last saturday i started my weekend by going to see the new harry potter movie with my childhood friend, marisa, who i hadn’t seen since october 2007! i returned to find a house full of busy bees…
my dad was drilling holes for blow-in insulation. my mom was priming the bathroom walls and ceiling. mathew was working on electrical wiring. everyone was very engrossed in their projects. i walked to the local store to buy paint then helped my mom with the primer.
on sunday mathew continued with his electrical work adding new outlets and networking cables. this usually starts with cutting holes upstairs (above left) then stringing wires through to the garage downstairs (above right.) it sounds simple but it can be very frustrating if the wires don’t behave and have trouble moving through the walls. last weekend mathew says he spent 5 excruciating hours on one outlet trying to pull wires through at an impossible angle.
meanwhile my parents and i worked on installing the cellulose insulation into the walls where my dad had drilled holes in the downstairs bedroom, kitchen and office.
in the garage, my mom and i were doing the noisy, dirty work of filling the machine hopper with the insulation material while upstairs my dad had the peaceful job of filling the holes and working the machine through a remote control.
his job did have some drawbacks as the reducing nozzle is only an inch wide so it would often get jammed and the whole process would have to stop. and it wasn’t often easy to un-jam the nozzle. also, sometimes there’s confusion with the switches on the remote control, if you turn off the agitator but not the blower, when you pull the nozzle out of the wall, you will shower yourself in snowy, grey, dusty recycled fibers. mathew and i have both experienced this and i think my dad did too.
in the late afternoon i heard a loud noise coming from the kitchen. what i found was mathew cutting the countertop. this downstairs kitchen is HUGE, possibly twice the size of an average san francisco kitchen, with way more cabinets than anyone could ever need. our plan is to eliminate some of the cabinets and bring the refrigerator closer to the stove and sink, then add a built in bench to create a dining area near the window.
last weekend felt a bit like we had tag-team volunteers, just hours after my parents left on sunday night, my cousin larry appeared. and as if he had known we hadn’t gotten a chance to go shopping and were running low on food, he brought all kinds of organic fruits and vegetables for us!
on monday morning larry got to work painting around the trim in the bathroom with a paintbrush, later he filled in the walls with a roller, then painted the window trim and wainscoting. he gave the room two coats on monday and another on tuesday. we think the bathroom looks great and it’s exciting to see it becoming finished. the floors are next…
we are so grateful to our generous volunteers. not only do they give their valuable time but they always seem to bring food. THANK YOU!!!!!! we know that mathew and i can be a bit perfectionistic and we sometimes have people working on things they’ve never done before, but we truly appreciate all of your efforts and enjoy spending time with you. with your help we are getting closer to our goal and one day will be able to spend time with you that doesn’t involve dust masks, work clothes or tools.
