After a new coat of paint: the refinished counters and stove top
The ground is frozen. Outdoor work is reduced to chores and little more. Fencing is out. I shall never be strong enough to drive steel or dig into the frozen earth. Working with the horses is reluctantly limited to ground work at best. Now they are allowed their well earned free time.
Work turns indoors. Preferably indoors with heat. We have several projects going on at once. I hate to be without something to do, something to keep me busy, a point and purpose to every day, this impelling desire to be productive, even if it requires creating work to allow me that satisfaction. However, on this ranch, on any ranch, finding projects is usually never that difficult. All one need do is look around and choose “what next?”
The remodel of Cabin #2 progressed so quickly at first. Knocking down old walls and framing up new ones. Fun stuff. Big hammers, lots of banging around, and visual results at the end of every day. But now, work slows down. Before the walls are closed in with drywall and plaster, the complicated labyrinth of electrical wires, gas pipes, and plumbing must go in. This part goes slow. It’s complicated. We find ourselves crawling under floorboards and between roof rafters, sorting out an intricate web of wires and pipes as we become covered with cobwebs of the past. All for a small, compact, simple off-grid cabin here in the mountains. I can’t imagine the complexity necessary for building elsewhere. This is plenty for me.
Bob has great patience for such things. These things somehow drive him (drive him onward, that is, not crazy). He has worked on remodels year after year after year, getting this guest ranch into a shape his Grandfather who built the original little old cabins would now not even recognize. Our guests are grateful. Now, with each cabin we consider how it would be if we lived in there… and we do our best to make each cabin as comfortable and as livable as if we did. In several, in fact, we have.
In our cabin, all the cleaning and scrubbing would not spruce up the fact that we’ve lived in this one for seven years. Wear and tear are inevitable. More so with the three of us, our outdoor lifestyle and indoor baking habit, dogs, cats, birds, lots of guests coming and going… shoot, I’ve even had the horses in the house (though they were not, as you can imagine, welcome to remain inside long).
The time had come when no amount of elbow grease or cleaning products could freshen up our stove and counter tops. The signs of the use and abuse of a country kitchen were clear, if not clean. And so I turned to a fresh coat of paint. I started by grinding down the wood counter tops, removing the old, worn and stained finish. Then I used matching wood fill in all the cracks that this dry air produces in wood. The surfaces were then sanded down using finer and finer grit sandpaper, then finished with three coats of polyurethane.
For the stove top, I started with very fine steel wool to clean the surface and to remove any chipped paint, then a couple light coats of spray-on appliance enamel.
The end result is that my kitchen once again looks good as new. Though I imagine that won’t last too long.
In the meanwhile, I can’t help but wonder… what would a new coat of paint do for me?