What to do with the time?

The question, "What will I do today?", seems to be a frequent one lately. It's the perfect storm, as it were, where I live in a house that needs some attention, I am retired from my teaching career while my other income avenues have temporarily dried up, and I am sequestered indoors. There seems to be only one answer. Fix the house.

Jobs about the house that I have left for the opportunity to ply my interests in more enjoyable ventures have come to my immediate attention. Long overdue promises and increasing needs have urged me to take up various tools and attend neglected tasks. This fall has been busy with me rebuilding my back deck, tearing out half of my garden, replanting and placing landscape fabric and mixed-surface materials in place, and getting rid of an unwelcome raccoon and critter-proofing my front porch. With the rain dampening more than my spirits, the time has come to carry on indoors.

First I painted the upstairs hallway, all five miles of it. Then I did the stairway; that proved to be an exercise in creative stretching. Afterward came the downstairs entryway. My wife applauded my skill and encouraged me to ply brush and roller to her sewing room. "Start with the closet," she said. "A shelf is broken and needs fixing." Indeed, I found a broken shelf there which required significant drywall patching requiring several days to complete. If I was lucky, I could make this last a week. Of course, before fixing it, I had the honour of emptying the closet's contents.

We have been married for over 32 years. The love of my life has developed a passion for quilting and collecting fabrics of every colour and description over that time. She uses some of this and a little of that, but the bulk of it gets tucked away. Guess where it is all stored? The closet. Out came dozens of containers. Out came the bags, bundles, and stacks of material. It was little wonder that a shelf collapsed; moving the collection nearly did me in. Then came the shelves, which had to be removed for patching and painting surfaces.

After finishing the closet I turned to the walls in her sewing room. Of course, there was nowhere to put stuff as the entryway was now home to the contents previously hosted by the now freshly painted and patched storage area. So, all that was removed was put back. Then the west side of her sewing room was broken down and removed. The south and west-facing walls were patched and painted. Then, I had a thought.

Our house is 18 years old and a serious crack has appeared in the floor; the worst of it was in Kathryn's sewing room. I had the house insurance people in and they determined that the crack was caused by settling and wasn't covered under the terms of the policy. I left it for the time being. Now that I had everything moved and the floor was open the crack was clearly visible. Mud had appeared in the corner. "Bad news," I thought. Water must be getting in. This changed everything. All of a sudden, painting took on a different priority. The floor became Job number 1.

This week has been all about hammering out the crack and prepping the area to be filled with a hydraulic cement mixture. I finished the west and south walls and today am starting the east wall. You can see on the image above the crack that I have uncovered. Those dark areas are holes that go down below the foundation. I am using a flexible patching compound that can handle some movement and will provide a water-tight seal. I hope to be finished tomorrow. Then I can finish painting the sewing area and put everything back in place.

The next task will be the garage. Oh boy, I can hardly wait.

Thanks for reading.     Ericspix     Eric Svendsen