Progress on many fronts

Two weeks after mowing front and sides lawn perfectly AND edging (on the weekend after I got a warning from the city to cut my lawn within 10 days), I did it a second time.  I'm getting used to the country club look in my front yard; I've never had a house with such a perfect lawn--largely thanks to RainBird irrigation installed last year, I haven't done any chemical treatment and hope to avoid it.  And I was also worried about getting another warning.

I probably wouldn't have gotten the first warning had I not slacked off for 4 weekends following my cataract surgery.  The week before surgery I had given my lawn a very good mow, knowing the risk of city citation.  Then we got several good rainy days.  Most of the lawn wouldn't have attracted attention, because it's now almost entirely slow growing St Augustine, except in the very front near the sidewalk where crab grass shot up to 3 foot height in 4 weeks.

The back yard didn't get as much attention, but on the first mowing weekend I cut the shoulder high crab grass around the oak tree.  I did some trimming around the patio on the second mowing weekend two weeks later.  But that second time I mowed one of my solar-powered accent lights (which had become invisible becuase it was buried in thick grass).  The lamp is injured seriously and I'm not sure I can repair it.  Speaking of lamps, I did repair the wires relating to one pair of Frontgate lamps--using soldering iron and heat shrink--just before my surgery.  The mower worked, but with much more vibration than usual.  I ordered a new mower blade online from Sears with express shipping and it arrived just before last weekend, when I didn't get around to install it.  Soon I will, I hope.  Fortunately, there probably won't be as much need for mowing as the weather has turned sharply colder.

Instead, last weekend I focussed on assembling the new bedroom furniture, a new night stand (for the second person) and a new giant DVD tower rack which I hope will replace my two existing DVD racks and then some.  I did assemble the night stand on Saturday, and then went to hear the Symphony with my friend on Saturday night.  When we came back to the house she liked the new nightstand and put it to use right away holding her wine glass while we watched a documentary.  I had done all the assembly very carefully and had even re-mounted the handle a second time to avoid the exposure of any unfinished surface.  The Black Forest color has some grain in it that you might think comes from it being a thin coating on the particleboard.  I'm thinking that the grain is mostly in the plastic coating itself, but it also helps hide imperfections.  I had chosen this particular piece not because it was about the cheapest nightstand you could get (though it was pretty close to that, at $49), but becuase it was the only one I could find in two days of web browsing to meet the fairly strict dimensional requirements, it had to be very small yet still have a nice shelf and height.  As I was completing the assembly, which took about 3 hours, I had been thinking about my mother's saying, often sarcastically, "a thing of joy and beauty to cherish forever," and re-wording it to "a thing of joy and beauty until it can be replaced with something better."  But it may actually be good enough for a long haul.  The manufacturer Ameriwood might be the same that made my bedroom dresser, which I've had now for about 16 years, and still have no plans to replace.  What is particularly nice about both units are the smooth gliding shelves.  The plastic finish is only so-so in both cases, but better than any attempt merely to paint particleboard.  I don't like formaldehyde emitting particleboard, but in the case of the nightstand there isn't much anyway, and it's close to the floor any formaldehyde emissions would sink to.

But I made no such progress on Sunday.  When I started unpacking the 1080 DVD rack (actually the 1080 number is for CD's, not DVD's) from Atlantic, I noticed that the styrofoam package inserts had broken and there were tiny stryofoam balls and styrofoam and cardboard dust over everything.  Every single piece needed to be carefully vacuumed off to remove the styrofoam dust.  Some of styrofoam crud is now permanently stuck to the cardboard piece that forms the back of the rack, at the seams where the adhesive material that holds the 3 pieces of cardboard together has adhesive exposed.  I tried very hard to get all of it out of there, but some remains still.  Finally I cleaned up the box itself and put into recycling.  Then I cleaned the floor.  All that cleaning work took about as much time as assembling the night stand had taken.  I carefully placed all the pieces on the couch.

One motivation for assembling those furniture pieces NOW was that I had just finally ordered the new adjustable bed for the King's Room from Sleeping Organic during the previous week, and I thought it would be good to have the new furniture in place.  Well the adjustable frame is now going to be delivered tomorrow (Thursday) but it actually won't be a problem to move the DVD rack around it just as I would have moved it around my existing bed.  I hope.

Meanwhile, I'd also ordered a Scooba 830 floor mopping robot to keep my new vinyl plank floors clean, and it arrived today.  I'm having housecleaners come out Thursday to clean the bathrooms and the kitchen floor.  I've decided not to have the housecleaners mess with the bedrooms or the bedroom floors or the loving room.  I'll do my usual vacuuming in the living room and have Scooba clean the bedroom and hallway floors.

Previously I had ordered two Gallo A'Diva speakers for the Queen's Room, and just last week I bought longer screws than had been provided so I can be sure they bolt securely to wall studs.  I wouldn't feel secure with the wall anchors that came with the A'Diva wall mounts.  Last week I received the new Audiosource A100 amplifier to drive the speakers but haven't unboxed it yet.  I also got flat white adhesive speaker wire which can be attached fairly invisbly to walls.

Electricians installed the new Casablanca Stealth fan on Monday, and fixed the loose outlet near where the adjustable bed is going to be.  I was going to have them put in two new phone lines (one for each bedroom) because the original wires I had put up had to be taken down for the new baseboards during the remodeling.  But when they quoted me $450 per jack, I decided to have them do just one jack.  That'a a high price anyway, google says that a phone installer would charge $135 per jack, but the electricians earned it, attaching to the laundry room telephone hub through the attic, and making the new jack appear from nothing at the best location in the wall, and wired with Cat5 wire which is the current standard for telephone wire, they said.  I will install the new jack in the King's room myself, much as I had installed the earlier jack 20 years ago that had to be removed.  I've purchased nice black Radioshack indoor/outdoor phone wire that will be run right above the black baseboards and held in place with black Arrow insulated staples applied with an Arrow T59 stapler.  I ordered the stapler and staples on Tuesday night after deciding it would be much neater, and just like a professional installation to use staples rather than the various styles of clips I had purchased from Home Depot on Monday.  The Radioshack wire has very thick black plastic outer cover, and the 24 gauge copper wire is probably at least as good as the wire that comes to the existing outlet in the King's room which was placed inconveniently near the window by the homebuilder.  Nevertheless, the Radioshack phone wire might not be as good as the Cat5 wire installed to the Queens room, but it is good that the Queen's room has the best wire of all from the central hub because the Queen will need a Fax.

I had also intended the electricians to install the new Legrand video doorbell (after I had discovered that it would be necessary to drill pilot holes for all the screws into the fiber cement siding) but after they quoted me $180 for that job, I decided to do it myself, though who knows when.  But hopefully not too long as I already disconnected and removed the old doorbell button.

Another change which helped get the Queen's room cleared again was that my friend offered to take the pedestal hunter fan I got as a "free gift" when ordering the Casablanca Stealth for the King's Room. I was happy to help load the 55" high box into her car.  I already have two nice pedestal fans, though the Hunter is different in that it appears to be a real metal fan.  But the plastic ones I have may be easier to move, and I may not even be needing the nicest remote control one in the King's room as I now have an even nicer remote control ceiling fan.

Just before my end-of-the-month party in October I cleared out the living room which was stacked with junk which went into Lyndhurst, which itself had to be re-organized a bit.  Not much more was cleared out until the last couple weeks, when an additional large box of VHS tapes had to be moved out, along with more books and dvd's from the King's Room.  Also in the last 4 weeks I've set up the heater inside Lyndhurst, but also gave it some more adjustment a few days ago.  The remote thermostat seems to work better at 70 degrees than 69, and because of the remote thermostat the lousy thermostat on the heater itself can be set high, currently to #4.  I've set the air conditioner up to 87 but the A/C still seems to run occasionally even when the temp is in the low 70's (though it's hard to tell when it may only be "sensing" the air by running the fan), so the A/C is now timed only to run between 1 and 7 PM, along with the 87 degree setting.