Sunday, August 19, 2012

As My Gray Hair Turns Yellow

by Pa Rock
Handyman

Still unpacking, stacking, shuffling, re-stacking, unboxing, boxing, lifting, dropping, cussing, and banging my head against the occasional wall.  Every time I finish one thing, I find two more that have to get done.  The end is no where in sight!

I was out in the storage shed a few minutes ago doing all of the above when I noticed a small lizard scampering up the wall.  Arizona has lizards, big ugly ones like gila monsters and Jan Brewer, but I have never come across a small one before.  Curiously, this one looked very similar to an Okinawan gecko.  It's probably not, though, because two months in a hot box would not be the healthiest way to travel.  If it is a gecko, however, we may have the makings for a Japanese horror flick as some environmental cataclysm unfolds.

Friend Brenda answered my questions about how to clean the bookcases that arrived with mold.  Basically she told he to roll up my sleeves and wash the damn things - which I did, and the mold came right off.  Then I let them dry in the hot Arizona sun for a few hours, and put them back in the storage shed to see if the mold would return.  It didn't.  The final step (this was my own idea) was to spray and wipe them down with Old English spray - and again let them bake for a couple of hours in our killer heat.

I have a couple of other bookcases that arrived without mold.   They are blonde and made from real wood, whereas the moldy ones were more of a darker, composite mixture.  I bought a can of spray Pledge for those bookcases, and last night I sprayed them down in anticipation of stocking them also.  You are probably way ahead of me here, but instead of grabbing the Pledge, I mistakenly grabbed the Old English spray can (it was the exact same size as the Pledge.  I finished shining both bookcases before I realized my mistake.  Now those two book cases are a light brown - but they still look nice.

The bookcases may no longer be blonde, but I obviously am!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

That's great you were able to remove the mold! Sounds like you've been super busy. I wish we could be there to help you.
-erin