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shadesofmauve:

and I’m suddenly allergic to everything

Oh god, you too? I’m currently debating whether to try upping the dose of my antihistamine to see if that brings things to more of a level of sanity.

Today has been a flurry of activity. My frustration with the current state of affairs; namely waiting for other people to do things. Like, for example, waiting for my universities to send forms to the US. Waiting for the embassy to process our application. Things I have no control over and am entirely dependent on others…

…these things make me cranky.

Also, I’ve suddenly be struck by the realisation that if we’re to be moving in October / November, that’s *really f’kin close*. And the house is, you guessed it, not yet finished.

The List (which is now really ‘the house list’ as we have ‘The Great Escape (list)’ on our wall, thus meaning they should be distinguishable, I suppose) is actually looking a hell of a lot better. Although I keep finding small items to add to it just as I cross things off.

But, the additions to the list not withstanding, today has been a day of progress.

– The boxing I made for under the stairs has been filled. Most of that filler will end up coming back off when I sand it, but the hardboard needed a bit of fillerly-love because there were some ‘slightly iffy’ joints.

Irritatingly, I actually broke out the mitre saw and made some beautiful cuts which would have made really, really nice boxing. Had I then not just thrown it together with a few screws and no-more-nails.

But, hey, it looks okay and it is just a bit of boxing to sit over the fusebox. Feh.

…I have filled (and now painted) two more sections of the kitchen skirting (base)boards.

They need another two coats but it just leaves the two piddly bits next to the fireplace and the big long section with the sockets under the bench. That should be quite ‘entertaining’ because I also have my special bits of hardboard to go around those sockets to sand and attach too. It took me quite a while to come up with a good solution to the sockets because they weren’t quite sunk into the wall far enough. Hopefully my solution will look okay.

…I have removed the two rotting planters and made a new raised bed (with no soil in it, as yet)…

Pleasingly I managed to salvage quite a lot of wood from the grotty planter I threw together (last year?). Which means that the wood is not merely recycled, it’s re-recycled. Heh.

…I’ve planted a bunch of leeks that my mum gave us (and some swiss chard, too).

…I have cut and installed a blanking plate that allows all the cables that run to the TV / Hi-Fi / etc out of the wall. It was, until today, just the bare metal box sunk into the wall with the cables hanging out of it. It’s not something that people will probably even notice (thankfully, because I didn’t do that great a job of cutting the blanking plate and I wasn’t going to disconnect all the cables to try and feed them through a nicer outlet), but it’s better than it was and it now bothers me much less. It also doesn’t sort of scream at you from across the room, which it was doing (at least to me).

…I’ve also sanded and put two coats of paint on the old handrail that goes on the other side of the stairs. I probably should have removed it permanently, because it’s not that nicer rail. Something which has become more apparent to me now I’ve been cleaning it up (it’s got some massive knots missing).

But given the choice between, at this point, removing and filling the rawlplugs in the wall and then attempting to paint over it and putting the rail back up I’m going with the latter.

shadesofmauve:

Two men were shot by a police officer today in Olympia. Both Andre Thompson and Bryson Chaplin are alive, but Thompson is in critical condition. They were suspected of shoplifting (though the article states taht they threw the items back at the employees when confronted, which… actually means that even if it IS the same people and that IS what they did, they didn’t actually steal). The Olympia Police are NOT investigating themselves; Olympian article says “It will instead be investigated by the Thurston County Critical Response Team, a group made up of five local law enforcement agencies” which is… unfortunately vague. (googling the group name turns up ZILCH except for links back to the Olympian article).

I’m very glad that both men are still alive, and absolutely furious at the continued use of lethal force against black people suspected of misdemeanors.

Read more here: http://www.theolympian.com/2015/05/21/3737619_two-suspected-shoplifters-shot.html?rh=1#storylink=cp

asdf y

Per the Olympian, updated one hour ago.

Let me take a moment to remind you just how crappy nights are. I am at work today, having had yesterday off, having finished nights on Wednesday morning. So: Work night – ‘day off’ (where I worked the first 7 hours of the day), rest day, and notionally today I ‘should’ be back to a normal day schedule.

Only instead, I spent yesterday feeling completely exhausted and then woke up, awake as you f’ing like at 0300 this morning and have since had no hope whatsoever of getting back to sleep. I feel really, really tired. But have spent the last hour and 16 minutes listening to the owl outside and a mouse which appears to have made its home in the attic (I feel another humane trap purchase coming on).

I keep yawning, and wanting to curl up in a ball, and having got up my body is cursing me. But sleep? Not f’king forthcoming because nights.

Incidentally, the UK G’vt doesn’t think night shifts, and the corresponding loss of lifespan from doing them, are not worth paying medical staff extra. This is because the UK g’vt is a bunch of right-wing toffs who haven’t done a night’s honest work in their life.

shadesofmauve:

pyoorkate:

shadesofmauve:

eleneripenneth:

shadesofmauve:

eleneripenneth said: Good luck in tile hell! (There’s no bitterness there after our bathroom remodel, no…)

LOL, do you have a particularly bad experience I should learn from?

YES. 

And it is…. NEVER go tile shopping with a husband who’s an engineer, who neither makes decisions quickly, is prone to sticker shock more than I am (which is a LOT), and who isn’t particularly adventurous past the beige realm.

Eight years later, and I still weep going past tile stores…. ;)

Considering we’re talking about an industry that already caters to ‘any color as long as it’s beige"… ugh. I feel your pain. I’m actually in that exact stage of tile hunting right now. “Pick something that you’ll live with for ten years or more, no pressure!”

I want something with mixed browns and grays, like some slate, but in ceramic or porcelain and a smoothish finish (art studio, here – I need cleanable!). I had no idea brownish and grayish was such a huge scary leap from the Land of Beige, but the flooring industry apparently thinks so, and thus doesn’t provide many options.

I got mail-order samples from one place and I LOVE one of them, but it’s a 12 inch square sample of a high variation tile, so I have basically zero idea of what it would look like on a 190 sq ft floor.

Advice:

Never get cheap tile. The first time I tiled I used nice tile, but it was the first time I’d tiled… it came out pretty good (and I made tetris patterns in the kitchen tiling, which was awesome). The second time I tiled I used cheap tile from B&Q, I think. White, square, ceramic tile.

Only having talked to a tiler, part of the reason it was such a spectacular mare of a job was because cheap tiles are cut / made to much wider tolerances, which means it’s really hard to get a decent looking finish.

One thing I found that’s really odd to me, in the UK you can get natural tile (our kitchen is tiled with Travertine which was wayy cheaper than buying anything but the most grotty ceramic tile and looked way nicer. Our last house we did in slate, which again, was cheaper than ceramic. When I was last in the States, Kathryn’s mom was looking at tile – and all the natural stone stuff seemed way more pricey than ceramic which was confusing (and distressing to me, for future planning). Anyhow, the reason I mention this, is that cheaper natural stone tends to have quite a lot of variation in thickness, and it’s pretty hard to lay really, really flat*. So if you want a really, really flat floor that might not be ideal for you. Or you might be way better at laying tile than me / my builder (or have way more patience). 

On the other hand natural tile looks lush.

* Our kitchen floor isn’t bad, but I took quite a long time over it. Our last house, the builders got a pro-tiler in to do it, and it was more uneven than this one.

Whether stone or ceramic/porcelain is cheaper here or not varies, actually. I’ve no idea why. The human-made stuff is usually cheaper (or starts cheaper), but when my folks’ bought their tile the real slate they wanted was cheaper at the time than the other stuff.

It’s irrelevant to me, because I want porcelain. Kitchens and bathrooms have nothing on the staining potential of an oil painting studio, and porcelain is far less porous than the other options.

I wonder about the tile size discrepancies… there are variability issues, of course, but I know lots of people who’ve used cheap-as-can-get tile from both the two big box stores, and never had a problem. Could be another regional difference.

All that said, I can’t find the tile I actually WANT.

Ah, that’s good to know, because when we do have somewhere to tile, we’ll probably want natural in the kitchen-type and bathroom type areas, an then ceramic in Kathryn’s studio.

I think size issues are less of a problem on the floor – on the wall ‘cos you’re leaving the tile spacers in it becomes rapidly apparent when they aren’t all the same size and it’s quite hard to subtly correct for it. On the floor, you can just tweak the spacing to adjust a little as you go.  

pacificnorthwestdoodles:

pyoorkate:

shadesofmauve:

I think I may finally have a plan for my yarden path, and maybe for some bed borders. The problem with garden boarders is I don’t really like them, and I don’t want to spend a ton of time making a nice division between lawn and garden when I don’t really want the lawn at all – but I haven’t…

Sounds like a neat plan… I like that you’re also engaged in solving problems way ahead of when you might conceivably get to do anything about them.

Of course, my first instinct is to say ‘PALLETS’ as a solution. I have no idea how, but that’s currently my solution to all gardening problems.

Slightly more sensibly, I am opposed to paying for edging of borders, thus we use reclaimed bricks (by which I mean, we wait until they come up on Freecycle, fill the car until it can take no more, then edge with that). I was going to suggest dead roof-tiles, but then I remembered that ceramic roof tiles aren’t really a thing in the same way in the US that they are here. A quick tour of most of Bristol will reveal some victorian house having its tiles ripped off and binned for modern replacements (as they delaminate) – and those delaminated tiles also make quite nice edging (and moss grows on them, rapidly, making them settle into the landscaping).

Unhelpful, I realise, but I’m post-nights and thus oversharing :)

pyoorkate: I am a huge fan of pallets! Vertical pallet gardening is a personal favorite of mine and if shadesofmauve is interested in a vertical set up when she’s ready, I can always  gift my time and show her how! It’s a fun and easy project.

Aye, one of the first things we did with pallets was the vertical garden. It doesn’t exactly work right, because we didn’t put a mesh in first, so the soil washes out, slowly. But the sorrel’s so happy in there that we don’t want to move it either :)

Next time we’ll do it right :)