Cooperative Inactivity

Steve and I have noticed that we are considerably more productive when apart. The last time I went out of town, he finished painting the picket fence and dug up the entire front yard. When he was working late one day, I painted the entire laundry room. Many years back when he went on expedition to Indonesia, I cleaned out the entire attic.

However, when we're together, we tend to come up with more fun things we'd rather do than housework. Brunch, movies, games, etc.

I have been the equivalent of out of town for the past four days... I've been spending most of that time in bed with a nasty cold-type thing. So Steve has leapt into action.

First, he finished digging up some shrubbery in the front yard... a time-consuming and tough job. It's a good thing he finished off that particular bit of flora, however, since it appeared to have developed a taste for plumbing.

Spigot missing handle:

Handle being enveloped by shrub:

Then Steve moved on to the kitchen. He removed a mysterious metal plate that was on the wall behind our stove (probably to shelter the wall from an older, poorly insulated stove that the previous owner was afraid would catch the wall on fire). Steve found the beadboard behind the plate to be in surprisingly good condition, so he was able to simply patch and paint.

Removal (some coaxing required to set the flathead screwdriver into some of the old, painted-over screws):

Reveal (pretty good shape!):

Painting:

Then Steve moved on to touching up the green in the kitchen:

And to cap off the kitchen work, Steve put up a shelf above the sink with some scrap wood we had from another project (a really pretty dark walnut that Steve painstakingly oiled):

Oh, and because that didn't seem like enough work, he made an elaborate dinner earlier tonight (which, sadly, I couldn't really taste but it sure looked pretty) after spending much of the afternoon digging up a stump in the backyard.

I would say that I hope I'm better soon, but maybe if I'm laid up a few more days, the house will be completely finished.