Home Improvements (again)
Jul. 24th, 2020 12:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I had invited friends to visit this weekend coming up. They'd been on the calendar since October, iirc. I emailed them earlier this week to confirm (because covid and stuff) that they were indeed coming. They said they were, yep, as of Wednesday.
In preparation for said visit, I've been cleaning my "a bear but with furniture" home to resemble something where an actual human would live. I've put a significant amount of work into the project, last week and this week, every night until 1 AM. My house is now cleaner than it has been in the last fifteen years.
All the laundry is done and folded, every bit of it.
The floors are clean. All the floors are clean.
I have repaired and reassembled the bed that was broken by overly athletic, er, bed activities back when I had a Sam. (There hasn't been a Sam for more than a year.) Box spring and mattress had been on the floor this whole time, with bed frame in pieces up against wall in bedroom. (Many people say that their house is a mess, but when I say that, I actually mean it.)
I have removed mountains of cobwebs from every surface including the ceiling.
I have cleaned the white vinyl windows so that they are white instead of dusty and covered in flyspecks. Glass is also clean.
I installed the bathroom floor that had been sitting in boxes in the middle of the living room floor SINCE DECEMBER (it is now the end of July).
I caulked the seams between the new flooring and the tub, toilet, and vanity.
I removed and painted the bathroom trim (it had been "primer white" since 1997) while installing the flooring.
I cut off the trim to allow for the height of the new flooring and then I reinstalled the trim and painter-caulked nail holes and bad seams and then I touched up the paint.
I painted the window trim from the New Windows that I installed years ago. I'd hung the trim last fall but never painted it to match.
I cleaned the frame and glass on every painting in the house.
I cleaned off all level surfaces (I am a pile-things-on-flat-surfaces person) and put things away.
I sorted through my clothes and discarded three kitchen-sized trash bags of stuff that either didn't fit or was so worn out that bums would have passed it by.
I took in the aluminum recycling ($4.85).
I put more things away, lots of things.
I vacuumed enough that I had to empty my dyson three times.
I scrubbed the bathroom, including the outside of the bathtub and the dusty toilet foot.
I took down and scrubbed the SHOWER CURTAIN and then cleaned the hangers and then rehung it.
While scrubbing the bathroom, I fixed the tub faucet that leaked around the stem for the last fifteen years and gradually rotted out the bathroom floor so that it needed to be fixed (a process which fucked up the vinyl floor there so that I needed to refloor said floor, see above).
It's not that I don't Know How to fix stuff, it's that I'm fucking lazy as hell and I live alone and I just DO NOT CARE until I have company coming.
I bought new pans for under my stove burners because the old ones were rusty and looked like shit.
This morning I ran the final load of wash, remade the bed with fresh linens, and put out guest towels (also freshly laundered so that they'd smell fresh instead of stale).
At 11:00 AM they called to say that they would not be coming because "had to work this weekend". They wanted to reschedule at the end of August. I said yes.
Because, well, maybe they DID have a sudden work schedule problem.
Because they don't seem like the sort of people who would pull this just because they don't know some other way to say no thanks. We've been friends for nigh on twenty years. I assume that they are comfortable enough with me to say "Nah, don't want to visit" instead of pulling some sort of passive-aggressive bullshit.
Because why ask to reschedule if you just don't fucking want to visit? Claim work is "crazy right now" and "covid" and just let it drop.
Also house is cleaner than it has been in fifteen years and I am CHOOSING to be happy about that rather than pissed off at people I genuinely like for being horrible at scheduling.
In preparation for said visit, I've been cleaning my "a bear but with furniture" home to resemble something where an actual human would live. I've put a significant amount of work into the project, last week and this week, every night until 1 AM. My house is now cleaner than it has been in the last fifteen years.
All the laundry is done and folded, every bit of it.
The floors are clean. All the floors are clean.
I have repaired and reassembled the bed that was broken by overly athletic, er, bed activities back when I had a Sam. (There hasn't been a Sam for more than a year.) Box spring and mattress had been on the floor this whole time, with bed frame in pieces up against wall in bedroom. (Many people say that their house is a mess, but when I say that, I actually mean it.)
I have removed mountains of cobwebs from every surface including the ceiling.
I have cleaned the white vinyl windows so that they are white instead of dusty and covered in flyspecks. Glass is also clean.
I installed the bathroom floor that had been sitting in boxes in the middle of the living room floor SINCE DECEMBER (it is now the end of July).
I caulked the seams between the new flooring and the tub, toilet, and vanity.
I removed and painted the bathroom trim (it had been "primer white" since 1997) while installing the flooring.
I cut off the trim to allow for the height of the new flooring and then I reinstalled the trim and painter-caulked nail holes and bad seams and then I touched up the paint.
I painted the window trim from the New Windows that I installed years ago. I'd hung the trim last fall but never painted it to match.
I cleaned the frame and glass on every painting in the house.
I cleaned off all level surfaces (I am a pile-things-on-flat-surfaces person) and put things away.
I sorted through my clothes and discarded three kitchen-sized trash bags of stuff that either didn't fit or was so worn out that bums would have passed it by.
I took in the aluminum recycling ($4.85).
I put more things away, lots of things.
I vacuumed enough that I had to empty my dyson three times.
I scrubbed the bathroom, including the outside of the bathtub and the dusty toilet foot.
I took down and scrubbed the SHOWER CURTAIN and then cleaned the hangers and then rehung it.
While scrubbing the bathroom, I fixed the tub faucet that leaked around the stem for the last fifteen years and gradually rotted out the bathroom floor so that it needed to be fixed (a process which fucked up the vinyl floor there so that I needed to refloor said floor, see above).
It's not that I don't Know How to fix stuff, it's that I'm fucking lazy as hell and I live alone and I just DO NOT CARE until I have company coming.
I bought new pans for under my stove burners because the old ones were rusty and looked like shit.
This morning I ran the final load of wash, remade the bed with fresh linens, and put out guest towels (also freshly laundered so that they'd smell fresh instead of stale).
At 11:00 AM they called to say that they would not be coming because "had to work this weekend". They wanted to reschedule at the end of August. I said yes.
Because, well, maybe they DID have a sudden work schedule problem.
Because they don't seem like the sort of people who would pull this just because they don't know some other way to say no thanks. We've been friends for nigh on twenty years. I assume that they are comfortable enough with me to say "Nah, don't want to visit" instead of pulling some sort of passive-aggressive bullshit.
Because why ask to reschedule if you just don't fucking want to visit? Claim work is "crazy right now" and "covid" and just let it drop.
Also house is cleaner than it has been in fifteen years and I am CHOOSING to be happy about that rather than pissed off at people I genuinely like for being horrible at scheduling.