April 1 – Day 15 of Our COVID 19 Adventure

Is There a Silver Lining?

I have been reading lots of posts about, if there is a silver lining to be found during this pandemic, it may be the amount of time that we all have now to focus on things that are important to us.  I think there is a lot of truth in that statement.  However, I think that it would be difficult to convince medical personnel right now that they have more time, for example.  So I suppose that for some of us there is a silver lining, but not really one for all of us.  Some people are handling the crisis with aplomb, some are panicking.  No silver lining for them either.

For those of us who are blessed with either a disposition to see the good in all things or who are blessed with a situation that isn’t completely horrible, we need to be both grateful for that and mindful of those who are not so blessed.

I am blessed in both departments and I do believe that my ability to see grace and blessings helps tremendously with my mental health.  There have still been moments when I have looked at Jerry and said, “Is this really where we are?  This is reality?”  And y’all, it is a harsh reality.  Please, please, please find something to be thankful for and focus on that.  It helps the bad stuff seem a bit further away and that is all to the good.

I Keep Singing Annie Lennox Lyrics…

“Here comes the rain again, falling on my head like a memory…” is running through my mind.  I am not worried about the “new emotions” or wanting to talk  “like lovers do”.  Seriously.  I am just remembering the over seven inches of rain we received in March and knowing that when it starts raining tomorrow, forecasts are showing that it isn’t going to stop for about a week.

This is going to cause a bit of havoc with our outside projects and so today was spent rushing, trying to get ready for the rain and line up projects that can be done in the house.  For a time when things are supposed to be slowing down (see the opening bit of this post about the silver lining of having more time!), I seem to be rushing and always pushing against something.  <sigh>

Enough whining… here is what we accomplished today.

The Stadium Seats from Mertens Baptist Church

I started sanding on these beauties shortly after Buddy gave them to me.  I didn’t get very far, however, because the orbital sander needed a new pad and I didn’t have one.  The sanding discs kept coming off and I put this project on hold.  Now, they are back on the list to get restored.

One of the seats has a problem with the veneer.  It has gotten wet sometime in the past and has pulled away from the seat.  Okay.  I don’t know anything about working with veneer and I have no desire to try and replace the veneer.  What to do?  I figure that if water caused the problem, maybe I can use water to fix the problem.  This morning, I wet a terry cloth pad with water and attempted to soak the veneer.

Once it was wet, I attempted to press/mold it back into place.  I think it will take several repetitions to get this done, but I seem to have plenty of time, right?  And this is an inside project for now. Tomorrow, I will remove the clamps and see if we have made any progress.

The Master Bathroom Projects

There are two projects on the list for the master bathroom.  One is the vanity lighting and the other is an accent wall.

The vanity lighting will require two of the old ceiling joists from the old house and new lighting fixtures.  Jerry dove into the pile of salvaged lumber and selected several of the joists that were the correct length and had minimal bowing for us to choose from.  We will select from these tomorrow and I will give them a quick sanding before the rain hits, of course.

The other project is an accent wall in the shower area.   When we removed the roof off the back side of the house, we discovered that it was all original.  Take a look at this mess.

We thought that the boards were sexy and set them aside to be used sometime in the future.  And now, it seems as if the time has come.  These boards will be used as an accent wall.  Besides the fact that I think it will look amazing, it am thrilled that more boards from our lumber yard (read back yard) will be disappearing.  The back yard is a wreck.

More Prepping

The boards had a lot of nails and some of the wooden shingles that had to be removed.  There was a sweet little scorpion that was hiding underneath…just a bonus surprise for me.

Removing nails from the boards was a big job because the boards had a minimum of 140 nails to be removed, not including the square nails.  We decided to leave the square nails in for character and historic sweetness.  They had to be driven in flush and the backs either bent and pounded in or broken off…I let the nail decide what it wanted to do.

I love a plan and I try to have an idea of what I want a project to look like before we even start.  This project started out that way,  but I quickly altered that mindset.  While sanding the boards, I decided to let the wood give me what it wanted to show.  The boards aren’t uniform in color.  The saw marks are clearly visible.  I can’t wait to see them on the wall.

Silver Lining

Our silver lining is that we have time to complete these projects even if we are racing the rain.  We admit that we can’t control many things in this world, but we can control our responses to things that come our way.  Consider finding projects you can work on.  Research has shown that making progress makes people happy and that when things are crazy, having control over something has positive physiological benefits.

Y’all take care of yourselves and each other.