Cleaning up!

As I said, I woke up way too early on a day I didn’t need to be up early at all! I gave up trying to fall back asleep and worked on the Blog post. Then I put a pot of coffee on.

And, why didn’t I have to be at work at 8:00 AM? Because I took the morning off as 1/2 a vacation day and had planned on sleeping in, (but Caley took care of that option for me).

Blame it on Angie’s List (I gotta stop reading those emails)!

So, today was a deep housecleaning day. Two ladies were supposed to be here at 9:00 AM and work until noon on the house. Of course, they weren’t. I finally called at 9:30 and the lady who answered said they were on the way, but running late. They showed up about 10 minutes later. After unloading a ton of stuff, they got right to work and I stayed out of the way.

I told them I wanted them to concentrate on the kitchen and any area in the house that was up high or down low. I also told them to ignore the downstairs completely.

While they got to work, I installed the shelf in the office. Rather than have to unplug and move all the computer equipment, I draped it with thick visqueen.

Everything went well with the drywall anchors, except one chipped out a big hunk of paint that shows on the inside of the bracket. When I have the time, I’ll look and see if I still have any of that color paint left. If not, I’ll get a small can of paint matched to the paint chip.

When I was finished, I vacuumed all the dust off the visqueen and the ledge on the wall. I put the visqueen back in the garage for reuse. Then I set up all the glass items Joe and Kathy brought me from Lake Orion. Jake had teased me that the office was becoming a Lake Orion Shrine and I guess he’s right!

They were still going strong when I told them I had to kick them out so I could get to work. They asked me to do a walk-thru (or, in my case, a roll-thru). Everything looked great! They had washed the kitchen cabinets, even the baseboards. They washed windows and glass surfaces, etc., along with the usual vacuuming and mopping. The last thing they cleaned was the kitchen fan/light fixture.

They really did do a fantastic job.

After they left, I got dressed and left for work. I was still early, so I stopped at Michael’s and checked out their picture frames for the Orion picture project.

It was getting hotter outside and threatened rain, but it still hadn’t come by the time I went home at 5:00 PM. When I turned on the news, they said it was record high for the day of 85 degrees!

So, what else could I do but go outside and do a bit of work. I scooped up all that mulch I pulled off the old herb bed with the transfer shovel and put it in the wheel barrow. I carefully got the wheel barrow out to the south side of the garage (I still need to put that wagon together) and used the mulch wherever needed. It looked nice!

Then I went back and dug up the cement block things that I originally used to line the edge of the herb bed. I flipped each one over in the grass to dry out and so the rain can rinse them off. Speaking of rain, I checked the gauge and we had just under an inch of rain from that last storm.

By then I was sweating (this foam on the brace wrapped around me is not a good thing in heat), so I quit around 6:30 PM.

Since they had the sink all nice and clean, I tried to dig out the caulk behind it (it was starting to deteriorate). I got out as much as I could, sucked it up with the vacuum cleaner and re-did it with white silicon caulk.

I was going to “bake” a potato in the microwave, but found all the russet ones in the garage had gotten soft and moldy (phew!). So, I cut up some of the baby redskin potatoes and boiled them. When they were finished, I warmed up that other steak and ate it with the boiled potatoes for my dinner.

I started watching TV, but got bored with that. So, I went back to that thick as a brick book I need to finish before I can read the book Jake sent. By the time I was sleepy, I had less than 1/2 inch of book to go!