Except for walking the dog three times per day, going on an occasional hike and making a once weekly trip to the grocery store, we have been staying home.
Friday morning, when I took Paulie out around 6:40, we were greeted by a beautiful sunrise, clear sky, crisp air and a few daffodils that had started to bloom.
By midday Friday, when I took Paulie out around 1:00, strong cold wind and snow greeted us.
Saturday was sunny and cool, so we walked the one and a half miles to Coconino Community College and to the Bow and Arrow Trail just south of the campus. We hiked out about a mile before turning around and heading back home, for a total of about five miles. While on our hike, we had a pleasant hour long call with Bridgette - Bridgette and her sister Julianne were scheduled to visit us for a week and had they been with us as planned, they would have been on this hike.
Sunday, we continued work on some minor maintenance issues. All three bathrooms have exhaust fans. Because all the ceilings are at least nine feet high (twelve feet in the living room), it requires a taller ladder and better balance to get up to the fans to clean them. Today, we did the two exhaust fans in the two upstairs bedrooms. This included vacuuming accumulated dust and dirt, probably from when the house was built in 2007.
The gratess was so bad, we had to bring them downstairs to the kitchen sink and scrub them in soapy water to get the accumulated grime removed.
It was sunny and warm in the back yard when we took our lunch break.
Our house has both central air and forced hot air heat. Upstairs, that means a large grate in each bedroom and one in the hallway/stairwell for air conditioning as well as a ceiling air return vent (we previously replaced the 20" by 20" filter). Again, nine foot ceilings meant extending the ladder to get there, me on the ladder with Patty bracing me and the ladder, unscrewing the grates, vacuuming both sides of the grate and vacuuming up into the ceiling. We managed to get all three of the upstairs ceiling ones cleaned (there are four heating vents in the upstairs floors, but those are for another day).
The ladder is four feet tall, with both sides expandable to eight feet. I used it at the five foot tall level, so standing on the third rung my head came just up to the ceiling.
All of the interior hinged doors have doorstops on them so that the door handles do not bang into the walls. That means we needed to replace these hinge mounted door stops on 20 doors - twelve closet doors (six closets have double doors) and eight room doors. I had replaced six previously and today we did eight more (and later I placed an order for six more from Amazon).
I replaced another light bulb inside a closet, this one in the guest bedroom. This is very awkward to get up and into the closet to reach the nine foot high ceiling, pull down and detach the cover (and clean it while it is down), replace the bulb and then reinstall the cover.
The lights inside the closets come on by a switch on the side of the door frame - when one of the closet doors open, that releases the spring loaded switch that turns on the light; when the door closes, it depresses the switch and turns off the light.
The thing is, to keep the closet doors closed and the light off, there is a plate for each door at the top of the door frame and a spring loaded ball on the top of each door. Again, these have not been replaced nor maintained probably since the house was built in 2007. Today we replaced three sets of these upstairs, the linen closets in both upstairs bathrooms and the regular closet with light in the guest bedroom.
I had previously done the four closet doors in the master bedroom, the regular doors to both bedrooms and the door to the master bathroom. All that is left upstairs is cleaning the four grates in the floor for heating - but that is a task for another day, as are the ten ceiling grates down stairs (a mix of exhaust fans, heating vents and air conditioning vents), plus plates and spring loaded balls for the pantry doors, and the six remaining hinged door stops downstairs. Home maintenance and cleaning never ends.
Friday morning, when I took Paulie out around 6:40, we were greeted by a beautiful sunrise, clear sky, crisp air and a few daffodils that had started to bloom.
By midday Friday, when I took Paulie out around 1:00, strong cold wind and snow greeted us.
Saturday was sunny and cool, so we walked the one and a half miles to Coconino Community College and to the Bow and Arrow Trail just south of the campus. We hiked out about a mile before turning around and heading back home, for a total of about five miles. While on our hike, we had a pleasant hour long call with Bridgette - Bridgette and her sister Julianne were scheduled to visit us for a week and had they been with us as planned, they would have been on this hike.
Sunday, we continued work on some minor maintenance issues. All three bathrooms have exhaust fans. Because all the ceilings are at least nine feet high (twelve feet in the living room), it requires a taller ladder and better balance to get up to the fans to clean them. Today, we did the two exhaust fans in the two upstairs bedrooms. This included vacuuming accumulated dust and dirt, probably from when the house was built in 2007.
The gratess was so bad, we had to bring them downstairs to the kitchen sink and scrub them in soapy water to get the accumulated grime removed.
It was sunny and warm in the back yard when we took our lunch break.
Our house has both central air and forced hot air heat. Upstairs, that means a large grate in each bedroom and one in the hallway/stairwell for air conditioning as well as a ceiling air return vent (we previously replaced the 20" by 20" filter). Again, nine foot ceilings meant extending the ladder to get there, me on the ladder with Patty bracing me and the ladder, unscrewing the grates, vacuuming both sides of the grate and vacuuming up into the ceiling. We managed to get all three of the upstairs ceiling ones cleaned (there are four heating vents in the upstairs floors, but those are for another day).
The ladder is four feet tall, with both sides expandable to eight feet. I used it at the five foot tall level, so standing on the third rung my head came just up to the ceiling.
All of the interior hinged doors have doorstops on them so that the door handles do not bang into the walls. That means we needed to replace these hinge mounted door stops on 20 doors - twelve closet doors (six closets have double doors) and eight room doors. I had replaced six previously and today we did eight more (and later I placed an order for six more from Amazon).
I replaced another light bulb inside a closet, this one in the guest bedroom. This is very awkward to get up and into the closet to reach the nine foot high ceiling, pull down and detach the cover (and clean it while it is down), replace the bulb and then reinstall the cover.
The lights inside the closets come on by a switch on the side of the door frame - when one of the closet doors open, that releases the spring loaded switch that turns on the light; when the door closes, it depresses the switch and turns off the light.
The thing is, to keep the closet doors closed and the light off, there is a plate for each door at the top of the door frame and a spring loaded ball on the top of each door. Again, these have not been replaced nor maintained probably since the house was built in 2007. Today we replaced three sets of these upstairs, the linen closets in both upstairs bathrooms and the regular closet with light in the guest bedroom.
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| Each closet has two doors that swing open from the middle, hence two plates on the upper door frame |
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| There is a spring loaded ball placed on the top of each door. |
