Tag Archives: renovating and renewing

Happy chaotic 2025

27 Monday Jan 2025

Posted by in Daily Life, Daily Message, Finding Me

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Hi everyone,

I hope your 2025 is going well.  Whatever plans you have, start NOW!  Great advice, right?  Yet, I continue to be waiting on things to be finished so I can accomplish other things, so I can live my life.

I continue hoping for calm and order, but I will have to wait longer for that.  The construction/renovation on our condo will continue for a few, or several, more months. I am trying to keep positive and focus on the fact that things are progressing, but it has been a struggle. 

I like results and to have things completed and orderly, and my life at the moment is the total opposite of that.  There is dust everywhere. It is a daily ritual of vacuuming and mopping. Still, the dust persists.

We have been living out of the second bedroom. Everything we have is either there or in NY, waiting to be brought to Florida.  We will not be buying any furniture until all is finished.

Every day there seems to be little progresses here and there, so it seems there is light at the end of this tunnel.  At this moment some apartments are already having their exterior painted. I think ours will be painted in the next couple of weeks.

To renovate the exterior and correct all the damage in the balcony and exterior, they had to come into the apartment several feet. In doing that, there was damage to the floors, ceilings, walls and electrical work. 

We decided to take advantage of the fact that all is a mess and go ahead and remove the fireplace. In doing that we got more floor space and a little more view.

Everything is slow going as one crew depends on the other to finish their parts, and they all depend on the inspectors to come and approve the work. Nevertheless, I see progress and that provides me comfort.

To top the chaos, I have a physical audit scheduled, besides the regular audits – the auditors just love our little firm.  I also have dental surgery scheduled – more gum graft and laser surgery in my future.  Will expand upon those on the next post.

And then there is good, the ever lasting feeling of being blessed and the certainty that all that is happening now is for the best.

Love, light and blessings to all!

New Windows: It is all a Beautiful Mess

27 Friday Sep 2019

Posted by in Daily Life

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OLD WINDOWS

NO WINDOWS

NEW WINDOWS

At times, like yesterday, my life feels like a mess.  I let windows mess up my day and my mood.  Windows!  It was not brain surgery or the end of the world, it was just windows.

Life sometimes is messy.  We are thrown curve balls and we have choices.  To breathe and handle it or to pull my hair out? Since I don’t want to sport the bald look I handled it.

The feeling of powerlessness, panic and failure that overwhelms me at times when things well planned in advance goes wrong.

My windows were finally installed yesterday, not without some issues.  I will summarize.  The installer originally didn’t want to install the windows and left with the excuse that he was going to his truck to park.  He then called and rambled on excuses, and I quote: ” The building is too luxurious. I need additional help.  It will mess up the elevators.  There will be not enough time to finish”  I don’t live in a dump but I would not call it luxurious.

To each of his issues I had a solution: Don’t worry about the elevator, the super is cool he will not throw you out at 5pm.  I even offered to have the handyman that I had already hired for the day to help them. I also called the company that assured me that they were handling and would get back to me.

Finally they relented and came back.  They started in my tenant’s apartment first.  Another issue: there were cars parked in the parking lot beneath the window and they were afraid that they my drop something and damage the cars.  I had to get the super to move some and cover the ones that couldn’t be moved.  Installing continued.

Once done my tenant called me to inspect.  One look at it and I see it is the wrong grid-lines.  Even though the new ones look great it is not inline with the rest of the building. Now more calls to the office.  Originally they wanted to blame me for ordering the wrong windows.   Then they realized that the right windows were ordered and they blamed the manufacturer.

They have ordered the right ones  but I will have to wait another month for them to return and swap the top window for the right number of grids.  The same ones were installed in my apartment as they assured me that to change the grids will be a quick thing.

It would be nice if I could choose whatever windows I wanted. I would choose just a big panel but I have to follow the aesthetics of the rest of the building.

The back and forth with the technicians and the company while trying to deal with work and keeping my mom from feeding off my stress was beyond stressful.

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity”― Sun-Tzu

At those times I feel exasperated and powerless.  I feel like a complete mess and failure.  The truth is sometimes everything it is indeed a mess and it is ok.

Even though things are at times messy still they are perfect as they should be.  People make mistakes.  Things don’t go according to plan.  People don’t handle things as they should.  Still life goes on.  In the meantime this control freak gets the chance to learn to survive in a mess.  Controlled chaos is a thing and I think yesterday I had a taste of it.

In the end, it is just windows and I sound like a cry baby – I know 😦

“I’m not a mess but a deeply feeling person in a messy world. I explain that now, when someone asks me why I cry so often, I say, ‘For the same reason I laugh so often–because I’m paying attention.’ I tell them that we can choose to be perfect and admired or to be real and loved. We must decide.”― Glennon Doyle Melton

 

Trying to enjoy the process without rushing to get results

06 Tuesday Aug 2019

Posted by in Daily Life

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“I can hardly wait for tomorrow, it means a new life for me each and every day.” ― Stanley Kunitz

This month I am doing some work around my apartment.  I live in a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment measuring a little over 1,000 square feet.

It started with decided to replace some windows and now I keep adding to the list of things to do/buy.

I wish I had taken some “before” pictures so that later I could proudly show the “after”.  The before was not so bad.  The last time my apartment was painted was in the beginning of 2015. The paint is still good but since I am changing the carpeting and windows in some rooms I decided to do the painting also.

I have ordered new windows for my sister’s bedroom and the living room.  The current windows look great but they are drafty and don’t close correctly.  The one in my bedroom is the one that works the best and also the one that would be the most expensive since it is rounded at the top and it has to be custom ordered.  For those reasons I am leaving that one alone for now.

While I am waiting for the windows to be ready to install I am getting the painting done.  After the painting is done then the carpet will be replaced in the bedrooms.  I would love to have hardwood floors in the bedrooms but carpet it is less noisy on my neighbor downstairs and it is cozier in the winter.

My sister’s bedroom is a very pale yellow now with dirty beige carpet that doesn’t clean no matter how many times it gets watched.  It will now be a light gray/blue walls with gray carpeting.

My sister’s bathroom will remain dark blue with a fresh coat of painting.

My bedroom has sage walls with light beige carpeting.  It will be white walls with new beige carpeting.  I normally don’t care for white walls but I will bring color and personality with all the paintings I have.  The worst that can happen is that I hate the white and have it repainted another color.

My bathroom will be repainted the same colors it has currently. It will continue to be a light mustardy/yellow color with a small accent area of brick color.

The living room has chair rail, the bottom part is the color of brick and the top is a very light cream color.  It will now be blood red on the bottom and white on top.  I just adore red on the wall but haven’t been able to replicate the blood red color I had in an apartment once.  I am trying again.

The kitchen is very light beige/cream and it will be the same color.  It will just get a fresh color of paint.

My TV and microwave both died.  I replaced the TV a month ago and I just ordered a new microwave. I don’t use that much but it is mounted about the stove so I want to make sure I have all appliances working properly.

I will be replacing my 2 chairs round table with a 4 chair s square table.  I have that in my storage area, so if I don’t like I am just going to return it there or give it away. Even though the round table is much nicer, I miss the seating for 4 when I have people over.

I am also thinking about ordering a couple of bookcases to put on each side of the TV.

All the paintings currently on the wall will all change locations or be replaced with other ones I have.  My mother paints, so I have a lot of her paintings.

My apartment will continue to be a crazy mixture of styles and stuff.   I am okay with that because I am a crazy mixture myself.

The only problem at the moment is trying to relax.  I am results driven.  I don’t have patient for the journey and the details.  I can’t deal with too many options.  I find myself just wanting the painter to choose the colors and the carpet guy to decide on the carpet type.

Give me important decisions and I am able to decide right away, but present me with multiple wall colors and types of carpeting and I go crazy.  When given more than 2 options I freeze.

The painting started today and I am already thinking about cutting the painting short. I just want order.

I am repeating to myself: Enjoy the process!

The painter just sent me a picture of my sister’s bedroom wall.

Before

After