Playing around in Oregon and California is easy. Bessie is out of sight and out of mind then. But what about the lazy weekends when we would float down the river and just chill in the backyard? I have to walk through Bessie's staging area, the carport, to get to the BBQ grill. Sometimes it's easier to ignore than others.
To satisfy my obsessive side, and make me feel like I was making progress, I chose small, simple projects that I could do on a blanket in the grass while Brie and I enjoyed the sun.
You know how, when you move, you've always got that last mentally-impossible trip that doesn't even fill the truck but takes a thousand trips because it's that standing floor-lamp, or that fragile wall-hanging, or those things you didn't have a box for, or that didn't get categorized with anything else? Those little things are also the mentally-impossible tasks when performing any kind of home projects. Bessie is no different.
I decided to make these types of projects my small backyard projects, hoping in the end, I'd be saving myself some future burnout. Plus, it's cool to clean metal things in the sunshine. You know you're finished when the reflection blinds you! Here's a photo of the propane gas lamp just above the kitchen counter in the forward section. Don't have a before snapshot, so trust me it looks much better. Most importantly, it's now where it's supposed to go! One small project down. Countless to follow. Like this one...
This photo shows two small completed projects, newly painted metal and spankin' new electrical outlets. Many of Bessie's metal "accessories" were rusted, chipped, bronzed, or brass. It's fun to keep her period-correct, and we wanted to keep many of the fixtures, but that brass had to go. So we spray-painted them aluminum. Rustoleum is inferior to Krylon. Always get Krylon. Home Depot you suck for carrying Rustoleum. I would trade 3 cans of Rustoleum for one can of Krylon.
One morning I awoke, walked down to the Dutch Brothers for a diesel cup of coffee. Freshly caffeinated, I grew project-eyes larger than my project-appetite could handle, and decided to install Bessie's electrical outlets. No small task - as it included snipping larger holes in the aluminum for the modern safety standards of today's electrical fixtures. There isn't much more to say about his task. It was simple and tedious and required another cup of diesel coffee. I like the shiny!
