Yay. Progress!

I'm so excited. Today I made headway for the first time in a very long time.

Today was an early release day at school, and Frank came over to make a little money for the upcoming dance. He was here almost 5 hours, so we got a lot accomplished.

Several weeks ago, The Hubster and I put bamboo shades (although these are plastic and not actually bamboo) around the porch to basically enclose it. Having the shades up will prevent rain and dust from wreaking havoc like it has so much in the last several years. We literally scooped up gallons of dirt out there during the course of cleaning the porch, and the shades will help keep the dust/dirt level to a minimum which will make painting the furniture I need to finish painting much easier.

The only problem we had was that the shades blew around a lot and still allowed a lot of dust onto the porch. They helped stop the rain fairly well, but the dust was a different story. So today, Frank helped me secure the shades to the concrete. My husband and I worked on putting eye hooks in the concrete a couple of weekends ago. We'd drilled holes in the concrete (I could have sworn I blogged about this before, but for the life of me, I can't find the post), put some cement repair stuff in the holes and then added the eye hooks. Once the eye hooks were in, we built up the concrete a little, so nobody would stub their toes on the hooks and left them to dry.

When Frank came over today, the first thing we worked on was securing the shades to the concrete. By now the concrete had fully cured, and the eye hooks were firmly in place. So we took some nylon cord and tied it to some small double ended hooks Hubster had picked up at the store for our project, and proceeded to tie them tight enough that the shades will hopefully be somewhat secure, if the wind blows. Once we had the tension right on each one, we burnt the ends of the knots, so they wouldn't come untied or unraveled. It took awhile to get done, but I'm thrilled they're finished. We should be able to unhook the shades and roll them up, if we want more sunlight or fresh air on the porch, but for now, I have a usable workspace for which I'm very grateful.

Once we were done with that, we worked on cutting shelves to go on the bookcase that will be used to house hubby's books. I had 5 oak plywood shelves that i was going to cut to make enough for extra shelving in the shelving unit we'd gotten for his books. I was able to cut some extra wood off 4 of the shelves to make them the right width and then cut the remaining 4 shelves in half for a total of 8 shelves for him to use. The other shelf I used to cut a shelf to go in my craft cupboards. I'm not sure, if I'll need more shelves in my craft cupboards or not, but at least we know where we can get more, if we need them and cutting them will be a breeze.

Frank acted as my muscle today and carried all the shelves back downstairs for me to save my back a little. I'm so thankful! I decided to wrap things up on the porch, because I wanted desperately to get the plastic off the carpet downstairs. It's been covered for the last year to try to keep it clean while we were working downstairs painting. It did it's job, so Frank helped me pick it all up and either throw it in the trash or fold it up to take home, so Bugster and Bubster don't have to buy drop cloths when they paint their home.

I also got a couple of loads of laundry done. I'd have kept going, if it weren't for my back. Even though Frank hauled stuff for me the entire time he was here to save my back, my back still screams in protest tonight. I'm hoping a good night's sleep will make for a productive day tomorrow.

I have so much to do!