State of the Union; Address :: Miscellaneous Home Projects

*******

So I just got off the phone with my wife.  Apparently the top of my oldest daughter’s dresser had sustained a good bit of damage.  Sunday night, it appears I had hung a wet towel on the “coat” tree, which stands next to this pressed board piece of furniture.  As my wife discovered it, she of course had to call, immediately.  While the interruption took me off track, it was the information, rather — that kind of wrecked me for the afternoon.

And this is not how I intended to start this post.  But it does tie right squarely into some of the points I was hoping to run with . . . . Owning and living in an old house that both shelters two young children and that requires still substantial work . . . is, well, hard.  I of course do not blame them for the damage to the dresser.  Instead I only want to point out that it sometimes seems that no sooner do I complete a project does some dripping towel oversight during a hurried end-of-the-week clean up come along to subtract from what I may have accomplished.

Lessons Learned: 1.) Don’t trust that your children are beyond dipping their towels into the bath and then just chucking them onto the bed.  2.) Be focused enough at all times to notice the weight differential between a damp and a fully saturated towel.

That rant aside — here is where I was going. Oh yeah . . .

aka what I didn’t do on my house while I moved my blog to WordPress

In the time it took me to revamp this blog – four or so major holidays passed, two massive earthquakes rocked locations on this globe, I went to one daddy-daughter dance, took part in one monster snow storm, saw a Super Bowl champion crowned, watched part of one state of the union address, and I ended up not getting nearly enough done around my house.

In that time – I didn’t finish the kitchen, I didn’t update the hall bathroom, nor did we install the master bath that my wife and I have talked about since the day we purchased this place.  I didn’t get the pantry next to the kitchen done. (A project I am currently working on and likely will feature in upcoming posts.)

I did not replace the gutter that found itself bent under the biggest ice dam I have ever seen. Nor did I repair the paint or replace the rake board captured in the related pic in this gallery. I repaired an antique bed frame, I hung three blinds, I fixed the antenna on my wife’s car, and oh, shoveled some snow. Added an improvised fix on that stippled ceiling, and I mended a stuffed animal . . . well, OK, two.

I spent as much time on Webkinz.com as did on BuildingMoxie.com. Played with a new video camera, I test-drove Stanley‘s Fat Max Xtreme Instant Change Handsaw, and I worked on my side porch on the coldest day of the year.  I did start redoing a closet, and with all said and done — I probably did a few other things . . . like . . .

Random Dancing (if you have young girls, you may know where this comes from)

snow

ice; dam!

bed breaker

shade; it works

got to this

see

and this

see

started this

almost finished that

did that

see

used this

and this started like this

which went to this

then to this

then to that

got to here

and ended about there

doing this

gotta do that!

heard a lot about these

hate it when the kids do that

I wished a few people a happy new year.  2009 (breaks a rule found in the AP Style Guide I got) was a good year.  While we dipped into recession, the outlook around here remains still full of moxiful potential with lots of exterior paint issues still to address.

Thanks for reading.  And BMoxie BMore!