Since coming back to the farmlet I’ve mostly been cleaning up, but at a very slow pace. I left in a hurry in September expecting to come back soon and shut things down for the winter but that didn’t happen. There were scraps piled in the entryway from the attempt at demo-ing the living room wall and a bunch of detritus left over from the bathroom renovation on the upstairs landing. I took all this garbage out to the room in the barn where I’m storing it until I can get a container, and I tidied up all the tools and other things associated with various jobs that I left unfinished. Beyond that, I’ve washed most of the floors and cleaned most surfaces (like windowsills).
The only really bad consequence of abruptly abandoning the place last fall is that I had left the bed made up and it was occupied by mice over the winter. That necessitated buying new bedding and a new foam mattress to use as an alternate bed; this was actually something I had been planning on doing anyway, since I want to have a place for guests to sleep. This week I’ve been sleeping on the foam mattress while the bed airs out. Here’s the setup in the south bedroom:
Hey, it works for me! I’ve mostly been sleeping really well.
Thankfully, there really wasn’t much damage to the original bed and bedding. I threw out the fitted sheet (it was bad), washed the remaining linens (which were fine), and have been airing the pillows and comforter outside in the sun over the past few days. The bed has a very thick mattress topper, and while there was some staining, I have been airing it out and will simply flip it over to the clean side. I bought a new mattress pad/protector to put over the topper, and with that in place I’m going to declare the bed sleep-able. I know this will gross a lot of people out, but hey, what can I say? It’s a farm, and farms have mice. Eventually, when I move here permanently I will definitely have cats, but until then I just have to deal with it.
The only other little “project” so far was figuring out a way to contain the wires and components for my internet setup on the upstairs landing. It was a thicket, but a simple basket from a box store seems to be doing the trick:
At least it will be easier to clean around and it gives a tidier impression. Plus it doesn’t even block that very low window!
The last “home improvement” for this week (aside from hanging up some more of the linen curtains I bought last year) is really too small to even mention, but it pleases me nonetheless. There were two really ratty doormats outside; they were so torn and matted and gross that I went ahead and tossed them and replaced the one on the step with a very robust rubber mat:
I was prepared to have to trim it to size, but it just fits. Yay for small victories!
Renovation Tangent 