ORBITED BY NINE DARK MOONS

I am painting the laundry room raspberry! Up until now it’s been the same green as our hallways. I wanted to give it some distinction. I’m using Benjamin Moore Night Flower, which looks good enough to eat! I primed 2 sections of wall Sunday with Benjamin Moore’s Fresh Start primer, then rolled 3 coats of Night Flower on top.

OMG. I just spent 5 hours mapping the basement breaker box to all the outlets, switches and appliances in our condo. Holy crap. I thought it would take 3 hours tops. Nope. 5 hours. But at least now I can tinker with outlets if I need to [like replacing the beige receptacles with white ones!] and know which breaker to turn off.

I was hoping to be a DIY dynamo last weekend and tackle some projects that have been clogging up my to do list for far too long. Like the girl cave ceiling string lights, the girl cave bookcase redo & the recessed lighting trim color change. But when the weekend arrived, I felt like doing nothing. So I did nothing. All weekend. I watched a lot of TV, took naps, took some nice, long [cold!] walks, & read my Kindle.

I don’t think I’ve talked about it much, but I’m taking a Basic Home Repair class at the local voc tech High School – it’s part of their evening Adult Ed program. It’s AWESOME. The class is 10 weeks long, and is broken out into 3 parts: basic electrical, basic plumbing, and basic carpentry [30 hours of classes for $180 – cheap!]. Last night was the 3rd class of the semester, and the 2nd one covering basic electrical.

Over the weekend I was able to finish cat platform #2! About 10 seconds after I finished with the last bracket, Darwin came up the stairs [how do they always know when to show up?] and was instantly intrigued by what he saw. After using the steps to get up [*impressed*], and after a quick glance out the window, he thoroughly investigated the new platform, then returned to the windowsill for some quality bird watching.

Last Monday was a Federal holiday, so I had the day off from work. Jim’s office was open, so he had to go in [poor hubby!]. Since I had the day to myself, I decided to see how much I could get done. From 7:00-9:00AM I cleaned the rat cage which made the girls very happy! From 9:00-11:00AM I ran errands and cleaned up the condo. From 11:00-noon I relaxed on the couch and ate an early lunch while watching the Olympics.

Yesterday I couldn’t sit still. I kept trying to relax on the couch and enjoy the Olympics with my husband [which I managed to do somewhat] but there was a lot of sporadic DIY activity mixed in. So while my husband was at the gym, I decided to rip the ugly coat rack off the wall in the upstairs hallway. I never understood why the previous owner of the condo put it there – it’s not in a room, it’s not near a door, it’s not near anything relevant.

Yesterday, while relaxing on the couch with hubby, I glanced up towards the ceiling and remembered I’d bought off-white spray paint for the recessed lighting trim. A couple of quick trips to the basement and they were ready to go back up, with 2 fresh coats of off-white spray paint. They look awesome! Off-white, FTW!!!

I’ve been plotting to build a 2nd cat platform. The one I built in the dining room window was such a huge success that I’ve been itching to start constructing another. I decided the window at the top of the stairs would be perfect, since Darwin already loves to sit on that windowsill, and Bonkers loves when I hold him up so he can enjoy the view too.