[Photos taken 16 – 22 July 2022, posted online 05 March 2023. This is the last above-freezing day for the foreseeable 10-day weather-forecast future!]
The first week of our four-week-long summer vacation was spent on improvement work.
I had decided I wanted to paint the living room, which is easier with fewer people around. Knowing that Finnur’s dad needed help building a deck at their summer house, Finnur and Emma transplanted themselves to Laugarvatn for a few days, before spending a couple of days at house #2.
Meanwhile, Anna and Bjarki kept working their gardening jobs, and I fought a near-bloody battle with shades of white, before focusing on electrical switches and socket outlets. (60-ish images)
Saturday 16 July 2022
Big kiddos, about to be fed fancy pizzas for dinner.
I actually began the day by auto-washing the car, probably because it had bird poop on?!
Then I played on the computer at a café with hipster food.
By afternoon, the living room was properly paint-prepped.
I’ve learnt from bitter experience to take photo of random details, like which way this plastic curtain piece needed to turn before I removed it.
Photo-ing a visitor before setting it free.
As I began painting with what I thought was the correct white color, I began to have doubts…
It’s too gray, isn’t it?!
Meanwhile, out by Laugarvatn, son and father posed with a cement mixer.
Feeling slightly defeated, I took the big kids to the slightly fancy pizza place for dinner…
… followed by fancy ice-cream next door.
After dinner, I figured I could at least do one pass of the green, and use the incorrect white to cover the yellow, which in retrospect probably wasn’t very helpful.
At least the sunset was extra pretty a little past 10 in the evening.
Sunday 17 July 2022
The day began at the paint store, where I tried to pick out the mostly likely shade of white. That was the day that I learned that “painter’s white” exists for both ceiling and walls, and they’re not identical.
Anna could tell this day would benefit from home-made cinnamon rolls.
It’s hard to tell on the image, but the “wall painter’s-white” was a seeming perfect fit to the white already on the walls, yay! One mystery solved, so off I went to buy more of it.
Cinnamon buns being glazed, yum!
Bjarki went out to play with a friend.
The status at 10 pm.
Monday 18 July 2022
By 11 am, I had taped the border around the green wall. Next I painted white on top of the tape, to prevent green leakage.
I went downtown to fetch parking stickers for the EVs. Bumped into a few asphalt crews in the area.
Was feeling antsy, so to the gym I went. Due to covid, and blah-dee-blahs, the past two years had seen a a lot of gym-gaps. Finally, I’d managed to show up consistently enough to build up to actual weights, so I rewarded myself with 8 x 100 kg deadlifts.
Meanwhile, Finnur and his dad had made good progress on creating the support structure for the new deck.
By 9 pm, the green edges were looking ok, but the white wall remained stubbornly gray seemingly no matter how many painter’s-white layers it got.
Debating whether this is the most boring part of painting…?
Tuesday 19 July 2022
At 10 in the morning, at long last, the tape came off!
Lights drying on the radiator, they hadn’t been cleaned for a loooong time.
As I waited for yet another white-coat to dry, my attention turned to the kitchen & living-room switches. As it happened, the dimmer knob had broken off some 2-3 years previously, and we’d just… ignored it. Since I was in full improvement mode, this would no longer do!
It took me a while, and a lot of internet searching to figure out the maker of the switches, which were only labeled with “Delta” and part numbers. In the end it turned out to be Siemens, so to the Siemens store I went. As I stood there, I decided to give Finnur a call, and together we agreed to finally implement project black-to-white fronts.
While I was scouring the internets, I spotted an oven on sale that I’d had my eye on, so I went and bought it. Sadly, it didn’t fit into the trunk of my car, although it was darn close!
Maybe this is the most boring part of painting? Trying to pry the tape remains off of the base-boards?
My first victim.
The guy at the Siemens store had given my a refresher-course on electrical wiring (I am an electrical engineer after all), but I decided to take lots of pictures anyway.
Would you look at that!! As time went on, I added white spackle to my kit, but that particular outlet isn’t easily viewable, so I didn’t care that it looked a bit messy.
Meanwhile at Laugarvatn, the deck kept taking shape, and the weather was mild enough for dresses.
Putting the living room back together!
Anna quickly came to the conclusion that the white border around the little windows was too busy. I decided to sleep on it.
The updated kitchen & living-room switches. Yes, I’d killed a dimmer, and swapped out regular (and dimmer-flicking) led bulbs for app-controllable Philips Hue ones.
My new best friend (wire-stripper).
Taking a well deserved rest!
Wednesday 20 July 2022
Since I still had a lot of white paint, I decided to repaint the little wall by the kitchen, as it had acquired a lot of scruff marks of the years.
Outside the weather was gorgeous, but also full of fluffy seeds, that made spiderwebs very apparent.
My outlet crusade continued, slowly but surely. No more black old stuff, and desperately looking for usb-chargers!
I can’t remember what I was doing in the west end of town, but for some reason I ended up there at a café.
The view while waiting at a light by a tourist trap.
That evening, Anna and I worked to swap out the old oven with the new one. I’m quite sensitive to certain sounds, such as loud, sad, dying cooling systems, and so the old oven had been on my kill list for about a year…
Some interesting things hiding behind the oven…
“Chocolate”?
That Ikea “table-counter” turned out to be exactly the height we needed it to be!
Be still my heart! Functional lights inside the oven, a dashboard that actually works, and a whisper quiet cooling system. It was love at first sight.
Meanwhile, news came out that my company (and another) had issued less-profit-than-expected warnings.
Thursday 21 July 2022
The little wall was finally finished. Oh, and we bought that print at Ikea during one of our first years in California!
A mini-lion visiting.
One of the spiders outside caught a yummy piece of food!
Happily, the old oven fit into the back of my car, and I filled it with a bunch of other stuff to take to the dump/recycling center.
Getting to that outlet required cleaning out the corner-of-crap!
Meanwhile, Finnur and Emma had relocated to Skorradalur, to make use of the dry weather to oil/stain some wood.
Friday 22 July 2022
Having completed the main improvement goals, I decided to tidy up some accumulation spots.
Are stairs good, or bad?
Oh, look! Finnur had returned back to town, and we enjoyed dinner with some friends.
