Another Lifetime to go

16th February 2019

Kelli served me hash browns made by her loving hands. That always puts me in a good place. With a fresh cup of coffee I sit and listen to last nights network shows. They all feature Trump and his latest actions. Most of the people I have contact with (with the exception of Kelli’s mum and dad) are embarrassed that the country has that man in charge. I have to respect the rest of the families political positions even though I doubt they really understand what is happening to the Republican Party they remember.

Today was wood gluing day, I have a number of jobs I want to get finished.

Kelli went out leaving me to my jobs, mainly making things out of the mountain of material I have accumulated in the garage. I was trying to finish a solid top that was three inches short of what it needed. I started breaking up a pallet, hoping to utilise the bearers. So after levering the floor pieces and removing the nails I thought I was finished. When I looked closer I saw other nails that had been cut off meaning the bearers had been used before. I don’t think Dave would have been pleased if I ran them through his saw. Fortunately I did find a piece of timber hidden in the pile, so I was able to use that.

15th February 2019

We were up at Hudsonville early taking the two new pieces to replace the one we sold. So now my backlog has gone, so back to square one.

Kelli had to take her mum to the doctors for some tests, so I stayed with Dave to work in his workshop.

On her return, we set off to look for more furniture. We visited all the usual suspects but nothing was out there. Even the ropey dresser at the thrift store had gone. Kelli managed to find some odd stuff to buy, like most of the time she sees potential in things I think are crap.

Somehow she saw this wall mounted bicycle style flower basket, personally I was not that supportive, but she bought it anyway.

There was also a mystery. Two miniature wire candle holders shaped as a chair, were placed in the truck, by the time we got home, one had disappeared. The only other place we had visited was Aldi. Could it have dropped out?

I got back in the truck and drove back to see if I could find the elusive piece. Needless I came up zero. Kelli was disappointed because as a pair it might have been easier to sell. Regardless she spent the evening taking pictures and posting them on Marketplace.

That paid off amazingly. At about 10.30pm the bicycle was sold, and the person came straight over to pick it up.

Then a wooden “Hello” sign sold to be picked up tomorrow morning.

This is how it goes, all over the place people are always looking for something to buy, for us that is great. I always underestimate my wife’s ability to find unique things, and earn a buck.

I always smile when she reads my blog and finds my grammar, and spelling mistakes that I correct hopefully before my two readers find them.

14th February 2019

Kelli is a bit of a slave driver. She had to work at the florist again, leaving me to stain and prime a small sofa table. I was happily painting away when Kelli sent me a message to tell me that our multi drawer dresser had sold, so we needed to take the piece that I was working on to Hudsonville tomorrow.

In addition she also wanted to take the oak dresser I worked on yesterday.

I plodded on and waited for my wife to return.

When the door burst open it was as if Wonder Woman had just landed. There were swirls of wind and paper everywhere. (I think I provided the wind) I had stained the top and shelf, and primed the carcass, so I was quite pleased with myself. “We need to paint the oak dresser” I was relieved when she changed it to “I”. I explained that it needed an upstanding at the back, that I hadn’t made yet.

“Well you get on with that while I paint” ordered Kelli,

“Do you think I have a piece of oak up my arse?” I responded.

“You might have” she said mockingly.

“ Well for your information I don’t have any oak up there, but I might have some poplar, I will see what I can pull out”. Which is exactly what I did.

Like a well oiled machine we rolled those babies out, ready for transportation tomorrow.

This left us with just enough time to get ready for our Valentines day romantic meal, and the first anniversary of my proposal of marriage to Kelli. This was the first time I could give her a card with “Wife” on it, and it made me smile choosing it.

13th February 2019

Kelli drove to Saugatuck to help out in florist for a couple of days.

I was looking forward to tackling the oak dresser, so I carried it indoors and started work on it.

The bearers were just friction fits into slots, so they just had to knocked back into the correct position. Once these were in place, I added some small blocks so they would not drop again.

After a couple hours work the dresser looked great, all the gaps between the drawers were consistent.

Kelli returned from her flowery stint, and immediately took some of the returned stuff from Farmgirl and put them on Marketplace. There were a pair of Pottery Barn cushions that now hold the record for the fastest sale and collection. It was so quick that the creases hadn’t come out of the covers.

A fruit rack was the next to be snapped up.

Late into the evening Kelli received a message that a small vendor dreads. The lady who was due to pick up the table and chairs on Saturday suddenly decided that she didn’t want them, and as she had already paid, wanted her money back. She offered a plausible excuse of an aged mother having to go into care, and she needed the money more than the furniture.

These are times when the “no returns” policy gives you a level of protection, but we don’t have that clause when we sell direct. So we must grin and bare it.

12th February 2019

Frozen rain hit us last night, so there was a long time required to de-ice the windscreen.

Today we were heading up to Hudsonville to take the new dresser, re-arrange everything and bring the table and chairs back with us.

By the time we had finished, it had started snowing, but before we could drive back we had to go to Grandville. Kelli needed to return things she had bought at a store before, so that meant dumping me at Starbucks for a coffee and a handful of wooden sticks.

The drive back was precarious, but Kelli was in total control.

The lady who wanted the table and chairs also wanted other things, so there were texts going back and forth.

I checked out the dresser we purchased yesterday, and discovered all was not well. The bearers had dropped so none of the drawers fitted properly. Also some of the drawer floor panels had split or had slipped, fortunately I could see how to correct it all, but that’s tomorrow’s job.

11th February 2019

Viewed three houses today, one was around the right price, but frankly it was shite. I did not relish viewing the truck,parked in the garage, from the bedroom window. Yes, the structure was a lean-to built on the side of the house, but against the side with the bedroom windows.

The other two were at the top end of the budget, but I was curious to see the difference in relative terms to those we’ve already viewed.

The first was fully renovated and ready to move in, but the layout was a little unconventional. This place appealed to me having gone through the pain of remodelling.

The place was finished to a good standard, with the basement fully plastered, with an additional bathroom.

It had a new deck just waiting for summer.

Unfortunately there was no garage, although there was room to build one.

The last place was much larger, with old style wooden flooring in the lounge and dining room. Kelli was excited that it had internal French doors, and a laundry chute. The kitchen was a homage to the pine tree. It was everywhere, a place where the opportunity to get splinters just making toast was a damn certainty. The outside needed a lot of work with peeling paint on the wooden sidings. That being said, it could work, and Kelli already has the room colours picked out and the furniture placed, however, the price is too high for the amount of work that needs to be done.

News of a good sell came through. The new piece we delivered last week was snapped up.

There has been a slump due to the weather, which is not usually a reason for Michiganites stop shopping. Hopefully that our latest sell will create an eruption of activity.

We stopped off at another thrift store that supports an animal charity, and it explains why there are many cats roaming about.

A couple of weeks ago there were a number of oak dressers on sale, but they were too expensive for us to buy and re-sell. As luck would have it, there were two left and marked down to $25, so we grabbed the best one. The other was a bit ropey with cracked veneer, and in my opinion was only worth $10, so we will keep an eye on that one.

Later that evening we had a sell through Marketplace, a gate leg table and two chairs that we had at Farmgirl for ages finally has a new home. We were planning to go there to take our new dresser, so we will pop it in the truck to bring back.

There has also been some interest in Guitarshapes. Kelli put pictures on Marketplace of the styles I have here. Someone contacted us about customising a couple for two heavy metal fans, that would be fun to do.

As we sat relaxing watching “ Extraordinary Interiors” minds dumb from the days activities, Kelli turned to me and said “Are you hungry?”.

Now it had crossed my mind, but as it was close to midnight, I had second thoughts, but this was a way back in. “Mmm, I was just thinking the same” thinking she would get a few crackers. “I could make a little pasta and red sauce covered with fake cheese” she said excitedly. She had obviously been thinking this out for a long time. The TV went on pause, as she scurried out to the kitchen. It seemed minutes later we were tucking into a bowl of hot pasta. “ You realise we won’t be able to go to bed until after 2.00am” I said.

“Don’t worry, I won’t be able to sleep, I have the upstairs of that house to decorate”

10th February 2019

It snowed again, and singing “Jingle bells” doesn’t work anymore. I had a few things to prepare to take up to Dave’s to cut. Kelli has wanted me to cut up books into large letters. These are not unique, but no one at Painted Farmgirl does them, and a few that we put in the booth sold very quickly. The best, and least disrespectful to serious readers are Reader Digest books. They come with decorative covers that look charming as they are.

I set up the bandsaw, and choosing the simplest letter, cut away. I was quite pleased with my first attempts. Next I worked through the other easy shapes, carefully putting the offcuts into a carrier bag. There were a few loose paper pieces floating about, but generally the mess was minimal, until I picked up the carrier bag. Kelli had given me a bag with no bottom to it, so everything fell on to the floor, and small bits of paper can be a bugger to pick up.

On a visit to Goodwill, we found a small sofa table that we snapped up.

9th February 2019

We had a customer on the new dresser, or so we thought. Someone who had bought something in the past wanted it, so settling on a price, we awaited a day for collection. Then things got a little muddy, the new dresser was going into the same room as the other pieces, and the customer thought it was the same colour, unfortunately it wasn’t.

A lot of the times Kelli mixes up her own colour so the chances of two pieces are the same are pretty low. So communication slowed down and eventually stopped, so we assumed the sale was off, disappointing, but it is such a good piece it should sell quickly.

We had a response from the customer who had problems with the knobs falling off, she was going to get her husband to fit them back on. The tone was much better, she thanked us for the quick response, so hopefully that will be fix the problem.

I started work on the island by glueing up wood for a new top. This piece will either work or be a disaster, but that’s what we’re in it for.

In the evening we had Lesley and Mike over for baked beans on toast, with a splash of HP sauce on top. Then out came the wine and the dominoes and the chocolate, I of course came last with over six hundred, but I know my place in this world, I am the makeweight, someone who makes others look good.

8th February 2019

“Mansplaining, what the flipping heck is mansplaining?” This was my response to something Kelli accused me of. I merely asked if she had fully tightened the drawer knobs of a unit we delivered a week ago.

We received a message from the customer who bought it saying the knobs pulled off, and she felt that she had been “taken”, which implied that we sold her a dud. This is not what we wanted to hear, as this could effect our Marketplace place seller rating, so we switched instantly into damage limitations mode.

Kelli replied that the drawers worked perfectly when we delivered it, but offered to visit her home to fix it personally. We never had a reply even though we responded as soon as we received the complaint. This was puzzling in itself, but as we had met the lady halfway between her home and ours, we had no idea where her lived.

So going back to the start, I was innocently asking if the knobs had been fully fixed, or if they had been hand tightened in order to see what they looked like.

I had never heard of mansplaining, I accused her of making it up, as with many other words she uses.

“ Google it then” which I did, and I laughed out loud at the meaning.

mansplaining

/ˈmanˌsplāniNG/

nounINFORMAL

1. the explanation of something by a man, typically to a woman, in a manner regarded as condescending or patronizing.

The snow is back, and also the cold wind. I needed some materials so we braved the cold and drove to Menards whilst Kelli went on to Aldi.

We have finished another dresser, that just needs the top polishing, but more importantly we will make sure the knobs are fully tightened on this one.

7th February 2019

Finished off the dresser repairs and handed it over to the creative department to turn it into a wonderful furniture piece. Meanwhile I turned my attention to the desk thingy that we bought yesterday. One of the ideas was to convert it into an island, these have proven quite popular, and ones we had before sold really quickly. The main problem will be the height, normally islands are thirty six inches high, but this measures thirty inches, so I need to extend it. Kelli And Greer went off for the afternoon so it left me alone to do stupid shit.

One occasion where I ignore my golden rule of measure twice, cut once drove me into a rage. I was cussing and shouting at myself for being so dumb, especially when I had glued up two pieces of wood to get the correct thickness, only to cut it two inches too short. Anyone passing outside might have thought there was a heated argument going on, well I was, with myself.