Progress of sorts

Made one last trip to the cabin this weekend to pretty it up before the Chief gets home on Tuesday (HALLELUJAH!!!!). I had hoped to mount a toilet paper holder & 5 towel bars in the downstairs bathrooms and hang all 6 cellular shades, in addition to giving the place a thorough cleaning & vacuuming to get rid of the usual accumulation of dust, cobwebs, and insect carcasses. (Still no evidence of mice moving back in - hurray!) I got all the cleaning done, except for sweeping down the deck, which did need it. The gypsy moth caterpillars have either died or become moths by now, but their mess lingers on. Bleah!

I managed to mount 2 out of 3 towel bars in one bathroom, and one towel bar out of 2 and half the toilet paper holder in the other. Couldn't get the last towel bars up in either bathroom because I kept running into studs and the stud finder I made a special trip to get doesn't work on exterior walls; it kept reading the entire exterior wall as a joist. The problem with the toilet paper holder was that the installation instructions gave a distance for spacing the two brackets that puts them at least 1/2" too far apart (I can't help but wonder if that's a typo). My first thought was that I'd just back out the screws on the one bracket & remount it. Then I realized that I couldn't back out the plastic thingies the screws had to go into, so I can't remount the bracket until I get another pair of plastic things.

The cellular shades were the project I most wanted to get finished, as we have yet to put up any window coverings of any sort in the new bedroom, and with six big windows, that bedroom gets sunny early at this time of year, making it hard to sleep much later than 6 or 7 a.m. I got all the mounting holes for the brackets marked, then proceeded to get them all pre-drilled. All but the very last hole. Wretched battery pack on the driver drill ran through its charge, the inconsiderate, uncooperative wretch! I did go ahead and screw in the brackets on one window by hand, just so I could get one shade mounted and see what it looked like, but because I had been cautious and used a fairly small drill bit for the pre-drilling, cranking in the screws by hand was slow going - a good 10 or 15 minutes for just 4 screws into pre-drilled holes. And because I needed to get back home, I couldn't stay to do them all. Good thing the shade snapped into place incredibly easily, so I could get one shade mounted.

While I continue to be frustrated at how very much time this simple little project is taking, I was very pleased with the results when I finally got that lone shade hung. Not only does it look nice and hangs just as I'd hoped (though it could stand to be 1/4" wider), but it darkens the room beautifully. Once I get the other 5 in place, the room will be so dark with the shades down that I could probably sleep till noon on the brightest day of the year.