Still kicking

Hello, my hopefully loyal readers. Please bear with me while I get back into the habit of writing.

Let me start this off with some pictures of what's occupied my time. I unpacked all of these boxes (nearly thirty):




Onto these shelves:




This is still a great feeling, to see my entire game collection out and displayed. I have never really seen it spread out before, and I cannot swear that these pictures really do it justice. The number's about 430ish, but some of those are expansions. I did a quick count on actual-never-played games, and that came to a shade over 100. That means that I've played more than three-quarters of my games.

My wife keeps saying, "Oh, right! I forgot about that one" and "I've never even seen that one before!" My friends are a little stunned and partially overwhelmed with choices. I need to start some plan and effort to learn unplayed games before cracking them to the group.

Paint sitrep

Happy Lundi Gras! Here's a quick sitrep before we go paint some more.

Bathroom: One K&B purple window done. Need to obtain an L-shaped shower curtain rod. We will paint this room later, but it's a light blue right now.

Bedroom: Walls, ceiling and trim done. A nice rich darker than sky blue. Needs ten minutes to paint an accent stripe on two windows.

Dining room: Walls, ceiling, trim and the archway shelves done. Needs a third coat of edging around the crown molding. Chocolate and a rich soymilk color. Accent stripes done, need touch-up.

Front room: Same as dining room.

Game room: Walls, ceiling, trim, mostly done. A very light cream on two walls. and a red velvet cake red on the other two walls. Needs second coat edging basically everywhere.

Hallway: Walls and ceiling done; the four doorways need a second coat and touchup on the lintels. Bathroom door needs sanding, priming, and painting. Three out of four accent stripes needed.

Kitchen: Walls and ceiling done in a sagey light green. Baseboards in a nice dark cucumber. Two windows need outside trim done in white, doors need a touch-up/third coat. Accent stripes in Limealicious.

Laundry room: Feh. Most everything is the original peachish; most everything is behind appliances. A later project.

Office: Walls, ceiling, trim done. Needs second coat on ceiling edges. Same color from the front room/hallway/dining room plus a darker toasty caramel.


Unless otherwise noted, trim and ceiling are white in semigloss and flat ceiling paint, respectively.


Woo!

Holy crapper

The toilet in the house is older than we are. Time for change.

Habitat Store

The Habitat for Humanity has a discount building material store, roughly the size of a small warehouse. It's across the street from the Homer Plessy site and around the corner from NOCCA, straight through the praline factory. The building itself contains a vast amount of donated material; doors, windows, furniture, books, miscellaneous hardware, sinks, tubs, scrap marble and granite, lighting fixtures, even a free-standing swimming pool. There's a certain smell familiar to those who frequent small hardware stores, a musty sense of use and need.

We specificially wanted a door for the bathroom to replace the crummy hollow semi-balsa ill-fitting existing door. Measuring is the easy part, but the paradox of choice is a factor- how do you match a contemporarily-built door (for the smallest room, no less) to a pair of fifty-year old doors in the same hallway?

Answer: buy an old door.

The Habitat store had several hundred for us to choose from. We found exactly the correct size and style door to use- it just needs paint and a knob. I also only paid forty-five bucks, less than half of the cost of a new solid wood door.

Score one for the home team, har de har har.

Full Weekend

Tons of plans this weekend, some of them house related and some of them fun related.

Saturday

• 8:30, the AC guy shows
• Morning sometime, the one floor guy shows
• Before noon, bank errand
• Before 6pm, 7th annual New Orleans Bookfair
• Before 5pm, Habitat Re Store for: Door, mailbox, ceiling fans, wall plates, miscellany
  

Sunday

• Sometime, the other floor guy shows
• Possibly game day at Chez Radish
• Priming and painting
• Possibly furniture shop
• Plan, plan, plan
  

I am forgetting things. Need caffeine. Need to decide on interior colors.

Human animals

I spent a few hours this evening tearing out awful clown wallpaper from the back bedroom with my lovely wife.

Who doesn't love matching wallplate hardware?














Please note these matching, handmade (!) curtains.

Several people have told me that "it never ends" once you buy a house. Some have a honey-do list, some have a Ma & Pa Kettle list. Why do people feel compelled to remodel, redesign, rework, redecorate, or replace things in their home? We do not adapt to our environment. Humans are the animal that adapts their environment to themselves.

This is why Cat and I used an engineered enzyme in the form of a blue goo to remove the vestiges of a stranger's taste in wall covering.

Audio pleasure

For a few years now, I've taken opportunities to listen to the demos of Bose headphones whenever possible.

Realizing that we do not have a boom box, radio, or speakers of any sort for music while we work on the house, I snapped; I drove to Worst Buy to acquire a stereo dock for Cat's iPod. I looked over the various brands and models and colors, waffled... then said to hell with it, I'll buy the Bose.

I brought it home; to the new house. It's the first major purchase that doesn't count as a fix-up tool. It is shamelessly a luxury item for aural pleasure. It reminds me of the saying: “Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful.”

The new Bose is useful as well as beautiful; a fine start.

My current promise

I've promised that after my current order comes in from Funagain, and after I go to BGG.Con, I will not buy any more games until I unpack the game room onto the shelves I need to build.

Thrift finds and trades do not count.

Done and done

There you go. We bought a house.

Now becomes time to juggle work and play and home improvement and contractors. Honestly, you think it would be easy to call someone up and say "I want you to do work. Here, look; this is money I will give you for your labor."

The Ma and Pa Kettle list has four priorities: "Gotta do to make it livable," "Do ASAP when we move in," "Would be nice," and "Pie in the sky." Tasks range from AC and floors to appliances and locks and bookshelves to stained glass and solar power.

I promise that I will post pictures, particularly as I do the game room.

Books, I miss

Even as I read the Unclutterer blog and brainstorm ways of simply getting rid of stuff I don't need, I still long for space. For room and for rooms, and for the boxes and boxes of books that I can't simply pick up and read. I want to re-read. Our library lives in cardboard now, and I welcome the joy at finding old treasures. Honestly, discovering new ones is further down the list.

What did you read for banned books week?

I? Not enough.

Living in small spaces

YouTube linkery aplenty.

Here's an RV-classed house that's smaller than our current living space. It's 325 square feet.


(Direct video link)

Linked from that, a more movable house that folds up for easy transport.


(Direct video link)

I find it interesting that both appear to be of Canadian manufacture.

We're a long way from living in an ultimate engineered house, but I like the spartan/utilitarian approach to these designs.