Crossing things off my to-do list(s)

I have actually accomplished a few things lately… in between coughing fits, haha. Ha?

I’ve been playing around with my xTool M1. I’ve made a couple of things, and am so happy with them I don’t think I’m going to wait as long as I was thinking I would to bring them into HaldeCraft. I was thinking “play with it for a year, bring stuff into HC in 2025” but honestly some of this stuff is so fun and easy, I want to get on it. I mean, COME ON. Doesn’t everyone need a cheese board like this?!

Tee hee hee.

So I’ve been playing with that, I’ve been cleaning out the shed, I’ve been attacking some Doom Boxes every couple of days and making good piles of “stuff to burn” and “stuff to donate” and “paperwork I don’t need right this second but might in the future” and trying to put anything I want to keep, in the place I want to keep it. I’ve taken a couple of loads to the Repurpose Project already, and when Dacia and Dov were here the other week they burned boxes of old bills for me (I had bronchitis, so coupled with my asthma, burning shit wasn’t really in the cards for me in December).

The more I get done, the more I feel inspired to get things done.

I want to redo my kitchen cabinets, but (a) I don’t want to spend thousands and (b) I don’t want to put myself in the position of Kitchen Chaos and not be able to cook for a while and (c) I’m not even sure what I’m going to do will work. So, hey, why not test it out on my bathroom cabinets? I want to use some of that heavy duty contact paper to cover the cabinets. But the cabinets are curved in places, and have a recessed section in the middle. So I think what I’m going to try is… paint the curved sections with chalk paint (I hear it goes over everything, including shitty mobile home cabinets). Cover the bulk of the cabinets and the raised flat part of the cabinet doors with contact paper. Then for the recessed flat space, I got a peel-and-stick door cover that looks like stained glass; I’m going to trim it down to fit the recessed flat space and put it there.

I’m going to try this in the bathroom as soon as I have the hardware – I just ordered new cabinetry hardware and it should be here in about a week. Between the 10th-12th, anyway? I picked up some paint at Ace, I plan to use the same wood-grain contact paper I’ve used on a couple of things already, and the stained glass peel-and-stick stuff came the other day. Oops! I went to add a picture of the wood-grain contact paper, and it doesn’t look like I actually made a blog post about that – just posted on Facebook. Here… I’m torn between using either one of these for the cabinets:

Above is the contact paper I used on the kitchen island; below is the contact paper I used on the wall between the kitchen and dining room. I’m open to using either for the bathroom trial and/or the entire kitchen cabinet redo. Or, in the bathroom, I’ll use the plank one for the cabinets and the more solid wood one (which is allegedly waterproof as it’s designed for tabletops) to go over the hated bathroom countertop. It’s not like I can’t order more of both of them. Oh… or the plank one for the base of the cabinets, and the more solid one for the raised part of the cabinet doors….? Hmm. Good thing, I guess, that I have another few days to think about this, before the cabinet hardware gets here.

Slowly, I am making the house my own. I keep wondering, will I eventually feel like I’m erasing Tim? But so far I haven’t. I feel more like I’m making the place my own; my own style, my own stuff, carving out my own space of comfort and peace. Part of him will always still be here, because the people we’ve lost are always with us in our hearts or memories. Plus it’s going to take me literally years to finish all of the stuff he started but didn’t finish, haha. So every time I finish something he started, a little bit of him will go into that thing. Washing machine still needing to be leveled, I’m looking at you….!