But alas, I couldn't relax with all that work hanging over my head, so I did the laundry. I changed the sheets. I washed the dishes. I fed the animals -- including four snakes.
And I mowed. The whole yard. I even started trying to clean up the mess Tomato Man left when he abandoned his tomato patch. Alas, the grass and weeds kept clogging up my mower, so I put it off until later. I think I'm going to have to cut it with the weedeater first, then mow it. I need to do the weedeating anyway before my spider lilies make their appearance.
It was hot out there, I'm telling ya. H.O.T. It was up to 96, with a heat index of 106 by the time I was done. Needless to say, I took lots of cool down breaks, and I drank about a gallon of water. It was during one of those cool down breaks I started pulling all that English Ivy off my bricks.
I'd been planning on doing it for a while, but just hadn't gotten around to it. I do like ivy, but it was getting to the point it was taking over everything. Plus, with the guy coming to paint my eaves next month, it really does damage your paint job. I didn't want to pay all that money for new paint and stuff, only to have ivy ruin it. Thus, the ivy had to go.
I think the next step will be to hire someone to power wash the little bits of roots and things off my bricks, but I already think the house looks better just with what I've pulled off.
Speaking of bricks, I'm still plugging away at my fireplace. Fire box. Wood burner....oh, whatever the dumb thing is called.
As I predicted, this back corner is proving to be the troublesome spot.
It's just because it's hard to reach, but I'll get it eventually. The rest of it is nearly finished. I have to get all the little loose bits scrubbed off, then strip the base. During one of my cool down breaks from mowing, I put a little stripper on one of the bricks on the base. Once I'd scraped off the three -- yes three-- layers of paint, I found these lovely red bricks.
Why on earth someone would want to cover that up is beyond me. But then, I've always liked the simplest approach.
For a moment, it threw a monkey wrench into my plans, but I thought better of it. I think I'm still going to paint the whole thing light gray. That corner is kind of dark anyway, and I think the red would make it too dark. Light gray, on the other hand, might lighten it up a bit. I actually didn't have a problem with the bricks being painted white. It was just that the paint job looked so gloppy.
Well, Cody is going to be with me for a few more days. He still hasn't heard back from the apartment people about getting his name put on the lease. He's going to room with his friend Tristan, but the managers have to add Cody's name to the lease before they'll let him move in. He's a little frustrated by that, as he will be working the 4:00 AM shift at Wal-mart. He's for sure not going to want to make that 2 hour drive that early in the morning. Hopefully the apartment people will get back with him tomorrow, and he can go ahead and get moved in up there soon.
I'll feel better, too, about him not having to make that long commute every day.
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