Tuesday, August 07, 2007

What a day!

Yesterday was "projects" day. Lots of little things had accumulated and we wanted to get everything done before we get company this Saturday. And also before L gets home on the 16th.

I installed handles on the inside of all the windows. We have wooden louvre windows and sometimes they are hard to force open. The handles give us something to grab onto for leverage. Of course, I had several already installed when B came back into the house and announced that they weren't level! Grrrrr. Guess whether or not I took them off so that they could be adjusted one way or the other by 1/8 of an inch!

Then we went outside and scraped and sanded the fronts of the louvres since they needed to be repainted. Of course, the paint that I bought that my carpenter had custom mixed for the back door DID NOT MATCH the windows! Grrrr again! So we took a piece of the window and headed over to Comex (Mexico's Sherwin Williams) and had them try to match it. No problem, come back in an hour.

We were on the motorscooters so we headed downtown to our favorite lunch stand to grab a bite to eat. Then to the market next door to restock our veggies. Everything they had was in poor condition. I needed tomatoes for dinner so I bought the two best ones. Then to the grocery store and I bought a large bag of sugar since I want to bake cookies later this week. Got home only to discover that the factory sealed bag was infested with ants! This happens all the time. They must be prepackaged at the factory. I just put it in the freezer and will pick them out later.

Back to Comex and picked up the paint. He did a great job of matching the color. We had to pay $44 USD for a gallon! We could only get oil base though. Back home and I touched up the front windows and headed to the back to totally repaint those. At one point I got tired of bending over to dip the brush so I thought I would set the can on the window ledge. You guessed it. I hit the bottom of the can on the ledge, thus tipping it. A big gob of dark brown paint splashed out and and ran down the side of our cream colored house! I sent B to the bodega to get the bottle of mineral spirits/turpentine to try to clean up the mess. He came back with the now empty plastic bottle. It had evidently all evaporated. So there we were with fresh paint running down the side of the house, paint all over the patio floor and paint all over my hands. Grumbling and lecturing all the way, B went back to Comex to get turpentine.

The window looks great but the house is permanently stained. And we don't have any more of this particular cream color. I guess today we will try to buy some although we don't know the name or number for it. But the reason for that is a whole other story and brings our neighbor, Mr Asshole, into the story again. He has returned to the USA now and I don't miss him.

2 comments:

Brenda Maas said...

$44.00 for a gallon of paint. OW!!!! Ants in the sugar...hmmmm maybe you won't need to add chocolate chips or if you add chocolate chips you will have chocolate covered ants...a delicacy!!

Billie Mercer said...

I wouldn't pick out the ants. Aren't they a delicacy in Mexico. At least the ant eggs (escamole) are...and they are kind of expensive.

I love your day of projects. I sounds soooooo familiar.