Author: peterb51

16th January 2023

I did an early morning walk to the corner shop. We needed orange juice and potatoes, and rather than taking the truck I decided to use my feet.

It was good to feel the cold air entering my lungs, it feels like cleansing the body. I enjoy the walk, the lake looked grey and cold and just the gulls ventured out.

I was the only person in the shop apart from a couple of employees filling the shelves, I grabbed what I needed and made my way to the register purposely avoiding the racks with the chocolate bars displayed. I felt quite pleased with myself, as I usually have one as a treat every time I go there.

The walk back was equally bracing, and although it was 10.00am I felt like the only person alive.

The warmth from the house hit me as soon as I opened he door. We are fortunate to have a warm house, the extra insulation being a berm really pays off on these cold mornings.

I was determined to finish the last chair back today . I had just the areas in between the slats to strip, the worst bits.

It started raining mid morning and continued for most of the day, it was a typical English winter day.

We had a good breakfast, of a fruit smoothie, half a grapefruit and a poached egg on gluten free toast, garnished with tomato and avocado, washed down the a mug of freshly brewed coffee. I don’t notice that the portion is small, even though there isn’t a crumb left on the plate, and if I could get my tongue down inside the smoothie glass I would do it.

The poor dogs hang around the table hoping for any hand outs that drop their way, but there is little chance of that happening.

After the feast, it was back to the garage, and back to the scraping.

15th January 2023

I never ever thought a person could break the glass top on a Noguchi table until today.

My son Ryan informed me that a guest at the cottage did just that. I was mad to say the least, I think I would had hit the person probably with the broken piece.

From what I was told the person must have sat on it to stoke the fire. Now the insurance will have to swing into action, but any replacement will not be going back in there.

Work continued on the last chair back

Kelli was spraying the two dressers which are part of a set, then we took the dogs to the beach.

Entrance to Point West seems to be getting worse, the whole area is covered with “Private” and “No Trespassing” signs. Kelli knows someone who has a beach house, so we use their name to get past security. This time we were challenged by some old busybody who asked us if we were residents. Kelli gave him the name of the person we were “guests” of, but he went off muttering to himself. That put a bitter taste to our trip, but later Kelli put a post on Facebook about it where we learnt his name and where he lived, seems he’s a bit unpopular in that community. Next time we might just say “Hey Randy”.

14th January 2023

The last chair has now been started. Stripping it down and finding that the inserts are bonded to the bolts, Ah, that problem again.

In between the chair I’ve been working on a side table made by cutting down a single desk.

I alway find I’m rushing to catch up. Kelli storms ahead sanding and preparing pieces for painting, and I’m left with the more labour intensive work to do.

I decided that the time was right to get work gloves. There are many jobs where I can’t wear any, like using machines were I need to feel things. They will be ideal when I’m scraping and sanding, so Mr Amazon delivered three pairs.

I took a look at the new house that is being built up the road. At $399,000 it seems a little excessive with such a small back garden.

I was impressed with the speed it took to get the structure built and boarded, and I was amazed that the materials were not stolen as the site is open and unguarded.

I expect that the whole building will be wrapped in plastic in a day or so, then the roof will be tiled.

I’m not sure if it’s a thing generally, but I’m not used to putting all the dirty dishes, cans and any old shit in the sink. Then take everything out to do the washing up. It really niggles me, as I tend to do the last wash up of the day. We have a dishwasher, but rarely use it, and to me it’s therapeutic to do it by hand.

But it doesn’t make sense to have to lift everything out, put the cans a plastic in the recycling then get down to cleaning things.

I have tried to get used to it, as another aspect of American living.

13th January 2023

My heart just wasn’t in to it today.

After breakfast, and while I was waiting for a Skype call (that didn’t happen) I went into the garage, that was particularly cold, to start on the last part of the chair.

There were a couple of areas on the back that had to be revisited, but once that was done I had the seat to scrape.

That is when a cloud of misery descended, and I could get excited about the process.

This chair had been particularly hard to strip because there was no other layers of paint under it, so I was scraping the black directly off the oak which meant it stained the wood.

This required a lot of sanding to get to a clean surface, enough to cause a blister on my thumb, maybe that changed my mood.

Finally I got all the chair parts finished, and needed to reassemble. First I had to remove the inserts from the bolts.

I believe these chairs come into the US in component form from China and are finished and assembled locally. When I removed the bolts, the inserts came out with them because they were gummed up.

Therefore I had to heat them up to release the bolt, once that was done I could screw back the insert and reassemble the chair, job done.

Kelli finished the tall dresser, we took pictures, posted it, it sold and was picked up in the evening, I was feeling better already.

12th January 2023

We paid a visit to Goodwill on the south side, it had been a while, but there was nothing. I did notice there were a lot more CD’s that I had heard of, not the normal of god music.

We walked out with very little, a rare event.

There was a quick visit to Nature’s Market to buy extortionately expensive natural food. I usually have to go inside so that we get an old gits discount, in fact we get that at Goodwill on Tuesdays old gits day. You see I have my uses.

Then it was back to the garage to do more sanding on the chair back. I kept going until my fingers got sore, but at least the back frame is finished.

We ordered a take out, but in line with our desire to loose some weight, we only ordered one portion. This was ample as the servings are very generous. We chose fish and chips because things could be divided.

I managed to scoff that down in record time and spent the rest of the evening starving.

Rather than going on a diet, we plan to eat half as much, the last time I was on that kick I had to go to bed at 8.00pm so as not to hear my stomach rumbling.

11th January 2023

The two door cabinet hit 1283 views, something of a record for us, but it only led to two offers, one of which was a scammer, the other was legitimate, that was picked up this afternoon.

I attempted to repair the sander that had a split in the cable. This usually not a big job, just open up the casing, disconnect the wires going into the switch, cut off the old end, and trim back new wires, reconnect, refit the casing, plug in and bingo it should work, but it didn’t.

That now pissed me off. I stripped it down again, everything looked good, I plugged it in and pulled the switch, now it worked! I put the casing back together, and tested it, but nothing happened.

I thought I should have tinned the ends of the cables, I was clutching at straws now, but could I find my solder? not a chance, I looked everywhere with no success.

I put the sander aside as I needed to work on the chair.

Kelli was working on a tall dresser, staining the fronts and top. Cedar comes in a variety of colours from deep red to straw, the wash she applied balanced it out.

10th January 2023

Well the day I never thought would happen, happened. I had an appointment with Kelli’s kinesiologist, more out of curiosity than any problems I was having.

We arrived ten minutes early because I had to fill out forms noting any medical conditions I had in the past or current. The answer to most of them was no, so I thought he would have met his match and declared me a perfect specimen.

As soon as I was in the room he went through the paperwork, I knew he was determined to find a flaw in my profile. He talked about old traumas that can effect the body all though life, even though they might have been forgotten.

I held out my left hand and pointed to a couple of fingers that gave me problems at times, mainly in the cold. I put the index finger as having arthritis in the joint, the one next to it sometimes locks up at certain times.

He asked me questions about any bone breaks.

I mentioned that at age eight I fractured my left wrist, His eyes widened, this was a front door to my soul.

He smiled, telling me that the effect of that could cause problem in different parts of my body.

That was the start, an hours worth of muscle manipulations, tracking everything that hurt.

By the time I left the surgery my dodgy finger felt less restricted, and other tender muscles seemed calm. Time will tell if the treatment has made a difference to my quality of life, I will keep you informed of progress.

The other big event was the purchase of new appliances for the kitchen redesign.

We went to Lowes because I researched several different manufactures product offering. There were Samsung, LG and Bosch to explore. It is a little overpowering entering a large store and wading through a jungle of appliances many of which are bloody ugly.

Fortunately we had a very friendly and helpful sales specialist, he put up with my jokes, I think he enjoyed our buying experience as much as we did.

“ Don’t go with Samsung “ Greg warned, “they had a high quality failure rate last year”. That was enough to scare us off that brand.

We ended up going with Bosch, and Kelli even got a copper sink courtesy of a generous discount.

The other important thing that happened was the booking of my ticket to return to the UK for a month long visit. Kelli still isn’t strong enough to join me on this one, but it will happen.

We took pictures of the two door cabinet, it certainly changed from when we picked it up.

That is the reward we get, being part of the transformation, and watching it go to a new home, hopefully that will happen soon.

9th January 2023

There was an interesting voice message left on Kelli’s mobile. It was for Peter, and it was regarding the termination of a lease. The massage came from a property management company in Grand Rapids.

This sent Kelli into wild conspiracy mode. Had I secretly rented an apartment ? I had to sort this out.

I called the number, first checking that the company was legitimate. I rang the number twice, but no one answered. The third call was successful.

I said that I had received the voice mail and wanted to know what it was all about. I asked for the name of the person they thought I was. They asked me my name, I told them I wouldn’t give it to them. Eventually they said the name was Peter Martin,”well that isn’t me” I shouted in reply.

Apologies all round, and a promise to delete Kelli’s phone number, and that was sorted.

It was back to work in the garage, and the objective was to finish the two door cabinet that Kelli had been working on.

My input was to make new wire mesh door panels and to remount the pressed tin pieces.

Once fitted back in the cabinet, it looked really neat.

8th January 2023

A couple arrived at 11.00am to collect the narrow cabinet. We invited them into the house, mainly because the garage was full of stuff and it was cold. They loved the piece, thrust all the money into Kelli’s hands, and I helped them load it into their vehicle. They were an older couple, in the short distance from the house to their truck he told me of all the body parts he’s had replaced, hips, knees, the lot, I asked him if the ankles were next. Either he didn’t hear or understand what I said, but he went on about riding his bike as soon as the weather got better. Meanwhile Kelli was doing a sales pitch to the lady who had mentioned she would like a tall dresser. Quick as a flash the back of our truck was open and showing the dresser we collected yesterday. This would be perfect, so we could have a customer lined up for that one.

The rest of the day was spent sanding tops and drawer fronts, it made a change from sanding chairs, well, not really.

7th January 2023

Kelli finished the small red cabinet, I helped to strip the top in between scraping chairs.

It turned out good, we took pictures outside and Kelli posted it straight away, within a short time someone was on to it and will be round tomorrow morning to look it over.

I finished the second chair, but didn’t feel like starting another, also Kelli had other plans anyway.

A free dresser had come up, and anything free will get her attention.

This piece was in Hamilton, a short distance away and is known as a bit of a “hick”place.

Every town or city has its dodgy area, and this was one of those.

We climbed aboard the truck and headed off.

You know when you are close because the tarmac stops and dirt begins.

We drove carefully down this narrow track. Houses were set back from the track and in between trees.

As were arrived at the address there were the collection of vehicles parked in various positions off the driveway. The dresser was set outside with the drawers stacked on top. A dog was barking loudly and probably tearing furniture apart.

The house looked in a worst state than the furniture with a tarpaulin wrapped around the chimney. There was a metal goal post set in the front garden, but there was no sign of any grass instead the surface was covered in moss, the result of living in a wood where the sun doesn’t get through.

We hurriedly loaded the dresser into the truck, just in case someone came out. I suggested that we make our getaway quickly, and reset the GPS somewhere else.

By now it was getting dark, not as dark as it was a week ago, a sign that spring was just behind the thick band of snow that will hit us again when we least expect it.