Another Lifetime to go

18th December 2018

I was determined to work on the shit dresser, and get the top done.

I set up the planer/thicknesser and started to push the flooring strips through making a pile of wood shavings on the drive. Things were going well, and I was down to the last pass when there was an enormous crack and bits of board showered around me. I have no idea what happened, but the piece I needed was in several bits. I searched for all the broken bits, hoping that a repair would be possible, if not I would have to go back to the store and find another piece.

I walked up to Dave’s to de-creak his Ergon.

I took the base off and could see the spring mechanism, but there was not really any moving pieces, so I squirted WD40 in every conceivable place and re-fitted the base. Miraculously the squeak had gone. I have no idea what I had done, but accepted the praise for solving the problem.

17th December 2018

We had an appointment to look over a house, this was the first one that I had seen, and it was one I could afford. It was a ranch style built in the early 1900s. Apart from the bedrooms being a bit small I thought it was reasonable. The floors were horrible melamine wood effect, and the kitchen cabinets were painted black. You could also see the lake from the porch, but next door was a factory.

Kelli did not “ feel” the place, and as she started sneezing soon after we left, a sign that something wasn’t quite right.

We made a trip to Hudsonville to check on sales over the weekend. Kelli had brought a mug tree for some mugs she had on display, unfortunately they had been sold. I managed to avoid breaking anything, therefore profits will be up.

I did a bit of covert activity to check if other vendors we having a slow time. We had identified two other booths selling similar things, and from the pictures I had taken, very little had moved, so it confirmed our thoughts that there was a slowdown.

Kelli completed work on the redo of the dresser that we collected. Gone is the bright maple, now the top has been darkened and the case matches the drawers, let’s see if this works.

Out with the old.

In with the new.

16th December 2018

Still no prospect of snow, damn it! That is at odds with most of the residents of Holland who are happy with a mild winter. “But I have told everyone that the snow will be eight feet deep” I explained to Kelli, who gave me one of her smiles, as if to say “tough luck buster”.

My sister sent me a picture of the results of her baking day. Apple scone cake, two types of mince pies, ginger cake, and a large chocolate iced cake. I could imagine what the kitchen smelt like. These are the images that will never leave me, my mother was exactly the same, although she tended to burn things, the smells are a reminder of times gone by.

We spent a riotous evening at Lesley and Mike’s. They had invited some of their friends Bob and Pat, and Pete and Laura. Pat was such a small lady with a big heart. She and Kelli immediately hit it off as they had the same birthday, and so did their fathers. Plenty of wine and beer flowed, as well as some pickled onions and cheese. I had the opportunity to meet some fun people, and another Brit. Pete was from north London and works for Ford, so I was not allowed to mention cars or engineering. However the state of the country gave us plenty to talk about. Kelli found that two gin and tonics were her limit, any more and I would have to carry her home in a bucket.

15th December 2018

It was time to do some Christmas shopping, something I love, well not really, but it is my first one here, so I made a real effort.

I was also looking for something I could use to salvage the top from the shit dresser.

We stopped at Habitat for Humanity to look for some strips of flooring. I had the idea to plane off the backing and bond the solid wood that was left to the top giving it a new surface. We will see how that works.

I spent the early evening scraping paint off the decorative pieces I had removed from the shit dresser, a task of love, or a moment of madness?

Kelli had a text from Lesley and Mike, the English couple from down the road, inviting us for drinks tomorrow evening. That was it, Kelli was off trying on different clothes, emerging with different combinations, twirling around and expecting me to say what I liked the best.

That is quite a responsibility because she looks great in everything she showed me.

For dinner Kelli made a rice soup which was fabulous, I love soups, especially in winter, it sets the mood, and memories of my childhood come flooding back.

It was also the time to decorate the Christmas tree. It is traditional here to buy a new ornament that signifies an event that had happened during the year, ours was of course was the wedding, so we had a special place on the tree.

14th December 2018

I went with Dave to an auction house to look over some items that were due to be sold tomorrow. It was out in the sticks, part of a farm where a barn had been converted to a sales room. It was a rather sad collection of somebody’s junk that they were hoping to get money for. There were collections of old tools that looked as if they were left out in the rain. It was a sad sight. Not much appealed to either of us, so we got out of there.

I continued work on the shit dresser, completed stripping the top, and accessing what I needed to do to make it acceptable. I removed some ornamental pieces off the front, and made the decision to remove the top altogether from the carcass.

I know I will end up putting more time into it than we will get back, but I want it to be the best I can do.

Kelli was feeling tired so to give her a break, we went to New Holland for dinner.

We had to wait for half an hour for a table. We had made the mistake of arriving around the time the old farts get let out of their housing complexes. We sat on a bench like two garden gnomes watching mums and dads trying to keep their excited children under control. Finally we were called to a table, by then we were both starving, and the food and drink went down a treat.

13th December 2018

Another trip to Hudsonville to take the table and chairs and to bring back a maple dresser that hasn’t sold. This was one I worked on back in September, lovingly stripping back the varnish and re-finishing the top. Kelli thinks people prefer dark tops, so all my hard work will go down the toilet, again.

My run of breakage continues. I was removing a string of lights that had died, and managed to dislodge a small white jug that fell and smashed in two pieces. I quickly looked around, Kelli was out the back, so for a few seconds I was thinking what to do about it. Suicide was out of the question, it was only a jug, just then Kelli came back, she already knew what happened. I swear she has super hearing, tuned to the sound of things breaking, however, not quick enough to catch thing before they hit the ground.

My average is not good, two visits, two breakages, can I keep it up?

We set out the table and chairs in such a way to allow good access through the area. Kelli was a little concerned, if there was sufficient space for a “Michigan lady”. My understanding is a Michigan lady looks like she has two children hidden inside her coat, and her leggings are at maximum stretch.

12th December 2018

The garage was a little colder today, but I worked on the two side tables. There was not the backlog that I imagined, I repaired a broken rail of a chair, and I continued to scrape the top of a dresser that we picked up a couple of days ago.

As I removed the paint from the top I came across large areas of filler, so all in all a piece of shit that we paid good money for. This is the challenge, how to turn it into a cool piece of furniture.

Kelli picked up a gate leg table that would go with a couple of chairs we already had, just a lick of paint on the legs.

Trump continues to make a fool of himself and the rest of America. He is intent on scaring his gullible followers by implying that dangerous diseases are being carried across the Mexican boarder.

11th December 2018

Today was working with Dave day, starting with breakfast at “Jackie’s Place”. In my previous posts I had likened “Bob Evans” as heavens waiting room, but Jackie’s is more extreme. It is the only restaurant with its own mortuary, and a defibrillator on every table.

Most of the patrons looked like they moved on and were tackling their breakfast with a straw.

I was helping Dave with a project to reduce the heights of a kitchen cabinet by three inches.

He gets all sorts of jobs given to him, and often it takes him an age to get them done. He has been working on replacing a wood stock for a rifle for such a long time, he had time to plant the tree and wait for it to grow so he could use it.

The cabinet had to be finished before this Christmas, so I lent a hand. We worked hard for several hours, taking no breaks, but it was done in record time, the partnership of Butt and Bulthouse was unstoppable.

10th December 2018

Drove to Hudsonville to re-arrange the space. Kelli is vendor of the week, so has the pleasure of offering 15% off all items. There had been a sale of a piece on the wall, and Kelli did not like to leave a space bare for any length of time.

I was eager to please by moving a clock from one wall to another, and I managed to dislodge a glass jar from a shelf that didn’t bounce on the stone floor. Oops! That’s six dollars that we won’t get back.

We have agreed to start our yoga sessions up again. These proved successful in helping with my painful knee problem last year. With all the weeks of renovation work I had done on the cottage, I had stiffened up, and I thought working through the various positions, the stretches would help. Oh how wrong I was.

There is a tendency to expel unwanted gas during the more strenuous positions, and it is very hard to disguise. The best you could hope for is a subtle “phoot”that few would notice, the worst is a trumpet solo, that everyone in the neighbourhood would hear, mine was more the latter. It was a little embarrassing, no, it was really, bloody embarrassing.

9th December 2018

It was the usual Sunday lunch around the family Bulthouse residence. Georgia, Kelli’s mother has pulled out the seasonal plates with Christmas trees on them. Kelli had prepared a potato and onion dish with a green salad. This was in great demand with everyone, so I had to made sure I grabbed as much as possible before the others got their forks into it.

Dave had purchased a used high back leather Equa to replace an aged Ergon that creaked like an old schooner, but he was not happy with it. The arms could not be raised, so I guess I will have to help strip down the old Ergon and somehow de-creak it.

It was fun taking the dogs out for a walk, it was cold, but with a warm coat and gloves, and a promise of hot coffee means that I would travel to the ends of the earth and back.