Furniture Assembly – Spirit of Dee

A little more comfortable

22 January 202122 January 2021 Dee Leave a comment

As part of the big year of home improvement, I’m gradually adding stuff to help make the space easier and more comfortable for day-to-day living. The coffee table in the centre of our living room had been feeling a bit claustrophobic and precarious, as it was too close to the sofa (meaning I had to squeeze in and out of my favourite spot all the time) and really cluttered on top due to my need to have a cushion on it during the day (I like to put my feet up!). I’ve never kicked any of my drinks over yet, but it was only a matter of time. As such, I bought this useful side table last week.

The soft storage basket in the base provides a space for all my gaming handhelds, and keeping drinks on the top next to me means that they are now at much less risk of being knocked over! This is important given the quantity of electronics I keep and use in the space.

I’ve also been enjoying having all our bread products tucked away out of sight in our new bread bin.

I found it a bit difficult to open at first, but it turns out the trick is not to close it too tightly.

In non-shiny news, I’ve had a fairly busy week. Not too much day job work, but I did have a lot of admin and accounting to do in preparation for submitting my tax return, which was as boring as you might expect! I’ve also been continuing with the TOMM cleaning method, which is still taking me about an hour a day while I get into the swing of it.

From Sunday onwards I was able to go outside to run, which I was really appreciating… and then on Wednesday night it snowed heavily again so I was back indoors on the treadmill yesterday morning! Thankfully it had mostly melted by today so I was back out on the roads again. Hopefully there won’t be any more snow over the weekend as I’ve got lots of outdoor running plans.

I’m still playing ukulele as part of the Zoom group on Wednesday evenings, and I’m still getting as much videogaming in as I possibly can, and… that’s about it. I expect life will continue in this vein for some time, at least until the current lockdown restrictions start to ease off again.

This week’s earworm playlists:

Saturday

The Marcels – ‘Blue Moon’
Ben E King – ‘Stand By Me’
John Barrowman – ‘Anything Goes’

Sunday

Yoko Shimomura – ‘Radiant Historia’
Cast of Oliver! – ‘Food, Glorious Food’
Duran Duran – ‘Friends Of Mine’

Monday

Noriyuki Iwadare – ‘Turnabout Sisters’
The Weeknd – ‘Blinding Lights’
Julian Nott – ‘Wallace And Gromit Main Theme’
Arrow – ‘Hot, Hot, Hot’

And a bonus track Geth was humming that day:

The Lancashire Hotpots – ‘The Technical Support Song’

Tuesday

Men Without Hats – ‘Safety Dance’
Glenn Miller – ‘In The Mood’
Audrey Hepburn – ‘Moon River’
3 Daft Monkeys – ‘Paranoid Big Brother’

Wednesday

Oasis – ‘Songbird’
Duran Duran – ‘Friends Of Mine’
The Strokes – ‘Last Nite’
The Chemical Brothers – ‘Galvanise’

Thursday

Bob Marley & The Wailers – ‘Three Little Birds’
Katy Perry – ‘Firework’
Duran Duran – ‘The Edge Of America’
Revo – ‘Fighting To The End’
Duran Duran – ‘Tel Aviv’
Belinda Carlisle – ‘Circle In The Sand
Duran Duran – ‘Anyone Out There’

Friday

Nintendo 3DS eShop – ‘Main Theme’
Landscape – ‘Einstein A Go Go’
Traditional – ‘America The Beautiful’
Pointer Sisters – ‘Automatic’
Audrey Hepburn – ‘Moon River’

Building stuff

12 August 202012 August 2020 Dee Leave a comment

Just a mile today…

…because I woke up late again. I need to set an alarm tomorrow as I’m falling behind with stuff a bit this week.

After my run, I spent pretty much the rest of the day building garden furniture. Geth ordered a set the other day and it arrived yesterday, so I put it all together this afternoon as we have guests (!) coming for lunch on Friday. It’s still meant to be very warm and dry by then, if a bit cloudy, so it’ll be nice to sit out in the fresh air.

No videogaming tonight as I have too much admin to catch up with. Hopefully tomorrow will be a bit easier time-wise… if I don’t sleep through that alarm.

Today’s earworm playlist:

Duran Duran – ‘Rio’
Ashford & Simpson – ‘Solid’

New shiny things

21 March 201821 March 2018 Dee Leave a comment

After a couple of days of dribs and drabs of small deliveries of house stuff, the big Ikea order arrived today! Most of it (I’ve already assembled the replacement lamp) is still sitting in the middle of the living room, as there’s no space to assemble the units or put them in their eventual places yet. And just when I thought I’d reclaimed that bit of living room floor. Oh well.

I also finally finished the wardrobe cull. It’s amazing how much stuff I realised I just didn’t like or want to wear, and in total I’ve probably got rid of about 75% of my clothes. To be fair, I am now spending a lot of time online, fantasy shopping for replacements, but I’m trying to be good and only (mostly) buying things I actually need.

Now that the Ikea order is here, one thing I can do is start putting stuff into its proper storage boxes. Hopefully I’ll have a properly functioning dressing room, at least, by the end of the week!

Tetris and other block puzzles

14 March 201814 March 2018 Dee Leave a comment

You know those games (physical or digital) where you have to get a ball from one end of the board/screen to the other by moving blocks around so you can slowly work the ball through the path? I’m terrible at them. It always takes me ages.

That’s how I’ve felt about working on the new house for most of the last week.

The current project is to get everything into its correct room, if not its correct place. What this means is I’m just constantly moving boxes around, trying to clear paths for other things to be moved through, filling one room and then another in an attempt just to have some tiny space to manoeuvre stuff. It’s really tiring, and I feel like I’m going round in circles.

A big part of the problem is that there’s so much stuff that doesn’t have a place yet. We’re going to be building new wall shelves out of our old Ikea Billy bookshelves to house the DVDs, videogames and some of the books, and I’ve designed a wall of Ikea Kallax units for the boardgame collection. As such, until these units are in place, our books, DVDs, videogames and boardgames have to stay in boxes, and there’s a lot of them.

I know, logically, I am making headway. I’ve spent today making rows of all the boxes that go in different areas, so once Geth gets home tonight and helps me with a couple of heavy lifting jobs, I’ll be able to fill the study with all the Stuff That Goes In The Study (as opposed to the all-kinds-of-everything totally random stuff that was in there before) and use that as a dumping ground to help me sort out other rooms. After that, over the next couple of days, I can move my magazine Kallax upstairs, then move all the boardgame boxes to the space where their Kallax storage is going to live, and that will mean there’s a bit more breathing room around the piles of boxes of books and DVDs that are currently having to stay in the living room.

The whole thing really is doing wonders for my hoarding habit though. I can’t wait to start sorting through things properly and getting rid of stuff.

One step at a time. It’s just frustrating when there are so many steps.

Yet another busy day spent home improving

7 March 20187 March 2018 Dee Leave a comment

I am that lucky girl who has the world’s best dad.

Today, between three of us (mostly Dad doing the work, with me playing assistant and Geth doing the heavy lifting) we got the master bedroom walls finalised, the other two bedrooms painted white, and the bed assembled. This last bit was more difficult than expected, as the bed had lost a few fixings during its time in the last house (I thought I’d found them all while I was dissembling the thing in a rush on the morning of moving day, but we were missing a few); however, Dad found fixes for everything, and we now have a working bed that we’ll be able to sleep on again from tomorrow night.

The other two rooms, meanwhile, look so much better for a fresh coat of white paint, and I’m really looking forward to getting them set up with furniture and contents. The unexplained smell that was hanging around upstairs has also disappeared since the paint went up, which is great, and the whole area just feels so much more welcoming and homely now.

Tomorrow’s job will be getting the furniture upstairs sorted. I may even get round to sorting out some photos so you can see what I’m talking about!

Paint!

6 March 20186 March 2018 Dee Leave a comment

Still working in the house, still excited and impatient to get everything sorted!

My mum and dad arrived today and so my dad and I were able to start working on the bedroom walls. The master bedroom came with a giant wardrobe that I didn’t see us being able to move (although my dad has worked out how to split it into parts for moving in future), so I’d decided that we would just take down the existing shelves, Polyfilla the imperfections and touch up the magnolia paint in there for the time being. Eventually I want to wallpaper that room, but that’s a long-term project.

Tomorrow we’re going to paint the other two rooms white (non-magnolia rooms! I’m so excited!) and assemble the bed. Every day is feeling like an important step at the moment.