Adventures With Flooring: The Vinyl’s Revenge

March 10, 2012 ~ JodiLea

This is our entry way vinyl that matches our kitchen floor. It is very photogenic, meaning that it looks fairly OK when it’s shiny from the camera’s flash. In reality, it is a lot darker and sinister. In fact you can’t take a picture of it without the flash, even in the daylight. And note how well it goes with wall colors.

Fake Brick Vinyl — The butt-ugly flooring

I honestly thought I would have fun ripping out this butt-ugly vinyl in my kitchen. I have hated that flooring since we moved in – 24 years ago. It is only because we had to fix water damage from an old leaky dishwasher that we are changing the flooring before we put the house up for sale.

Before Cleaning up Floor — What is under the vinyl..

The job is much harder than I ever suspected. Admittedly, hubby is doing most of the work which is rightly so, because this type of housework is MANS WORK. I am helping him, but my level of strength is low, especially compared to hubby’s, so my job is to remove the backing and horrible gluey mess, that will now be referred to as the crap, from the floor that the vinyl left. No sweat, right?

Ha! Lots and lots of it, actually. Not to mention screaming back and shoulder muscles. And the cursing.

My fingers are all torn up and cracked. And I have worn gloves and use a large putty knife to scrape the crap. My carpel tunnel is protesting also. Damn my weakness!

I wanted to hire some flooring guys to replace the floor while I was at work. Is that too much to ask? But hubby is an excellent handy-man who can’t stand other people doing what he wants to get done. And besides that, he has left over flooring tiles in the garage. Which means that our kitchen floor will soon match the one in our guest bathroom. Hmm.. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I am sooo glad that I’m moving out of this crazy house!

.This is the progress I made on Thursday.

See the darker plywood on the right? That is from water damage. For some reason it makes the crap stick better.

To be continued….

The Hopeful (Lazy?) Gardener

March 7, 2012 ~ JodiLea

I come from a long line of Kansas farmers, who are no doubt laughing beyond the grave as they shake their heads at my flower garden.

Hey! I planted the daffodil bulbs in December and they are popping up on schedule. AND I have spent 2 weekends hacking weeds out of the California soil, which really isn’t soil at all, just dirty gravel broken up with rocks.

I was tired and achy and succumbed to temptation from a mail-order catalog that promised “quick and easy” beautiful flower gardens. I ordered these organic roll out strips filled with seeds and followed the instructions (except for the part that told me to remove all the rocks from the flower bed – which could never happen).

Flower Strips

Wah-Lah! This is the before photo of my beautiful flower garden. (Note the timely daffodil’s growing in the center) I just need to keep it damp for 2 weeks and the seeds will germinate. Unfortunately, it looks ridiculous now.

It was forecast to rain yesterday, so I did not water the precious strips. Dang! By the time I get home they may have dried out. Luckily I get home around 2:30pm, so maybe not all is lost.

I’ll know in a couple of weeks if I blew 20 bucks or not 😉

Misadventures With Technology

March 3, 2012 ~ JodiLea ~ 4 Comments

Well, I’ve crossed over.

I bought an iPhone. It is so awesome!

I downloaded my first app yesterday – a diabetic management software. What? Well, maybe I will download something fun next time, but I would feel too guilty playing games on my phone while I need to do other things. I’m hoping that “Glucose Buddy” will rescue me from handwritten forms and complex Excel spreadsheets. That would free up a lot of my time so I could have some fun.

The second app I downloaded was “WordPress”. (Only second because I had trouble finding it.) I still don’t have it set up right because I published a short post from my phone before this one and it must have floated off into a wireless black-hole, because it is not here among my other posts. Maybe it will turn up later. I am not knowing.

I’m terrified that I will damage the thing. I did not buy the insurance, which will probably bite me in the ass later, but the phone cost enough by itself, ya know? You probably do, because unlike me you have had your smartphone for years and have mastered it. I have a feeling that my phone will be smarter than me for a long time.

Please don’t be upset if I don’t call you for a while – I still need to figure out the contacts list thingy.

🙂
photo credit: willc2 via photopin cc