Update May 2

Ever feel like you're wrapped in a thick wool blanket, dipped in water, heated up, and then told to swim with it on? That's how it felt the past couple of days to get motivated to work on the house. The weather outside has been wonderful, I got sidelined with a great new book for my bookclub (The Thirteenth Tale . . . a good read!) and pure laziness.

Today, I got the gumption to do some projects.

There were two small pieces of hardwoods in the kitchen that still needed poly. One was a butt-end that had been prematurely cut off and was reunited with the rest of the wood plank it originated from with some glue and a wedge. The other was the single piece (uninspired as I was at the time) that fits under the lazy susan, that completes the gap between the cabinet toe-kick and the rest of the floor. Today, both got their poly coats using a sacrificial sponge brush that I had been hoping to save out a bit longer for a more dedicated project than 3 minutes. $0.50 for three minutes. I wish I got paid that well!

Rich had gotten a lot of trim installed in the hallways and green wall, and today I finally got to caulking them to prep them for primer. With nitrile glove on the right hand, I squeezed the caulk gun trigger and rubbed and re-rubbed and wetted the glove and re-rubbed some more to get it all done down the hall.

Then the edge banding.

A few weeks ago (or months?) I had set about staining all the edge banding for the kitchen. It was looking amazing; a very close match indeed, as it turned out. And then, the final coat for the darkening stage and boom, completely WRONG. Ugh. We took it into the kitchen and mocked it up so we could see how far off it was. It was just too red. We turned the lights down low. Too red. We turned on the pot-lights, under cabinet lights, pendant lights, lights on the stove. Still too red. Back to the sander.

I spent the morning sanding down all the wood, back to bare. Some of the wood had taken the red staining so well that it would not sand out. I guess it'll add more of that "character" we're getting fond of adding to this house. Then, as the last bit of sanding was taking place, the glued and nailed section of the longest piece snapped off. After murmering blessings from above (yeah, right), I pulled out the old nails, went on an excavation party for the missing glue, and set to work trying to fix it. I sanded down as much of the old glue as possible, but you can't sand too much or the length of the entire thing will be affected. I got the pieces prepped and set about looking for a place to glue and reassemble.

Why not try the place where it will end its days? The countertop is actually the correct length to hold it, so it was perfect. I took out some wax paper (didn't want glue on the beautiful countertops) and placed it under the pieces of wood. Then I painstakingly rubbed glue over both ends carefully, and let them get tacky. Then I pushed them together. Since they're mitered over each other, it's difficult to clamp, so I wanted to tack them to each other with a couple of brad nails. Grabbed the gun, made sure my fingers were out of the way, and Bam! in went a nail. I went to move the wood to a different angle to get another brad nail in there. It didn't budge. Seems the wood was happiest on top of wax paper, but nailed to the countertop.

After more blessings from above, I got the wonderbar and slowly, carefully, pried the edgebanding from the improper location on the countertop. Did you know that wood putty fills the hole nicely? After recovering from laughter, I took the whole contraption outside and tried again. In the end, after another round of three-nailing, and the whole thing coming apart again, I've informed Rich that it will go together in place, on the counter's edge.

Then I set to staining it all with another $0.50 brush. At least that took a good 15 minutes for the first coat.

I wish granite had been cheaper, or the house had had intact, usable plumbing.