Smidgens

The hole in the laundry room ceiling where I tore out sodden and moldy ceiling panels.

The hole underneath the panels that goes directly to the attic, where there once was a chimney.

The brackets for our new kitchen shelves being painted (glossy black).

The kitchen tiling I finished last week.

The kitchen shelving boards being varnished.
Woo! I had a feeling this would happen once I unplugged myself from the giant time-suck of painting the house. (In some moments I have thought of that project as a giant leach with vampire fangs, sucking sucking sucking the momentum out of my weeks.) Free from spending half the day chained (not really) to the manlift, I am thrillingly getting shit done. I usually spend the morning hours at some kind of physical project, because I have found, at least lately, that sort of discharging some of my physical energy in the AM makes me much more able to focus on writing in the PM. That's something I'd like to keep up even after winter descends. We'll see if I'm able.
So I've been swinging from cutting, sanding, and staining these boards to painting those brackets here to loading the truck for the dump there, trying to get as many things underway as possible-- because each little thing has many steps, and often the next step will be delayed by the necessity of waiting for varnish to dry. So it goes. 
The laundry room ceiling is something I'm really not thrilled about having to redo, for the third time, since we bought the house. Remember two years ago, when we had water damage? We bought a fresh bucket of tar, Patrick lugged the (80 pound) bucket of tar to the roof, and spread it out, and then I scraped and primed and painted the ceiling, and we expected the damn roof would hold water. And it didn't. The water stains spread like cancer all across that pretty white ceiling, all over again. So this summer we coughed up nearly $2,000 for pros who came with rubber membrane and covered up the flat part of the roof with that. It appears to be holding, though making it through ice-dam season will be the real test. 
And so, I am this time tearing off the trim, and replacing the drywall, and spackling, priming, and painting. And if this doesn't keep out those damn leaks I'll... I'll... 
Establish a laundry room pond, with frogs and lily pads, and replace the whole ceiling with a screen.
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