THE FIXER-UPPERS

We have been doing a lot of repairing, cleaning and fixing-up of this apartment lately. Things only get fixed or cleaned if the current tenants notice and want to do it or know how to.  Since we like fixing and cleaning, aren't they lucky to have us come every other year?  Ha, ha, ha.

Our latest project was to buy an IKEA curtain rod, drag it home on the bus and subway (it was taller than the bus and subway doors so quite fun to get in and out of with).  Then our little cheap drill I had bought at Obi (what do you expect for 11 Euros?) couldn't handle drilling the holes in the plaster walls.  So we had to borrow a heavy-duty drill from Peter Mayrl at church and lug it home.  Then we put up our ladder that wasn't quite long enough to use without feeling like we would plunge off of it while trying to reach the high walls (we estimate they are about 11 feet high) to drill the holes.  But we did it and got the rod installed in our living room. 

The whole project started because in 2011 we took down the bedroom curtains because they didn't come close to blocking out enough light from the park below so that we could sleep.  We got BYU to pay for some better curtains and stuffed the old ones in a cupboard.  I wrote a note to future directors that they could hang the curtains in the living room if they wanted.  No one ever did.  So we decided it would be a fun project and would give us a little more privacy at night and add hominess and cut down on echoes.

Since there were 4 curtain panels I had to sew the pairs together so they could be opened and closed more easily.  Then I also had to hem them.  They were very long so it took a lot of time to do by hand.  But I got it done and we proudly hung them and are so pleased with ourselves.

Didn't you want to know all of this?

   THE NEW LIVING ROOM CURTAINS

 CLOSE-UP OF THE "INTERESTING" FABRIC

Our other projects include replacing lost knobs on dressers and cupboards, ordering parts from IKEA to fix the kitchen kickboards that have been constantly falling over onto the floor and even caused a huge chip on the dishwasher door when it caught on them. We realized the IKEA dishwasher door is made of painted cardboard so no wonder it broke so easily.  But it looks terrible taped back together and we wanted to prevent further problems.   We discovered that all the attachment parts on the inside of the kickboards had broken off so we ordered new ones and installed them.  Problem solved!

We have cleaned pigeon droppings off our window ledges and thanks to Uncle Bill's suggestion rubbed a layer of Vick's Vapor Rub on them to deter the pigeons landing there anymore.  We sure hope it works.  So far, so good.

When we got here the entire front of our building was covered in heavy plastic with scaffolding all the way to the top of the building.  Workers were repairing and re-painting the stucco. We could not see out through the heavy plastic so it was terribly dreary inside.  It took until the middle of September to finish and then all the front windows were covered with drops of plaster.  So we also had a lot of windows to wash.  Some of them open outwards so it was quite a job to clean them without plunging to our deaths.  It always feels good to have clean windows!

So there's your report from the Vienna Fixer-Uppers.

COMING UP NEXT WEEK: a tour of the apartment