10 Annoying Projects – Part 1
10 Annoying Projects – Part 1

10 Annoying Projects – Part 1

You know those little projects on the perpetual “to do” list that never seem to get done?  Because they’re small, annoying, or both?  Yeah.  I have 10 of those that have been on my list for months.  I decided I’ll do one a day for the next 10 days.  I figure each one will take between 30 & 60 minutes.  Originally I planned to post this all in one post, but it got too long, so I’m breaking it in half.

1. FIX IKEA LIGHT IN GIRL CAVE:

On Monday [Halloween] I fixed the base of the IKEA Onsjö light in the girl cave so it’s flush with the ceiling [or close enough]:

310a        310b

Ever since I installed it it’s been driving me crazy.  In theory the [cheap plastic] base is supposed to be pulled tight to the ceiling by the weight of the light.  That’s bullshit.  Today I did the best I could, and I’m calling it good enough.  I think because it’s on a slanted ceiling it will never be completely flush.  Total time to fix = 10 minutes, which included scraping off the Sugru adhesive I’d used when originally installing it.

UPDATE 6/30/2018:

I finally gave up and removed the Onsjö “firefly” LED chandelier from the girl cave ceiling.  It never sat well on the ceiling, and even though it was cool looking, it gave off very minimal light.  I’m going to replace it with a spot light soon.  I need as much light as possible when I work on art and stained glass!  All gone:

i revised the color scheme for the girl cave ac cabinet

2. INSTALL SCREEN DOOR SWEEP IN BEDROOM:

On Tuesday I installed a door sweep at the bottom of the bedroom screen door I built this past Spring:

310c        310d

I’d installed a door sweep originally, the kind with the adhesive back that “sticks to anything!”.  It fell off after a couple weeks, so for the past 4 or so months we’ve been using a towel to keep bugs out… classy.  Today I installed another adhesive one but this time I also screwed it into place.  Total time to fix = 10 minutes.

3. REMOVE HIGH ALTITUDE DUST BUNNIES FROM BEDROOM & LIVING ROOM:

On Wednesday I got my Little Giant ladder out, set it up in each corner of the bedroom, climbed up and removed the high altitude dust bunnies [ceiling cobwebs] lurking in the vaulted ceiling & around each ceiling light:

setting up the ladder in the bedroom to get rid of dust bunnies & cobwebs

Then I hauled the ladder down to the living room & repeated the process.  The living room took waaaaaaaaaaay longer.  Mostly due to the hoards of long-tailed cats spread across 4 shelves and the 3 layers of curtains & shades in each window.  I usually take each cat down for a dusting every 6 months but I must have missed last time…:

310f        310g

Look at that little dusty face!  And the large dust bunny above it – ugh:

310i        310h

Total time = 80 minutes.  The bedroom took 20 and the living room took an hour.  Crazy!  But it’s done now.  I checked for high altitude dust bunnies in other rooms but they seem to only occur in the bedroom & living room.  After much thought, I have a theory about that:  both we & the cats spend most of our time in the bedroom & living room; the ceiling fans are on almost all year round in both rooms.  I think we [humans & pets] create a lot of dust which the fans send airborne where it collects on shelves & sticks to cobwebs instead of being vacuumed up nods.

4. VACUUM ALL CAT PLATFORMS, CAT TREES, & CAT BEDS:

This ended up being a 2 day project face palm.  On Thursday I grabbed the vacuum, emptied the canister [so I could keep track of how much fur I was removing] and carried it upstairs.  It took 90 minutes to vacuum the 7 upstairs cat platforms & 2 cat trees.  OMFG!!!  Way longer than I expected.  But check out this H·O·R·R·I·F·Y·I·N·G mass of fur & dust no longer polluting our upstairs air:

310o

It made quite a visual difference, and will definitely improve air quality.  Here are some before & afters of the bedroom cat tree:

310j        310k

310l        310m

Darwin was VERY happy to have a freshly vacuumed tree – he jumped right up and slept in the house part all night:

310n

On Friday after work I spent ANOTHER 90 minutes [!] vacuuming the 18 downstairs cat platforms, both fleece igloos, & both cat beds.  Here are some disturbing impressive before & afters:

310p       310q

310r       310s

Here’s the final result from both floors – disgusting!:

310t

And seriously – WE HAVE A VERY CLEAN HOUSE!  You wouldn’t think it from this post, but we do.  Seriously.  We have a very thorough cleaning man come in every 2 weeks for the basics.  Ted is a literal life saver!  But it’s easy to get lazy with the non-standard stuff like cat platforms & trees…  The scary part of all this is I’m allergic to cats & dust!  That huge bowl of fur, dander, & dust could literally send me to the ER.  But I REALLY wanted a visual of how much was removed.  Crazy.

5. MOVE BICYCLES TO BASEMENT:

Thankfully this one is EASY and only took 10 minutes 🙂  The first thing I did when I woke up today was move the bicycles from the alcove under the stairs to the basement.  In their place I set up a little table & basket for the mail:

310u       310v2

We never even rode the bikes once this summer… so they may as well live in the basement until we decide to use them again.  And a basket for the mail will mean no more paper chaos on the dining room table.

Five annoying projects done, five to go!

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9 Comments

  1. Anne

    The amount of dust is both impressive and scary. And as huge fan (no pun intended) of fans, I can assure you that they’re probably responsible for most of your collected dust. Don’t forget to clean your fan blades (you’ll have another omg moment). I use a Swiffer on the ones I can reach, and a Home Depot brush specially made for fans for the out of reach ones. I do our fans probably twice during our six month stay, and each time I’m horrified by the amount of dust each blade has collected.
    As always,I’m impressed by your initiative. We have an endless list of that type of project, but you really have to get yourself in the right mood to tackle them – they’re so easy to ignore when you want to.

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