It is way more fun to go off in a private corner and write stories than it is to tell strangers on the internet about those stories. I followed all the how-tos and advice for creating an “author’s blog” with generic posts like a good little neophyte, but, just, ugh. Ugh to all of it.

I’m never going to use my “author Instagram” because I despise Instagram. Twitter is busy burning to the ground, so that doesn’t seem like a long-term prospect either. And I think linking a Facebook page was actively detrimental to my already miniscule interest in blogging. The only thing worse than people seeing your thoughts on the internet is people you know seeing your thoughts on the internet.

Anyway. Here is a blog post I am making myself write. I enjoy reading blog posts from people doing restoration work on historical properties, so let’s talk about the closest I’ll ever come to doing anything like that, which is fixing issues around my forty year old home.

Look! A bathroom with fresh paint! Lovely. There is an entire saga of schlock behind the necessity of painting this bathroom, but we’re going to focus on my achievements with “Sockeye” latex paint, since I don’t have any control over the rest. It makes me want to bite something.

Oops, what’s this?

A hole where a toilet should go. The hole is dire. Not to be too technical, but there are some standard plumbing bits that you want to have a certain way in your toilet hole. They are not supposed to be rusted. Or leaky. Anyway, I have already arranged for this to be a plumber’s problem. Let’s move on.

Closet! New closet. Formerly the site of bare walls and lots of boxes on the floor. We painted like a million (two) years ago and just now finally got around to hiring a professional to put in storage. Hurrah. My boyfriend made me negotiate for a portion of “his” drawer space, even though this schmuck wears copies of the same white t-shirt every single day of his life, like a cartoon character from low-budget TV.

Here’s the same closet, now with crap in it, because it was convenient to take this photo.

Or it would have been, if I hadn’t forgotten to hide my girlfriend’s bras the first time around and had to run back for a second take.

Oh, yeah, I also live with my girlfriend. That’s something I wouldn’t want to tell Facebook. I had better remember to shut down my author page after posting this. Anyway, my girlfriend is awesome. They were vastly more generous with sharing “their” drawer space than our boyfriend was, even though they own a lot more clothing.

Continuing to problems downstairs. Kind of doing these in reverse chronological order. Here is a bathroom that is currently just a box, with my boyfriend knocking a hole in the ceiling:

The reason for the hole was to discover whether the spreading stain on the ceiling could be attributed to a water leak, and the answer was “yes”. (Other suspects include: dead, rotting mouse corpse; rain, maybe??)

This leak originates from the Sockeye Bathroom above, and the toilet hole in particular. Again, a plumber’s problem. Once the Sockeye Bathroom is no longer in shambles, we will turn this box back into a half-bath. Until then, its constituent parts live scattered around the boyfriend’s mancave.

Let’s end on a positive note with another fixed problem. Here is what used to be a particularly scungy laundry room, mid-paintjob, and carpeted in self-leveling concrete (to fix a massive drop in the floor):

We hired professionals for this too. The previous owners, likewise responsible for the rusty toilet hole, used about fifteen buckets of glue when sticking down cheapola vinyl that I swear was designed to look dirty. The professionals had a lot to say about what it was like to peel that stuff up. “Two-day nightmare” is an apt summary. They had to take turns with this thing that was like a spatula crossed with a jackhammer. A machine for causing carpal tunnel.

And this is what it looked like when 90% done, just before we put the new light fixture in:

If the plumbers can get either devastated bathroom half this functional, my girlfriend and I will be able to stop brawling over who gets the toilet when we get up for work in the morning.

I found a before picture of the cheapola scunge tile. Look at that mess. Also, as you can see, we used child labor for a lot of the painting. I highly recommend this approach: children have bendy knees and good backs. Redshirt there has had a birthday since and also sprouted up like a weed, so I guess we don’t get to enjoy child labor anymore. I’ll have to call it teenage labor.

I’ve got to go put a second coat on the Sockeye Bathroom now. I enjoy calling it that. The girlfriend picked the paint color and I think they’re a genius for it, because our Norwegian boyfriend, true to type, loves salmon.

And that wraps up all the work I’ve been doing for the past five-ish months! And also I finished writing another book. I guess I should talk about that, since that’s the nominal purpose for this blog… But later.