Finished plastering the living room Monday, 23-May-22 07:08:36 CEST

Staircase was measured Tuesday, 07-Jun-22 22:17:12 CEST

Sunday, 29-May-22 20:40:01 CEST

The old house is sold

Finished painting the living room. Started moving out things from the old house. The deal is closed, and the house is sold.

Monday 23 May

Holiday! That does not mean I am lying on a hanging mat sipping on tea and reading a book. I would not do that even if I didn't have a deadline to empty a house if I knew myself. No, I am always busy. But now we got a deadline. I suppose the old house is sold, more-or-less, so it will need to be emptied.

We also got a staircase delivered soon. For that, I would like the measurements in the staircase to be as final as possible, so I would like to plaster the staircase walls; that is the main task this Monday.

I noticed that the day lily is about to start blooming. That is nice! We had this plant at the old house, and I moved a couple of them last year. I did not blog about that, which is a pity. They made it in the new flower garden!

We went to a hardware store and bought a new paint bucket and a roller for the paintwork in the living room. I bought a couple of 9V batteries as well. I want to power more slug forts with these batteries. While at it, we went to the second-hand shop, and there I found four wheels that could work really well under a furniture roller.

I made one round slug fort. It is indeed more robust than the square fort. Unfortunately no images of that.

DD came to us in the evening. She cleaned out more from her room in the old house. While she did that, I dismantled cupboards.

DW painted the corners of the living room today. The room had two layers of paint on all corners at the end of the day.

Tuesday 24 May

In the morning, I brought DD to the train station. Then we started the DIY tasks for today.

DW painted the living room! She started with the first layer in the morning. After lunch, she started on the second layer. In the afternoon, the living room was finished!

It will look good when we remove all the protective paper. Right now, it is a little too much white.

The plastered surface I created with the chicken fence had dried, so I could work on that area again today. I made a tapering in the seam below the area. In that tapering, I placed a regular scrim band. Now the two areas are held together better to avoid cracks. There are risks for cracks anyway, but I have done a better job avoiding them. Then I plastered TopFinish on top of the entire surface.

Next, I worked on the north wall of the staircase. I applied TopFinish on this wall as well. The Crab48 scaffold is standing a little too close to the wall to make it convenient to plaster the wall. It was a little too tedious for my liking, actually. You need to have long strokes of well-applied pressure on the trowel when plastering, and there was no room for that here. This situation ate on my humor, and slowly I became a little grumpy. There is not much to do about it other than carrying on and doing the best. In the next layer, fix what was not perfect in the previous layer.

After plastering was done for today, I planted a part of the bell pepper on the west side of the container, next to the grape wine. I started on the bell pepper project on 15 March. I gave a couple of the seedlings to neighbors, and I even brought some to my work. Those at work are dead now. I repotted one portion that I keep indoors, and the other portion is now planted on the west side of the sea container. It will be interesting to see what bell pepper plants are doing better.

I also built the next slug fort of a PVC flooring rest piece. This time it was round, so there was no need to connect the four edges. In this fort, I planted Lobelia. They are so tender! When I sowed them, the seeds looked like dust. The lobelia seedlings had tiny roots holding the chunk together, so taking them out of their pot was challenging. With the first pot, I was not prepared that it was this fragile, and this chunk fell into its place in the ground a little unordered. I doubt they will survive. The following two chunks came into the ground a little better.

In the evening, DW and I pottered around in the garden. It was really nice to end the day in the garden, leaving the irritability of the plastering behind me. We picked weeds in the flower garden together!

Wednesday 25 May

The first task for today was to improve a furniture roller. I had found this roller in the garbage, but the wheels were not good. Last Monday, I found better ones at the second-hand shop, so I replaced the wheels. Then I placed bands on the plate so that we could drag stuff with the roller, which also works like a charm.

We wanted to move furniture with the small trailer today, but it had accumulated stuff to bring away to the recycling center, so we did that first. At the recycling center, a lady wanted to dispose of a big bucket; I asked her if I could get it, and yes, I could have it. Now we had a bucket in the trunk of the car as well.

Then we went to the old house. The idea was to move the brown cupboard from the second floor of the old house to the hobby room on the first floor of the new house. I had managed to turn the cupboard into four pieces, but each piece was heavy.

I carried the lower part of the cupboard and DW the upper part. I took most of the weight, and she could steer away from walls. In situations like these where I need to do something intensive, my communication skills deteriorate. I know people that carry stuff and keep talking, but I am not of that sort. I carry stuff in silence. We did not have too many hiccups due to communication today, so that was great.

The first cupboard went so so. We learned a lot about how to maneuver the piece through the staircase. The next went much better. Our small trailer is not that big, so these two parts of the cupboard were all it could take of the furniture. We filled the rest with boxes.

We decided to concentrate on emptying the second floor, and it was delicious to see the room getting emptier with each piece we moved out of the room.

DW realized that the deadline for a possibility to back out of the buying deal ended today. With that, our old house was actually sold today. We placed stickers on the sign saying that the house was sold. The buyers would like to get into the house earlier, but we will not be able to finish on time. This current deadline for getting out of the house is hard enough. Indeed, if we are done well on time, there are no problems. For now, we stick to the made agreements.

Then we went back to the new house, unloaded the cupboards and boxes, and then went to the old house again. This time DS came with us. Now we were three to communicate about how to do things. The good part was that DW and I were experienced by now, which helped with communication.

In the afternoon, all four parts of the cupboard were moved to the hobby room of the new house. We did not put it together, though; that is for another time.

Thursday 26 May

This morning we talked about the challenge of sowing lobelia seeds. They are so small, it is like dust. It would be better if it was possible to sow them so that transplanting into the ground can be done conveniently. DW suggested making a tray of a drink cardboard package. Then when the time is right, one side of the package is cut away, and the soil and the seedlings can slide into the ground. So said, so done. I like this kind of problem-solving very much, trying new things with the tools at hand, making things better. I will keep you informed about the progress of the Lobelia. The goal is to transplant these to the lobelia slug fort in the flower garden.

Today, we celebrated the day of ascending furniture into the hobby room of our new house. We moved DWs desk to the hobby room. It is originally my table that I bought at an auction at the Grand Hotel in Strömsund, Sweden. I suppose it was the hotel owner's table in his office. Then it moved to the Netherlands, and here it is.

Yesterday was much heavier work, while today it was relatively easy compared, but I was still a little broken from yesterday.

The desk's tabletop went on the car's roof, the cupboards in the small trailer, and boxes of stuff. We protected the tabletop with a blanket. Then we drow to the new house, the blanket fluttered in the wind against the car's roof. I did not like the sound of that.

We carried the desk parts to the new location in the new house. We added more to the stack of boxes.

It did not feel like we would make another journey to the old house, so this was it for today. Instead, I moved our temporary living room from the hall on the first floor back to the actual living room on the ground floor. There are still some pieces of protective paper visible in this photo, but they will stay there until we are finished with the kitchen. The TV is just a simple computer monitor that we can connect to a laptop to view something. The old TV is still in the old house.

Then the day was over, and I could sit on the sofa and do nothing? No, I wanted to build another slug fort! So I did; this time, I tried to make the distance between the copper lines shorter so that smaller slugs could not get through. That succeeded! It was made possible because I first mounted the first line, and then I made the second line based on the position of the first line. Now I got three slug forts of this kind in total. The calendula is looking like it will survive the slug attack.

Friday 27 May

Today I had a regular work-from-home-office day. DW still had a day off. It is challenging to move heavy things alone, so she went to the old house to pack things. She made significant progress all on her own. The cupboards in the kitchen got packed.

It was probably good for me to do office work for one day. I was feeling worn out. My head and hands were fine, so I could program just okay. I had many things to do. The solution I made before the holiday had some defects and those had to be fixed.

I discovered that while plastering the staircase, I made wall art. Here is the portrait of a dog.

After work, I wanted to make use of the new slug fort. I placed the fort in the flower garden and transplanted Rudbeckia seedlings into the fort. I placed all the seedlings apart from each other. It had been better to have the seedlings transplanted into their own pots first and have those grow for a while, but I think it is warm enough now in the soil and will do just fine. I also sowed a couple of more calendula seeds in the calendula fort.

Then I helped DW to sow beans in the vegetable garden. That part is more her project. She wanted to sow some parsley seeds, but they had to be sowed in a shadowy location, so I suggested sowing them in the salad bed. It is on the north side of the house where it gets sun in the morning and late afternoon.

This was not enough; she sowed some Coreopsis Tinctoria (Meisjesogen) and suggested I have some. These can be used for dying yarn, and they are pretty as well. So I had a go at that as well. There were some slugs at this spot also. I hope they don't get to the seeds in the ground, but I don't know. I have not heard about slugs eating seeds; that is perhaps a thing?

That was it for gardening this evening. Then we had to do our weekly shopping, and this evening I did not make another slug fort.

Saturday 28 May

The first task for today was to remove the temporary bed in our bedroom. It is a bed we got from our DD on 2 October 2020. The mattress will go to the recycling center, but the slatted base we can reuse in our own bed that we will move here today. The pallets will go to our pallet pile. Our original slatted base was shattered, and the material had become brittle. The new slatted base was higher than the original, which we will need to get used to.

We went to the old house with the large trailer. A neighbor asked if he could borrow a trailer net, and I said it was okay. DW disagreed on this, but it felt good for me. The large trailer is not having a hood, so it better not rain when the trailer is loaded.

We loaded the trailer with things for the recycling center: The old desk of DS and his old bed, and a couple of other redundant things, including a metal changing table. We had this changing table for our kids and left it hanging. Now the kids are grown-ups, and the metal is rusty; time to dispose of it.

I am getting better at reverse with the trailer using the rear mirrors. I was taught this during the trailer course on 30 October 2020. I am actually proud of this skill, and it is helpful too. I will continue to practice.

We also went to the second-hand shop and brought things they could have. We could start on the next phase of the activities: Disassemble two cupboards. The cupboard pieces went into the trailer, together with the bed pieces and, on top of this, the mattresses.

When we arrived at our new house, we took the parts inside and assembled the things. It will still take some time to get things right, but at least the stuff is out of the old house. Soon after, it started to rain, we were so lucky this time!

After the rain, we had a chat with our northeast neighbors. They would like to have our sheep grazing a part of their property. It is just that they have a building fence around the property, and it is held together with a special kind of bolts, but the key for it could not be found. The building fence can be opened if they find the key, and our sheep can start grazing on their property.

We assembled the bed, our own cupboard, and the cupboard of DS. We still have another cupboard at the old house, but it will not fit nicely in the new bedroom, so we need to find a solution. The principle was that we would reuse old furniture, which we are doing, but it is not working well in this case. The large old cupboard is not good quality, so it is okay to dispose of it. I will save the hinges because I have plans for them.

We had snacks in the "new" living room with a fire in the woodstove in the evening. It feels like it was a long time ago we had that.

Sunday 29 May

When I woke up this morning, my back was a little sore. I did curl-up exercises as I usually do when I got problems with my back. I hoped it would get better.

The first action of today was to extend the fenced area for the sheep to include the space on the north side of the house inside the dyke. The sheep have been a bit annoyed lately. They were bored by the space they had. There was enough to eat, but it was no longer fun, so they bleated more. At the end of this task, my back had started up, and I felt better.

When the sheep were happy, we drove to the old house to do another round of moving and packing. The plan was to move two cupboards from the living room.

When we were back at the new house, a neighbor came to bring back our ground drill while we were removing the straps. He helped us move the cupboards into the house!

These cupboards are still empty, but that does not matter; they are in the correct house, which is nice. The right cupboard in the photo is standing in a temporary location. When the kitchen is finished, it will move there. The other cupboard is in the correct place.

After this action, DW made dinner, and I pottered around in the new garden. I removed thistles behind the sea container.

This is the result of this week's work! It feels like we are on schedule for moving things; that is nice. My body will appreciate being back at office work next week.