basement in reorg progress.

The tools took over the apartment.  They only got put away on Monday.

We lived without a coffee table for the better part of a week.  That sucked.  This is all the crap I cleared out of the bathroom closet so it looked “roomy and spacious.”

Our nicely cleaned out hall closet.  All the eBay stuff as it was until Monday when I started moving out into the dining room so that I could catalog it all.

Preparing a bunch of stuff to get put down in the basement.