The Fire Next Time

Ian says next time I want to renovate something he's just gonna set fire to it. Right now I tend to agree. Somebody could bring marshmallows. If we're ambitious we could make s'mores.

Why is it that no hardware we ever buy matches the surface we intend it for? The cabinet handle bolts in the package were too short for the drawer fronts, and too long for the doors. (???) A five-mile trip to the big box home store, only to buy the wrong size bolts. (My bad, I shouldn't measure anything when I'm *that* tired.) Remeasure, make another trip. They were closed. This morning another trip. Sigh.... what was supposed to have taken an hour's time took three-quarters of a day. But we finally got the cabinet handles on the doors and drawers and they look really nice.

Then we started to install the catches. Just a minute, they are too deep for the cabinet face. It took three stores to find these and I know there are no alternatives. Ian cuts many small blocks of wood with the hand saw, screws a block of wood onto the back of the cabinet face and *then* installs the catches. He speaks fluent cursive during this exercise and wonders if (at 40) he's too old to start taking illegal drugs. He vows to learn a second language just to have more swear words at his disposal.

The language was pretty bad. It started peeling the wallpaper we installed last weekend off the ceiling. We swear at it, specifically, not just obliquely, and stick it up with spray glue. Flies beware!

I scrub the bathroom within an inch of its life, ending up with a rubbing alcohol sponge-down to kill any lurking stinker bacteria. You're supposed to be able to shower in this teeny cubicle, but trailers react poorly to having water dumped into their interiors through badly designed shower pans, so that won't be happening while we live in it. The resort has hot showers and we'll make good use of them. I recaulk all the seams, all the way around the room.

I cut and install reflective insulation on all the walls behind the cupboards. At least this is easy. Ian rewires all the jury-rigged light-fixtures. How the thing never burned down is a mystery to me. There are melted wires and plugs behind the lamp bases. But now the lights are all reinstalled with new wiring, properly grounded and capped.

It hasn't helped that Himself has been ill all weekend, having done too much for his condition. We've spent a lot of time monitoring him, and worrying whether he was going to have to go to the ER for treatment, but by mid-afternoon he was on the mend so we relaxed a bit.

Our "weekend to finish the interior" left us with five or six unfinished jobs and in need of a long holiday. What we've done so far looks great but at some point the work flow better improve or we're spending the winter in the driveway!

Between 5:00 and 6:00 pm the temperature dropped from 25 C to 10 C and it began to pour buckets. The wind was tearing branches off trees and the trailer rocked like a rowboat on a millpond. I love the thrumming of the rain on the roof.

Tomorrow's another day. I'll be working alone, but maybe I can finish installing the insulation. I could also sew... It would be fun to see some curtains go up. Gee, if the bubble beads aren't bling enough I could get light ropes and run them around the windows... Maybe a neon sign...