After a lazy morning watching the adult equivalent of Saturday cartoons and lounging with the puppies, my afternoon unfolded into digging in the dirt with the husband. That would almost sound like childhood fun but hauling out all the excess dirt so we can lay a path is fairly grueling work on a hot and sunny day. Despite the sweat and soil, it feels good to move closer to completion in the yard, and working on a project as a couple is always a good experience.

We only unloaded one load of dirt, but tomorrow should be the last two to three loads. I’m amazed by the quantity of soil we’re removing. Our yard is tiny but somehow there’s a lot of dirt. Soon we’ll have a path that doesn’t turn muddy in the rain, and a rain garden to do our part in mitigating stormwater overflow in our neighborhood. I can’t wait to see how everything looks next year when plants are established and coming into their own.

Post dirt hauling and after cooling off, Hank helped clear out the remaining tack strips and plaster from my bedroom closet. Over a month ago, I ripped the carpet out of my closet on a whim (a whim that was really an inability to tolerate carpet that smelled like animal pee no matter how many times I cleaned and cleaned). We think the former owner had a pet or pets that had spoiled the carpet. My old kitty Julius, who had previous litter box issues, peed over the old pee and thus began a journey of cleaning and tolerance on my part. He passed away last November and I hadn’t had any trouble since until our next oldest cat Jordan got diabetes. Now he is a cat who has never peed outside the box but I think all the extra water drinking that unmanaged diabetes can bring drove him to further ruin the carpet, or our youngest cat Neko is to blame which is a possibility too. The recent inappropriate elimination only happened once but when I found it I flipped. I’m convinced it only occurred in my closet because of the former desanctification that took place in my hallowed clothing space.

I grabbed a utility blade, opened the closet window, tore up the offending carpet and shucked it out the window. The pad followed, and then I removed some of the track strips. Finally the inevitable happened, I stalled out and the closet and bedroom have been in disarray ever since. But after working on it earlier last week, there was only a little bit more to take care of, and Hank finished it off easily.

Now I’m onto sanding, vacuuming, maybe more sanding and vacuuming, washing of the floor, priming, waiting for primer to dry, painting, waiting for paint to dry, and then finally moving all things closet back to their rightful place, thus restoring my bedroom to sanctuary status. I think I can get it all done tomorrow if shoveling dirt doesn’t tire us out too much. Progress is a good thing.

One fun thing out of the closet experience is that I bought my first power tool yesterday at Lowes (a sander, which will also work with my kitchen cabinet reno)! And I picked out my floor paint, although porch paint (durable for floors) is really limited in color selection. Now I’m thinking of stenciling the floor with a non-porch paint to add in some fun and give the floor a punch of color to coordinate with our red bedroom. Good thing I already have the stencil or else I’d probably stall on that for another month =)