My house, on the corner of my street.

beachhermit (50)in #blog • 7 years ago

It's spring. The jasmine is blooming, as you can see above, which is my favourite bit of spring. You can smell it from half way up the street. The weather is finally starting to warm up, so that means opening up the house and doing stuff that a month ago I would have said, "nah, it'll take too long to dry in this weather," or more to the point, "nah, I'd rather stay in foetal position by the heater."

I only bought this house last year - almost exactly a year ago. We moved in on the AFL Grand Final weekend last year. (aside: This coming weekend it's TIGES IN THE GRAND FINAL. It's been 35 years since I've been able to say that, so there's still some surreality about it.)

There's slate flooring through the entryway, kitchen and dining. That's a lot of slate. In the main part of the kitchen it was starting to get daggy, so it needs to be resealed. The problem with slate sealant, though, is that there are different kinds: water based, oil based and xylene based (or something like that) and they are incompatible with each other. We did ask the agent to check with the previous owners; they said they'd get back to us, but never did.

Asked Dr Google, but found lots of conflicting advice. So, off we go to Bunnings to find out about slate sealers. No way of telling what's already on the floor, apparently, other than to buy a sample and try it out in a discreet area. We got a water based one - $30 for a 'sample' pot! Geez, even drug dealers give away samples for free. I'm starting to think that house maintenance is a worse monkey to have on your back. Tried it out in a cupboard. Conveniently, the floor of the cupboard is the floor - and it went all milky and awful so, nope, 30 bucks wasted on the wrong one.

So we got the xylene one, tried it in another cupboard and bingo! Nice and shiny.

I've ordered a new drafting desk, going to put it in the entryway because there's a huge north-facing window, and a lot of natural light. So, that got the slate treatment first.

There. Lovely shiny. But it STINKS. So I went out and grabbed handfuls of jasmine to counter the smell.

It's not working, but it was worth a try. Now every current of air brings something new: stinky stinky stinky... oh is that a whiff of jasm... argh stinky stinky.

The other thing to do is cut back some trees. The neighbour's tree is growing over the top of our garage, dropping bits of itself and the tin up there is rusting where it can't dry out properly. Chop chop.