Home Alone

Well, looks like I’ll be home alone for a bit. Over the weekend it was decided that we’ll be doing distance learning at least through April 6th, but potentially longer depending on how the coronavirus situation evolves. Just me and the kitties… Woot?

I’m still working, for which I am quite grateful, especially in light of the number of people whose jobs are gone or who are dealing with reduced hours. I’m trying to embrace the idea of working from home, but here on day 1 of it I realize that I’m not really setup well to do it. I have an extra monitor, but no cable to connect to it. My desk is cool, but the laptop sits pretty low, so a stand and separate keyboard would be really awesome to have. I’ve also got only the two wall outlets because I’ve already used all the power-strips/surge protectors elsewhere. Sigh… And then there are the kitties, who are so happy to have me around that they are constantly kitty-butting my video meetings. ^.^

On a non-virus note, I’ve kicked-off the kitchen remodel process with my cabinet & countertop order at Home Depot. Cabinets are now scheduled for delivery on April 20th, but they won’t even schedule the install until the cabinets arrive. So probably looking at the end of April before they are in, then the countertops get measured… I suspect I’ll have a good amount of time with little to no kitchen.

I did get a bit of work done over the weekend. Martin was here helping with still more trim. We are getting close to finishing things up now, but it’s slow going as a lot of it is getting glued before install.

I’ve also been working on patching up the drywall downstairs and starting to paint. I’m excited to get rid of the mustard and red paint scheme. These are the old mustard walls, where I’ve been patching up the big entry / room divider.

This is the front wall, where I started painting. It’s amazing how much nicer it looks in green.

I’ve also been looking at changing out the basement heating. There are currently electric baseboard heaters in the main family room area and the extra bedroom. I’ve wanted to put heat in the floor, and had some electric heating cables that we had intended to use at the previous house. I thought maybe I could use that here, but of course several issues have gotten in the way. First, there just isn’t enough of it. The family room here is huge, more than 300 square feet, which would require a 240 volt max length cable. Mine is 120 volt, and while it might work for the extra bedroom, the wiring there is already 240 volt for the baseboard heater. I decided it wasn’t worth the expense to redo the wiring, and to buy new cables is several thousand dollars.

So, the current heating will have to stay, but I’m at least going to replace the old units with newer ones in white to match the trim and get new thermostats to help manage the temperature and power usage better. I’m not even sure the current ones actually work. If you turn them on, you’ll roast down there.

It’s also gotten cold again, with freezing rain over the last few days and potentially snow on the agenda for later this week. I’m trying to embrace the idea that this is what Spring is like here, but it is so hard!!! I long for the sunshine, and sadly there are no tulips here in this yard. Granted the darn bunnies would probably eat them if there were…

I have started to get inspired with gardening and yard plans too, but realistically nothing is going to happen in that area until fall. I did get a lawn service scheduled, so at least I’m not on the hook for mowing. Hopefully they’ll be more reliable than the tree service. I’m still waiting for them to get out and actually finish the Winter tree work we had scheduled from last fall. The inital fall work they did was great, but I’m a little disappointed not just in this delay, but in their handling of it. They’ve spared no effort to contact us for money to schedule, but they’ve not reached out at all in regards to scheduling or the delay.