![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
edenfallingMy mother has been and gone, and Stuff Has Been Dealt With.
Granted, it wasn't all quite what we'd intended to deal with, but still, it was useful stuff. We did sort through three boxes and two giant milk crates of old papers (and got rid of 2/3 of it, hurrah, while most of the remnants are now in neatly labeled file folders in my miniature filing cabinet)... and then we also bought and installed a new toilet seat (trust me, it was necessary), bought and put together a new standing lamp, bought and installed a curtain rod (but not the curtains, not yet; they are really a pair of twin sheets that need hemming before being put in use), and pried up and DESTROYED a doorstop.
That doorstop. Let me tell you about that doorstop. It served no imaginable purpose (since the door it was intended for has been moved to the other side of the doorframe and now opens into my bedroom rather than my living room) and it was blocking me from moving my living room carpet flush against the wall so as to improve the usefulness of a table on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, first I couldn't unscrew it because the main screw was rusted over to the point where it was glued to the brass of the doorstop and I couldn't even find the dents into which to put a screwdriver. So I went after it with WD-40 for a couple days, pushing and scraping, and then today I bought a more heavy-duty Phillips head screwdriver and finally got the screw out.
But that was not the end. Oh no. I then discovered the doorstop was still stuck to the floor. So first I pried out the foam inside the brass housing, tearing it in the process (but I did not care, because it was a USELESS doorstop), and then found that the doorstop was itself effectively the top of a bolt going into the floor, but back under the little brass half-dome where I couldn't get a proper grip with my pliers. And I couldn't just turn the whole thing around, because at some point after the doorstop was installed, someone put baseboards under my giant living room windows, and they stick out into the room just far enough that they impeded the turning of the doorstop.
So I bought needlenose pliers. This did not help. I finally said the hell with it and pried the damn thing up, bolt and all, scratching and scarring the hardwood floor. The bolt was like a solid bar of rust, and I bent the screw-thread part something awful, but I still did not care because it was, as I have said, a USELESS doorstop. I cleaned the whole area thoroughly with Comet, let it dry, and then filled in the bolt scars and the scratches with fake wood. Tomorrow I will move the damn carpet and be done with the whole business.
And that is the saga of the doorstop.
I also clipped a lot of branches from the maple and mulberry trees that overhang my deck, because they are a nuisance and I don't like trees that brush against the house -- they are a potential source of ants -- and laid all the branches in the huge, deep puddles in my driveway. This is a stopgap measure at best, but it felt rather satisfying. So did banging nails into the outside of my kitchen windowframes, to keep the screens fastened more securely. Later tonight (or maybe tomorrow afternoon) I will install some curtain holdbacks in my computer room, to keep my heavy blackout curtains pulled back without having to loop them over each other in a silly-looking stopgap measure.
ETA, 9pm: Holdbacks installed. And good god, those screws were long and the windowframe wood is tough. My wrist is killing me.
...
Home improvement is exhausting, you know?
---------------
P.S. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!! *lights imaginary fireworks*
Granted, it wasn't all quite what we'd intended to deal with, but still, it was useful stuff. We did sort through three boxes and two giant milk crates of old papers (and got rid of 2/3 of it, hurrah, while most of the remnants are now in neatly labeled file folders in my miniature filing cabinet)... and then we also bought and installed a new toilet seat (trust me, it was necessary), bought and put together a new standing lamp, bought and installed a curtain rod (but not the curtains, not yet; they are really a pair of twin sheets that need hemming before being put in use), and pried up and DESTROYED a doorstop.
That doorstop. Let me tell you about that doorstop. It served no imaginable purpose (since the door it was intended for has been moved to the other side of the doorframe and now opens into my bedroom rather than my living room) and it was blocking me from moving my living room carpet flush against the wall so as to improve the usefulness of a table on the other side of the room. Unfortunately, first I couldn't unscrew it because the main screw was rusted over to the point where it was glued to the brass of the doorstop and I couldn't even find the dents into which to put a screwdriver. So I went after it with WD-40 for a couple days, pushing and scraping, and then today I bought a more heavy-duty Phillips head screwdriver and finally got the screw out.
But that was not the end. Oh no. I then discovered the doorstop was still stuck to the floor. So first I pried out the foam inside the brass housing, tearing it in the process (but I did not care, because it was a USELESS doorstop), and then found that the doorstop was itself effectively the top of a bolt going into the floor, but back under the little brass half-dome where I couldn't get a proper grip with my pliers. And I couldn't just turn the whole thing around, because at some point after the doorstop was installed, someone put baseboards under my giant living room windows, and they stick out into the room just far enough that they impeded the turning of the doorstop.
So I bought needlenose pliers. This did not help. I finally said the hell with it and pried the damn thing up, bolt and all, scratching and scarring the hardwood floor. The bolt was like a solid bar of rust, and I bent the screw-thread part something awful, but I still did not care because it was, as I have said, a USELESS doorstop. I cleaned the whole area thoroughly with Comet, let it dry, and then filled in the bolt scars and the scratches with fake wood. Tomorrow I will move the damn carpet and be done with the whole business.
And that is the saga of the doorstop.
I also clipped a lot of branches from the maple and mulberry trees that overhang my deck, because they are a nuisance and I don't like trees that brush against the house -- they are a potential source of ants -- and laid all the branches in the huge, deep puddles in my driveway. This is a stopgap measure at best, but it felt rather satisfying. So did banging nails into the outside of my kitchen windowframes, to keep the screens fastened more securely. Later tonight (or maybe tomorrow afternoon) I will install some curtain holdbacks in my computer room, to keep my heavy blackout curtains pulled back without having to loop them over each other in a silly-looking stopgap measure.
ETA, 9pm: Holdbacks installed. And good god, those screws were long and the windowframe wood is tough. My wrist is killing me.
...
Home improvement is exhausting, you know?
---------------
P.S. HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY!!! *lights imaginary fireworks*
