5 More Annoying Projects – DONE!

A few weeks ago A few months ago I completed 10 Annoying Projects in 10 Days.  I realized there’s sort of a never ending list of annoying projects, so from time to time you’ll see a post about them.  I started writing this post last November [!] but got really busy making Christmas presents and am just now picking up where I left off.  The first 4 projects I actually completed in November/December:

The whale painting has always hung in the upstairs hallway but needed to be moved when I constructed the latest upstairs hall cat platforms.  It’s a print by Jim’s best friend Nat’s grandfather Robert Blanchard.  It was propped against the wall of the bedroom for 6 months before I finally got around to re-hanging it:

In February 2018 I re-framed the whale painting and hung it on the wall at the top of the stairs [where Birdie’s litter box platform used to be]:

        

The decision to add some color to our bedroom came this past Fall when I rediscovered the colored LED “tinsel” balls [#affiliate] I’d bought a few months ago last summer.  They slowly fade into 7 different colors [red, green, blue, yellow, aqua, pink, & clear].  They’re very soothing and hubby & I usually fall asleep with them on.  Each ball changes colors on a slightly different time frame so the string is never the same twice:

        

The light string is actually 2 strings of 10 balls connected in the middle between the windows.  I tried to minimize the extra wire on either side of the connection by tying it up into a bundle but it looked bad [see 1st photo above the ocean print].  I bought some white electrical tape and wrapped it – much better:

        

We love how they look:

        

Last Tuesday night December 6th after work I raked the yard and driveway.  I filled 5 yard bags and put them on the curb for pickup:

        

I’ve lived here for 4 years and had never really raked much before, so it was nice to peel back crushed leaf litter from our driveway in big, wet swaths and dump it into the bags.  Much neater!

We used to have solar lights on the deck but they finally fizzled out.  I bought some new LED string lights at Home Depot and hung them on the deck last Friday December 9th.  I originally planned to plug them into the outlet above the deck but found out the hard way it doesn’t work.  Plan B was dropping the lights over the edge of the deck to the roof of the catio, running down to the yard, grabbing the lights and plugging them into the outlet below the catio connector.  They are plugged into an outdoor wireless remote control [#affiliate] unit so we can turn them off or on from the bedroom.  They look beautiful.  Here’s the view from our driveway [left] and from the Riverwalk Bridge [right]:

        

I have been dreading this project!!!  But my blog friend Jessica made me realize it’s good to pull the kitchen appliances out and vacuum/clean behind them once in a while nods.  I was always a renter before meeting hubby [except for a brief period in 2000 when I owned a condo with an ex] and projects like this were always the landlord’s issue, not mine.  Hubby told me the last time it was pulled out and cleaned was when he bought the condo in 2009, so it was definitely due.  Today was another day off due to inclement weather, so I made good use of it.  Yuk!!!:

The cats, of course, were fascinated [Darwin on left, Bonkers on right]:

        

I started by cleaning the sides of the stove.  Right side before & after:

       

Left side before & after:

        

Then tackled the floor with a vacuum followed by a soapy sponge – what a difference!

        

Then finally the walls:

So much better!  Phew.

After pushing the stove back in place I decided to clean the oven door:

       

And vac out the floor of the oven:

And finally I cleaned the 2 fan grates from the underside of the microwave which is suspended over the stove:

        

Then spent an hour shoveling the deck and driveway and cleaning ice & snow off the cars.  Not sure which project was worse, to be honest!  Cleaning the stove and oven kind of sucked, but shoveling the heavy, wet snow was also pretty awful.