Since our vacation plans were derailed this year (we were supposed to have been in Yellowstone last week……ug…..), we’ve tried coming up with some fun alternatives that will still be memorable for the kids. A few weeks ago, Brooke and I took our inflatable kayak that we got last summer down a stretch of the nearby Lamine River. It’s a little less than 6 miles and took us about 3 hours to do it, but three weeks ago, the river had more water in it and was moving a bit faster.
Brooke looked into getting a youth-size kayak for Meg to use, so Calvin and I could just use our inflatable, and Meg and Brooke could use traditional fiberglass versions. They checked around, thought there were some at Walmart in Sedalia, drove down….didn’t find any at the store….and essentially, it sounds like most places are out of kayaks. It sounds like everyone else is thinking the same thing we are: fewer vacation options, so find stuff to do closer to home, and kayaks are a relatively cheap option for that.
Well, once we figured that out, Brooke tried ordering another one of our inflatable kayaks from Amazon, but those were back-ordered (again, the aforementioned “everyone is buying them all the sudden,” but also “harder to get things shipped in from China). Thankfully, they over-estimated the back-order and a second kayak arrived on Friday. Yesterday’s weather was less pleasant, so we ended up going today.
Overall, the kids did pretty well! We tried to warn them that this was a pretty “lazy river,” so it wasn’t a particularly fast float. The novelty of kayaking wore off pretty quick, so Brooke and I ended up doing most of the paddling, though Meg and Calvin would have their moments where they wanted to actually help out a bit. We brought along some snacks and drinks, so we could slowly release those here and there to keep them occupied.
By the time we were done, it took about 3.5 hrs of paddling, and all things considered, the kids did alright in that period of time sans screens and other entertainment. Brooke and I were both pretty tired by the time we got to the end, so it’ll probably be an early bedtime tonight.
In the end, it was very tiring, but we’re still glad we did it! We may want to hold off on doing a “camp and float” trip, but now that the kids have a better understanding for just how long this can take, maybe they’ll have realistic expectations when we propose: ‘hey, wanna go on a float trip?’
As I’ve made pretty clear with the last few points, we’ve been friggin’ busy these last few weeks, but while we’ve been busy inside the house, the garden has been doing its thing with some minimal intervention from us (aside from a little weeding here and there).
Brooke planted green beans a few weeks ago, and only in the past few days, they’ve finally started looking pretty good. We had a bout of cooler, rainy weather that wasn’t all that conducive to our hot-weather plants, so now that we’ve had weather in the upper-80s and lower-90s for the past 5 days, the beans are finally making headway.
The green pepper plants south of the beans are also finally looking better. It just took some sun showing up for them to finally take off. I wouldn’t say we’re out of the woods yet on them, though, as they’re pretty small. Brooke also added some sunflower seeds to the north part of the plot, so they’re up and moving around. We’ll see how they turn out…
The tomatoes are also finally taking off. I pulled the milk jugs off of them a few weeks ago because the plants were getting too big, but even then, they slowed down their growth due to the aforementioned cooler weather. The four varieties we’re running are all moving at around 3 plants apiece. We’ll have to see. Got another month or so to go on them…but we’re optimistic…
Today, I tilled up the last bit of the garden that wasn’t planted yet. Brooke put in more kale and spinach, as that part of the garden is relatively shady and will hopefully give us some leafy greens later on in the summer. I think this is the first time we’ve tried planting those things in mid-June, so we’ll see how that goes.
Speaking of spinach and kale, the former is mostly done (though they’re still in the garden), and the latter is ready for harvest. The kale is still looking pretty good though, so Brooke will probably pull it sometime later this week.
In the plot that previously hosted the radishes, Brooke planted zucchini. We’ve planted it before, but I don’t recall much coming of it. Instead of a mound, Brooke put them in a row. Again, this is a “we’ll see” kinda deal.
The garlic is still doing its thing, too. Waiting for them to be done!
Speaking of radishes, we got a lot! Only a few of them, thus far, are what I’d qualify as “good.” A few of the ones I’ve tried are pretty tough and fibrous, but I’m not ready to toss them all out yet.
The real story of the summer thus far is the strawberries, though. We’re getting at least a bowl like this every day, but we’ve been fighting against the slugs for them… These tiny little things keep getting the strawberries right at the “ripe” point, so we’re picking them just a day early to make sure we get some. We’ve given some to the neighbors and to my parents so far, and even with that, we’ve ended up with enough to put on ice cream and put in a breakfast cake, so we’re very satisfied with the crop!
In other news, Brooke planted some sage and bee balm in the raised bed to go with the other herbs. They’re not doing much yet, but the lettuce is finally looking good. We’ll probably have more salads next week, or at least some sandwiches. Too bad we don’t have tomatoes to go with a BLT just yet…
Today, Brooke started picking cherries! Infamously, we got a single, solitary, sad little cherry last year. This year, we’ve got quite a few more than that! Brooke said this was maybe 10% of what’s on the tree right now, so we’ve got a bit to go. We’ll probably pick every other day or so, but we’ve heard that rain can make them split, and as it’s supposed to rain the next few days, we may have to pick a few early again. Still, better than last year!
Speaking of “better than last year,” peaches. So many peaches. All the peaches.
And last but not least, the bees are doing their thing! Again, it’s been hot these last few days, so they’ve been bearding frequently. The existing hive is the one with the ridiculous numbers, but the new hive is still doing fine. I’ve noticed some bearding, but there simply just aren’t as many bees in that southern hive as in the northern one. Brooke needs to hop into the hive and see how much honey they’re putting away, but I would bet we’ve got enough to harvest by July 4th.
As I mentioned in the previous post about this, Brooke caulked the corners and the gaps that were created along the top and bottom of the walls. We went with a second coat of primer, and a third in the spots that seemed like it really needed it. And after all that……..
…finally….PAINT!
AND MOAR PAINT!!!
Once the paint went on, we made significant headway, with me painting large swaths during the day and Brooke “cutting in” along the edges at the points where I’m just not all that patient.
Then, when Brooke was at work, I took care of the carpet. And it took me the whole day. And I had a bed frame to work around… Honestly, the carpet removal didn’t take all that long: I had it all off the wood by the time Brooke was home for lunch. It’s the tedious removal of all the staples that takes forever, but I still had that taken care of by the time Brooke got home after work.
At that point, we were so close that we just finished it all off. I’d vacuumed the floor a few times, but Brooke came back through and wiped it all down, vacuumed again, and put the finishing touches on the floor. We brought the new rug in from downstairs, Brooke put in the new Roman shades, she put in the new light fixtures, and….voila!
After we’ve got everything done, I’ll post additional pictures of it. Meg’s room and our room still need some things on the walls, and we’ve got new furniture picked out….just waiting on Ikea to open up to the point where I can actually go get it in KC… So yeah, we’ll have one last post with how everything gets reset.
Hopefully sooner rather than later, but for now, we’re all back where we belong and things are looking good!
Apparently a lot has been going on these past few weeks…. A lot of work stuff got in the way of posting more on this subject…. Onward!
As we left off in the last post, Brooke ended up spending a lot of time on the southern wall. There were countless evenings of plastering, then sanding, plastering, then sanding, etc. She did her best to make the wall as smooth as possible, but it was hard to secure the new plaster to the lath on the wall. I don’t think she was completely satisfied with it, but it ultimately looked waaaaay better than it did before.
The other walls around the room still needed some TLC as well, but nowhere near what the south wall did. Brooke spent awhile up on the ladder and down along the floorboards to try and clean up the leftovers from the wallpaper, but ultimately, it needed a bit more. After we started priming, Brooke decided that caulking the corners and the edges would be the best solution, so after I put the first coat of primer on, she came back through with caulk, and then I covered up the caulk with the second coat of primer.
I feel like the first round of primer went better in our room than it did in Meg’s room. Yes, it definitely needed another round of primer (as you can see on the south wall in the background, but I still think it took fewer coats to actually be done.
While we waited for the walls to dry after putting more (and more and more…) plaster on, Brooke kept working on the bed frames. As mentioned in the previous post, Brooke refined her process and cut down on the time spent on each part of the frame. In general, she’d work on one at a time, then prime it, and then start stripping the paint off the next frame while the previous one dried.
The primer actually looked alright in its own right. She used spray paint for this, and it took quite a few cans per head/footboard. During the course of the stripping, Brooke noticed that the frames had been a few colors in the past, whether some shade of white or some shade of black. We also considered just painting them some loose approximation of the metal underneath it all, but ultimately, we went with a kind of hammered metal black color.
It turned out really good! It also took multiple cans, but it was really just for full coverage, not because it needed multiple coats. The drying of each board also didn’t take all that long, thankfully, though they did have to be stood up in the garage to let them dry more effectively.
I was letting a set dry outside and a bird pooped on it. This happened on the last of the four, of course…so how the previous three didn’t have that problem is beyond me…
Last, but not least, the welding! It ended up taking a week and a half to get the rails back, and it only cost $40, but it was well worth it. In the picture above, you can see the L-shape of the rail, and then a second, smaller L-shaped portion added as a stabilizer for when the rail is placed upside down. These rails didn’t need as much stripping as the other parts of the frame needed, but Brooke still primed them for paint.
So yeah, that’s how the next few weeks went. Plastering, sanding, stripping, priming, painting…..and so on and so forth……
Ooooooooooh, boy…. We “finished up” Meg’s room on April 11th. We’ve been working on our bedroom basically since then without many breaks except for that first weekend and Mother’s Day. To be fair, a lot of this length of time was working around furniture refinishing and plastering (more on that later), so there have been a lot of moving parts….
…but first, back to the beginning….
So, we originally thought our room may go somewhat quickly because of the vinyl wallpaper that was already peeling in some spots (especially certain corners). As we would eventually discover, nay, it definitely did not “go quickly”… The vinyl layer came off easily, yes, along with a thin, white layer underneath. Yet, underneath that, we found a floral pattern…and underneath that, we found yet another floral pattern.
Those bottom two layers did not go quietly into that good night.
As we were doing this during Coronapocalypse 2020, I was doing scraping on the walls for 3-4 hours a day before or after my “virtual office hours,” while Brooke was at work. So I’d have to take breaks here and there to make sure the kids weren’t burning down the house, but as the weather was finally getting a little warmer, the kids were able to go outside sometimes, so that alleviated some of the constant bickering…
For the most part, I got into a groove and made solid progress. We ran into some issues with the ridiculous amount of wallpaper on the walls though, mostly on the top and bottom of the walls where the moulding was….because they put the moulding on top of the wallpaper!!!
…..sigh…..
I did my best with it, but we ultimately use caulked over it to try and obscure it as much as possible. It definitely isn’t a perfect solution, but the prospect of removing and replacing the moulding again wasn’t exactly at the top of our priority list…
I should also note that there’s a bed frame in this image. I should also I know that yours truly is the one who assembled this bed frame, and it is also yours truly that couldn’t figure out how to take it apart again… I’m assuming there was some special tool that came with it that is buried somewhere on the work bench out in the garage, but for the life of me, I couldn’t find any tool small enough to fit into the hole that held the nut that attached the head- or footboard to the side rails. Sooooo, we just decided to leave it in there and cover the surfaces of the bed with the old curtains that we were going to replace anyway. It got annoying here and there, but for the most part, we were able to work around it and still use the ladder.
The wall between the south window and my closet door was, by far, the worst one. Spoiler alert: Brooke ended up spending quite a bit of time plastering, sanding, plastering, sanding, plastering, and sanding this thing….
But while she was doing all of that, she was also messing with the bed frames, mostly on the weekends.
We got these frames from my parents, who got them from my Uncle, who has had them for a few decades, but he got them from my grandfather. These frames were his and his brother’s growing up, which is really cool! The less cool part is that they needed some TLC.
This involved quite a lot of paint stripper (the stuff in the blue bottle, not the white bottle, because Brooke found that only the stuff in the blue bottle worked well at all….), and plenty of spray painting. And some welding (more on that in a bit).
She’s pretty sure there were 3 layers of paint on one of the beds (two white, one black), and 2 layers of paint on the other bed (both white). There wasn’t a good way to know if it was lead paint or not, but we didn’t want to take the chance, so she used a carpet square from Meg’s room to catch the paper towels she was using to strip the paint. It took awhile to figure out her order of operations, and that first footboard (pictured above) took about 8 hours for her to finish (!!!!!!). By the time she got through to the fourth of these things, she cut that down to only a couple hours, so now she’s a pro!
But there was another issue with the beds. We took various measurements and discovered that one of the beds measured 53″ wide by 57″ long, which is the standard size of a modern full size bed. The other bed, however, measured 53″ wide by 69.5″ long, which is the standard size for literally nothing in 2020. Soooooo, I asked around and talked to a local welding business to see if there was something they could do to modify the off-size bed. I put these things in my Forester on Good Friday, ready to take it all over to the business, but apparently they took off that afternoon and I didn’t think about it, so the frames just sat in my car until after Easter.
Brooke met me there so we could talk to the guy and see what he thought, so everyone would be on the same page. We showed him the stuff while it was still in the car, so I didn’t have to unload it (which is not trivial, by the way….it takes a few people to finagle these into the back of a small SUV). He asked us a few questions about it, we chatted about potential options. And then he asked, “Did you try just flipping them over?”
Brooke and I just looked at each other, then said, “Uh…no?”
But low and behold, it was a great idea! You see, the beds are very similar to each other, but they aren’t quite identical. One bed (the actual full size one) has rails that slide in on their sides, but the one that’s too short has rails that connect on each end to the head- and footboards, which results in extra bits of metal (you can see all this in the image above) that would be in front of and behind the box springs.
If you flip the rail upside down, then instead of resting in the “L” shape of the bracket, that “L” is now upside down, so the box springs just sit on top of it! The problem with that is that the box springs can then slide side-to-side, and potentially off the rails.
So, after we took the pictures above, I took the rails to the welding company and told them we wanted them to just put on some bits of metal on the sides to prevent slipping of the box springs. I suggested 3 or 4 bits of metal would probably do it. Brooke also wrote “top,” “side,” and “head” on them so they would know how to orient the rails to put them in the right place.
And that took 2 weeks to get done……but on the plus side, the head- and footboards were still here, so she could keep stripping those while the rails were getting worked on.
The early(ish?) Spring has been pretty good to the garden so far. The radishes are doing really well (middle), and the kale (to the left) and the spinach (to the right) are coming along, though Brooke planted some extra seeds in there to try and fill out the row a bit better. To the far right, the garlic is…still doing its thing…
The tomatoes are doing well, too, but the temperatures these past few nights (dropping to the mid-30s) weren’t kind to at least a few of the plants. I pulled the jugs off a few that were growing out of the holes at the top (visible in the image above), but replaced them today after a few of the stems broke. They were damaged relatively high off the ground and they still have leaves, so I’m hopeful they’ll make it…
I should also note the straw, at this point. We kept it from Oktoberfest last Fall to protect the bees for the Winter, and figured this time, rather than grass clippings between the rows to limit weed growth, we could just spread the straw instead. We’ve still got some bales left, as we don’t have everything planted yet, so for now, they’re just taking up space: just not on my grass…
The peppers are also doing their thing, but growing a bit slower. We haven’t had many days in the 80s yet, so they’re probably wanting a little bit more heat…
The green beans are going in the soil next to them, but we haven’t planted them yet. I think we’re putting black beans in this year, too, as sell as soup beans (duh!).
The strawberries are taking off! Quite a few flowers have shown up, and the middle of the patch has some new plants popping up. Our next outdoor project will involve expanding the berry patch out and planting some new stuff, but first….gotta finish up the bedroom upstairs……more on that eventually…
The new bees arrived last week! She got into the older hive and put a new super with queen excluder on. For the new hive, put in new frames on the bottom, then transferred frames from the nuc into the top box, and then dumped the bees into the middle. A few days later, she added empty frames again. Both times she got into the new hive, she found the queen, but hasn’t seen much new brood in there yet.
In other news, we’ve got almonds! Like, five of them? Not very many, for sure… We’ve still got frost warnings happening still, so hopefully those few almonds make it….we’ve been waiting 5 years……..
And last, but not least, the peaches are back! Millions of them. There are so many peaches on that tree. We’ve also got apples and a ton of cherries (we only got one last year).
So yeah, I think that’s it…since we don’t have much growing yet, there’s not a ton to say yet, except that things are moving along…
And we had to cover the strawberries tonight because we have yet another frost warning….ug.
This post is part of an ongoing series summarizing each State Park in Missouri that our family has attended. We hope to visit each of 54 State Parks before the kids graduate from high school.
We’ve been feeling pretty cooped up these past few weeks, largely due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, so with the weather being really good this weekend, we opted to go for a picnic lunch and hike at Harry S Truman State Park, which is a little over an hour south of us in Warsaw, MO.
Getting to the park wasn’t really all that difficult, though it was a bit further off the highway than we anticipated. We had to drive through Warsaw to get there, which was a nice diversion. They seem to be big enough for fast food and grocery stores, so if we were to go down there for an extended camping trip, we’d be all set. Unfortunately, all of the camp grounds in the state parks are closed for the time-being (more on that later…), so that wasn’t really an option this weekend, anyway.
By the time we got down there, it was a little after 11:00, so we opted to eat first before finding our hiking trail. Because of the way Truman Lake bobs and weaves into and out of the land surrounding it, we thought we were in a place close to the hiking trail we were looking for, but upon further examination (and the distinct lack of a trail head), we figured out we had to drive about 10 minutes through the park to get there.
Unfortunately, the trail we wanted (that was something like 2 miles long) was located far back into the camping area of the park. Further unfortunately, said campground was closed, so we couldn’t even drive to it. We could have parked at the Park Office, but we’d have to walk on the road at least a mile just to get to the trail head, making it a 4 mile day. Calvin has improved a lot in the last few years, but 4 miles isn’t something I’m prepared to get him to do just yet……
Instead, we found a trail that we could access, but it was only about 0.9 miles long. It was a decent trail and was well-maintained, but it was a bit muddy in spots (it had rained recently). There were definitely some nice vistas off the trail where you could see Truman Dam off in the distance.
So yeah, this is a weird one, under the circumstances! There’s a beach down there that would probably be good to visit, as well as a pretty massive boat area (that had tons of vehicles parked, so lots of folks were out on Truman Lake, it looked like). We assume the Park Offices had some educational displays, but they weren’t open. There were playgrounds, but they were all roped off. Apparently there are hiking trails, but you can’t get to most of them!
I guess we’ll just have to go back sometime after this situation is all over!!
As I mentioned in the previous post, it took multiple coats to get through this, likely 2/3 of a gallon of paint. I used the roller twice on it, then Brooke came back through with the same off-white color we used in the other bedroom, so it matched. Then she had to come through again with the “Evergreen fog” paint to cover any extra white she’d gotten on the color of the walls. Just a lot of back and forth, really…
Is this the worst part? It may be the worst part…
I took care of the carpet this morning, cutting it roughly into quarters, then pulled up from the edges. The carpet actually came off relatively easily, but it took awhile to “find my groove,” since it’s been awhile since I did this.
The ongoing coronapocalypse is making trash pick-up difficult, so we’ll try to dispose of the carpet as best we can, but for now, it’s rolled up in those quarters on our back porch. Not ideal, but it is what it is. There’s furniture in our garage awaiting some painting, so it’ll be a bit before we can move the carpet out there. Overall, I think we were able to keep most of the dust from our wallpaper scraping on the carpet so it wouldn’t get all over the floor underneath.
The hardwood looks similar to the other bedroom.
Pulling up the tack board around the edges of the room took forever. I’m pretty sure that was Dad’s job the last time we did this, so I don’t think I’d done much of it before. This was another time it took me a bit to “find my groove” and finally feel like I was making progress. Pretty sure it took me an hour and a half to get just that part done. Brooke came up and joined me for pulling up the staples that was holding down the pad under the carpet, and while that was tedious, it went pretty well.
For now, we went ahead and kept the carpet in the kid’s closet. It will get removed, but we’ve got some time for reasons I’ll get to momentarily…
(Mostly) finished product!
After a round of vacuuming, then wood cleaner, then more vacuuming, we were done!
So, this project began on Saturday, March 28, and we finished it up on Saturday, April 11th. Technically, we still aren’t done, as we’re waiting on Meg’s bed frames to get fixed up. The frames are from my Dad’s father and brother, so they’re very old, but also only kinda fit modern beds. One of them is a full-size bed frame, but the other is about 5″ too short in the length, so it won’t fit a frame properly. We’re going to try and get a welder here in town to try and adapt it so we can have two full beds in the room.
We’re also getting a wardrobe for this room, so the closet will be mostly Calvin’s, though maybe we’ll hang a few things of Meg’s in there, too. We’re also going to move a dresser into Meg’s room, so there’s more furniture to go in, but again, it’ll take awhile for the beds to be done, and it’ll take awhile for a wardrobe to arrive.
Soooooooo, in the meantime, we’re moving on to our bedroom. We’re letting Meg sleep on a sleeping bag in her new room for a few nights, and then we’re going to break down and transfer our bed and furniture into Meg’s room while she moves back in with Calvin. Then, it’ll probably be another two weeks until our room is done, but then we’ll be mostly “project complete” for 2020. That will give us a few weeks to get the furniture situation figured out so Meg can be in her own room long-term!
Like the last time, we left the carpet on while we removed the wallpaper. Most of the walls only had a single layer of wallpaper, but the one behind the door had a few layers….and layers of wallpaper on top of joint compound.
Brooke was not pleased.
There had been some…”work”….done to the walls…
Overall, there were relatively large portions of the walls that didn’t need a ton of work, but the portions by the closet (and on the wall with the staircase to the attic on the other side) already had a lot of joint compound on them from the last time wallpaper was applied. Brooke thinks the latest round of wallpaper was probably put on back in the 80s. Under the wallpaper, she found a handwritten note that was difficult to read, but someone wrote their name and what looked like “198-“….so it’s hard to know for sure, but at least it seems like someone tried to fix the room, thankfully, by not just wallpapering over the existing wallpaper.
The primer went on pretty well!
After Brooke was satisfied with the cleaning of the walls, I spent a lot of the week putting up some primer. I had to go with a few coats of it to cover up the wealth of joint compound just spread all over the place, and even had some of it delivered from our local hardware store.
First coat of paint. Definitely need another coat.
The paint Brooke and Meg went with was a color that will go well in our bedroom as well as her bedroom. She originally wanted something more purple-ish, but….we don’t want purple walls in our room, so we won out. This color is called “Evergreen fog.” Granted, I’m partially color blind, but I can’t really tell where the “green” is…
I’ll save the rest for another post. The painting took a few days to finish up, and we still have carpet to pull up!
I’ve got some time on my hands, as as mental health professionals suggest journaling, I may as well keep posting here, right?
Classes “resumed” this week for me, so I’m trying to get in communication with my students. I’ve only heard from a few of them at this point, which isn’t too surprising, but it’s a substantially different dynamic compared with what I’m used to. I’m hosting virtual office hours five times a week now, though I haven’t actually had anyone join yet. I’ve got my first committee meeting today, so it’ll be my first non-email communication with folks at the college in a bit.
The kids, on the other hand, are generally enjoying their new reality. Brooke’s still setting up a checklist for them that gives them something to do everyday, along with a little bit of variety in the daily routine. Animal Crossing came out last Friday, which Meg’s been looking forward to since last Fall, so it’s been a welcome diversion from everything that’s been going on. Thankfully, there’s a co-op mode to it so Calvin can play along simultaneously.
Brooke started her new schedule at work this week. Right now, they’re going to remain open, but have rearranged their consumers for isolation protocols so it’s easier to separate those that may have been exposed, should that happen eventually… As of today, there are no cases in Saline County, but Columbia and Kansas City both have multiple cases. As of yesterday, there were 183 confirmed cases in Missouri, almost half of which were in people under the age of 50.
On Saturday, I took a trip into Columbia to donate blood, as the Red Cross is canceling blood drives all over the place now. I dropped some stuff off at Goodwill to clear out space for the next remodel… We were planning on separating the kids into their own rooms this year anyway, so we’ve just pushed up the schedule on that now that time is seemingly more available… Brooke and Meg spent quite a bit of time this weekend organizing their toys, moving some of it up into the attic and getting rid of other bits. I also brought back some old bed frames from when my grandfather and great-uncle were growing up, so we’re hoping to restore those and put them in Meg’s room, depending on how they fit in the space.
Then again, if Lowes closes and we can’t buy paint for the bed frames, we’ll be slowed down considerably…
Aaaaaaaanyway, I’m catching up on TV, keeping up on school stuff, and otherwise trying to entertain myself. The weather is improving, though it’s been pretty rainy. We’ve had at least 4″ of rain in the last week, kinda spread out over the days. Temperatures should reach into the 60s later this week, so hopefully things dry out a bit! The kids really need to get outside more…
