last weekend

hey everyone, i’ve been really sick and mathew has been really busy with his job, so here’s what happened last weekend.

the bathroom vanity now has drawers!

because of my lack of electrical knowledge i had a bit of a dangerous shock while stripping paint… my paint scraper slipped and must have hit something inside of the open outlet and there were huge sparks. (left) can you see the scorch marks at the lower right of the outlet? (right) and see that crater at the lower edge of the paint scraper? the sparks made that! luckily i was wearing gloves, a respirator mask, glasses and headphones. mathew says because it sparked against the outside of the plug, this is good because it means the box is grounded.

(left) meanwhile mathew was outside grinding off the bits that hold the useless mini half-gates at the bottom of our stairs. (right) and inspecting what the next steps will be for the cracked plaster wall in the living room downstairs.

a lot of the electrical outlets in this room were added more recently by a really BAD contractor. they were all placed at varying heights in the baseboards. they installed them by chopping out parts of the baseboard and then filling in the space with plaster. NOT pretty (see my scorched outlet photo above.) mathew is planning on putting them above the baseboards and then replacing the missing trim. (right) and while mathew and i are busy with demolition, scraping, sanding and general chaos, our friend and temporary downstairs tenant, mark was dancing tango with his girlfriend atsuko in the kitchen.

mathew up a very long ladder trying to uncover the reason for a leak.

(left) here i’m sanding to expose covered cracks in the plaster walls. (right) proudly standing next to my ugly work.