Author: peterb51

27th December 2020

I had organised a quiz for my son’s and their families using Zoom. I had spent the week working out the twenty questions, and felt happy to have included a good span of general knowledge subjects.

Each of us would ask their questions to other couple giving a total of forty possible answers.

I had the usual abuse from my boys with the question I fired at them.

Then it was my turn. Talk about crash and burn, my arse was charcoal by the time we finished. I laughed it off blaming Kelli for not knowing the answers.

We arranged another quiz for New Year’s Day, and I will do much better because I will bloody cheat.

Out in the garage I cut up strips of veneer and taped them together. I glued up the top and laid the veneer on top. I had intended to use some spare paving slabs as weights, but unfortunately they are under four inches of snow and frozen to the ground.

In the end I used my thickness planer, which weighs a ton to hold it down.

I sanded off the stain that I added yesterday to the pine top with the “spot” . That took an age, eventually I got the surface clean and flat ready to take the black stain that I hoped would hide the “spot” better.

I brushed on the stain and it appeared to do the job, now I will have to wait to see how it dries.

26th December 2020

It is sad that in the US there is no Boxing Day, things get back to normal, except for what is happening around the world.

The only similarity is eating all the leftovers, food often tastes better the second time around.

I made an attempt to work in the garage, but my heart wasn’t in it. The pine top that had the burn mark couldn’t be hidden with the walnut stain that I applied, so that was frustrating.

Also one of the side table tops had a couple of small burn marks on the front, which spoiled it and was difficult to disguise.

One could argue that it is reloved pieces, so a few blemishes are to be expected, but, I want the tops to be perfect, it added to my dissatisfaction, and compounded the frustration that I was suffering.

I decided that the day was not working, so a cup of tea was in order.

Whilst sipping the nectar, I had a brainwave to re-veneer the underside and make that the new top, brilliant! More work to do.

In the evenings we sit and watch some British house renovation shows on YouTube. The show is called “ Building a new home in the country”. The format is consistent for all episodes, a couple spend their life savings on a pile of crap, and spend three times as long, and often four times the cost. The man works his finger to the bone seven days a week, fifty two weeks a year, and somehow the wife gets pregnant, how does that happen?

Now he has more pressure to finish it ether by Christmas or before the baby is born.

If that is typical of what happens during a renovation, then we better not do any.

25th December 2020

Yay it’s Christmas, snow is falling, it’s perfect.

We opened our presents straight away.

Kelli bought me a Tilly hat, it is brilliant, ideal for winter. It has a lining that folds out and covers my ears, I was so excited, I didn’t want to take it off. Another pressy was a new set of ear defenders, as my previous ones broke.

I had lots of tool things sent to me from my family in England that will be very useful. I had a set of bits to remove screws with messed up heads which occur often in furniture restoration.

After a hearty cooked breakfast we started on a marathon session of FaceTime sessions with my family. It was really fun to see my Grand children turning their homes into a state of chaos, so satisfying that my boys are experiencing what I had to go through when they were young.

Then it was time for our Christmas dinner which had a German theme with potato salad, red cabbage and sprouts. It was so good I had two helpings in remembrance of how I felt living at home, when I ate so much I thought I would die, only to have Christmas pudding five minutes later, followed by a couple of mince pies. The day was just one eating fest with good things on television, those were the good old days.

24th December 2020

It started snowing this morning, to an Englishman it is rare and wonderful.

As a child, snow was always special, and I knew my mother looked forward to it even though it hardly ever fell around Christmas.

I stood looking out of the window, the whiteness is a great leveller hiding things you don’t want to see.

Both the dogs rushed out through the sliding sunroom door, and just as eagerly want to rush back in. They never do anything out there, they just want the treat that is associated with the action.

We finished another dresser and carried it into the house to be photographed. It doesn’t look that we did much work to it, being left unpainted, but the top was stripped back restrained and refinished and all the drawers needed repairs to all the drawer sides.

We didn’t expect much activity before Christmas Day but there were a few question asked but it led no further, we’ve come to expect a few time wasters.

It has been a difficult time for families, and especially Kelli’s mum who looks forward to the gatherings, but this year the protocol was a lot stricter. We agreed that we would exchange presents with her as long as we wore masks and stayed just to unwrap then then we would leave. That worked as well as we thought, although it did feel strange wearing face protection in the house.

This illustrates just how much the world has changed, and it will continue for quite a while to come.

23rd December 2020

The buyer for the grey dresser didn’t materialise, “It was the wrong size” she said.

A little disappointing, but we move with the punches, and we have two more in progress.

I had to do a repair to one of the drawers, whilst Kelli primed the carcass.

We then drove to Grand Rapids to drop Greer’s and Dylan’s Christmas presents off. It was agreed that we would leave them at the front door then retreat back to the truck whilst they opened them.

They live in a dodgy area of the city although I didn’t see much evidence of that. There were no burnt out cars in the street or bodies in the gutter. All I noticed were cars with super loud rap music thumping, creating sonic waves long before they turned the corner into view.

It made a change from collecting furniture, it felt like we should have stopped to pick something up, but around this place I’m not sure what we would have “picked up”.

Although we hadn’t really touched anything, we still felt the need to wash our hands with sanitizer, many times.

22nd December 2020

Finally there was some interest in our finished furniture.

We tend to sell things as we finish them, never having a build up of products. If we do, Kelli mopes around thinking she has painted them the wrong colour. I reassure her that the right customer hasn’t seen it yet.

Finally we had someone on the buffet, and another on the grey dresser.

The buffet people wanted to collect it in the early evening, which meant I had to make sure the final coat would be dry by then, fortunately it was, but I was sweating for a while.

I had more tops to work on, the pine one had such a thick clear coating on it I had to scrape an inch at a time to get through it. This is when my old man hands ache, and cover the floor with dust. It took quite a time to strip it, but what I thought was a large knot was a burn mark, that requires more work.

We lifted the buffet outside awaiting the arrival of its new owner.

It’s always a good sign when the tailgate is opened meaning they already decided to buy it, always a tense moment.

I helped with the lifting of it into their vehicle, after they thrust a wad of notes into my hand.

21st December 2020

My Christmas doldrums continue, I did a lot of paint stripping from a dresser top and finished sanding the two side table carcasses.

I cleared some of the area in the garage so that I didn’t walk into things and knock tools on to the floor.

I fitted the repaired drawers into the dresser and tweaked them so they moved smoothly.

Kelli wanted to collect some dried elderberry for the syrup she makes. For this we had to drive to Zeeland, and it was my job to collect the package from the fridge positioned on the porch.

I got a little confused because there were bags on the top of the fridge that I thought was the dried elderberry packs, and I didn’t take my glasses, so it definitely was the blind leading the blind.

When I got back to the truck Kelli put me right, the bag was just part of the seller’s Christmas decorations, and the mixture was on the inside of the fridge. Of Course I knew that, honestly,

Whilst we were out both Goodwills were on the schedule.

Furniture was thin on the ground, nothing to get excited, but we are alway on the lookout for anything. Even the rude Santa had gone, it had either been bought, or arrested for lewd conduct.

A couple more stops, then we drove back to more sanding and staining into the night.

20th December 2020

We carried the finished buffet into the living area to take pictures, well it was not quite finished, as the top only had a sealing coat on it as it took a long time to dry.

I work on the principle that buyers usually pick things up a couple of days later, so if someone wants to pick it up this afternoon I’ll shit myself.

Getting the dresser out of the truck was easier than I thought, seeing it in daylight displayed the true artistic merits of the child or talented monkey that had the piece before.

The actual material was solid pine or similar softwood so it should be easy to work with.

I volunteered to walk along to the corner shop to pick up a few essentials. I dressed up with my warm coat, scarf and hat, it was dark so no one could see me. My stride was brisk and my mind was thinking about Christmas, and all things seasonal when three quarters of the way I realised that I had forgotten my mask.

“Damn and blast” I uttered, turning round and speed walking all the way back.

I burst through the door in a rage, my face as red as Santa’s hat, I grabbed my bag and headed out the door again. Kelli was confused, and I didn’t have a lot of breath left to explain.

I returned to the shop, struggling to put my mask on with my hat covering my ears. Luckily the shape of my head is perfect for allowing my hat to slide up an balance on the top of my head.

I grabbed a basket and wandered around collecting the goods. At one point I had to put my glasses on which require them to fit over my ears where my mask is hooked around with my hat balancing on top. I was also holding a basket meaning I was trying to do it one handed. Needless to say everything fell off including my mask, I was vulnerable to infection so that was the first thing to go back on, then I threaded my glasses on and balanced my hat on top. Of course all this activity made me hot and steamed up my glasses, there was also a build up of heat inside my masks. I had to then rush round to finish my shop and get out into the fresh air.

I gasped at the cold air hitting my mask-less face. My walk back was a little more laboured as I was now carrying a heavy load, but I made it back. Kelli looked at me, laughing at the sight she saw before her. My hat was still perched on the top of my head like I was hiding a parrot.

At least it was dark.

19th December 2020

Dhama took her food for a walk around the kitchen again, she can cover ten to twenty feet per feed. If it were an Olympic event she would get gold.

We finished another dresser with graded stained drawer fronts, dragged it into the house, took pictures, and straight on Market place. Kelli was busy painting a buffet, I was frustrated that the top was taking an age to dry, I was hoping to get that finished for tomorrow.

All around the garage are things that are in progress, either glueing or filler that is hardening, this makes navigating a path through very tricky. Kelli hears me knocking things over, it has become a joke in the same way that I leave dusty finger marks over everything I touch. I could never be a burglar, because the police could just follow the trail of sawdust to where I was hiding.

I was just getting ready for a shower when Kelli announced that we had to pick up a dresser.

We drove of into the night relying on the GOS in Kelli’s phone to guide us. The first address it took us to was completely wrong, the next a little more promising, but it was a static home park.

Urban planning in the US was so logical, a grid system following the rule of the compass made so much sense. But when it comes to mobile homes those rules go completely out the window. It must have taken us twenty minutes to find the address.

We found the dresser under a tarpaulin close to the steps leading into the mobile home. It was a pine piece covered with childlike scribble. There were a number of illuminated inflatable Christmas decorations. I guess they needed the money for the dresser to pay for the extra electric they were using.

18th December 2020

The highlight of the day was delivering a dresser to Zeeland which doesn’t say much for the rest of the day.

Maybe there is a psychological slow down towards Christmas although two more pieces are nearing completion, there is a distinct lack of motivation at the moment.

Holland looks wonderful at this time of year with the street decorations, although there are not many people about to enjoy them.

We stopped off at Menards on the way home to pick up a new pot for the latest addition to our plant collection. Some new dirt and fertiliser completed the treatment, now we just wait for the new growth to appear.

Greer continues to feel sick, although she has had two tests that were negative, it is not uncommon for a third to be positive.

We have decided to cancel the Christmas Eve present swap party outside by the fire, there are too many unknowns from the family to risk getting together.