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Hi all! So my recovery seems to be going well. I had my follow-up with the surgeon and they removed the packing and tubes. That felt so much better! They showed me how to dilate - wasn't too bad. Yesterday I came home - I've never been so happy to be home! Recovery is easier in my own place with my own stuff. For 4 weeks I have to dilate 4x a day for 20 minutes each. I'm still working on my positioning, it gets a little uncomfortable and tedious, but I'll survive :-) Otherwise for now it's a lot of TV and reading. Barring complications I should be able to go back to school and my internship the week of the 23rd. At a more fundamental level - as swelling starts to recede it's easier to see what I have now, and it's pretty awesome 👯 More later! Xoxo Chrissy

We're not building anything new in the kitchen, we're painting over the ugly cabinetry and counters, and the tutorials require sanders. It's a large sanding area, and Nikki has already informed me he's not doing an area that big for multiple times (you have to sand the entire area each coat of the cement) if we go the faux cement veneer by hand. But all the brands look the same to me, none of them stand up and scream 'I"M QUALITY I"LL LAST!". None of them even look that sturdily built, and I guess sometimes I live in my childhood and want to buy thing that will last for 30 years like grandpa did. We're first sanding to rought up the counter to increase adhesion, then sanding for smoothness of what we put on it before we seal, not to strip anything. The nifty thing is we found a diy one for painting the cabinets, no pre-sanding needed, just use chalk pant and it adheres fine, covers well, and the site did a two years follow up and it lasts. SCORE! And I can't really help sand thanks to carpal tunnel I picked up from years of retail and my insurance is unwilling to pay for surgery since Im mostly functional, just hurty on repetitive action things which I no longer do to make a living since the last 11 years I was working were in an office instead of the scanning/cooking tasks that caused it, so Nikki gets his way here. And in the worst case zombie apocalypse scenario I can use it to be a zombies brain in. The saw is to build the built-in bookshelving and possible lock-in wood wall slats(light weight locking slats that just go on over your existing walls and we can easily fix the living room walls!) to cover the panel issue in the living room that will require a LOT of precision cutting thanks to some really unfortunate architectural choices in there.. And the craft table Nikki wants to build that folds up and is really small when we are using the spare room as a guest room. Both of which will also require large scale sanding after finish apparently, in addition to the saw for him to cut all the pieces. It's a lot of wood cutting as I understand him tell it. Would it help if I pm'd you the links to some of the projects?

Hi Bree, Well... There is a variety of sanders - they are all specialized. Belt sanders are handy at times, and so are the orbital disk sanders. Most of the time if you're building shelving/cabinetry with new wood you don't really need a sander. For sanding off little places where you've filled in nail head holes with putty, hand sanding is fine. Same thing for saws. Wow! I've had a radial arm saw (don't recommend it), a Skil saw (very handy), a full table saw (awesome and cool, but pricey), and a sliding mitre saw - also so great, especially for things like cutting molding for ceilings and floors. It might be best to buy a couple of good hand saws, one for finish sawing with fine teeth and one for cross cutting, with larger teeth. Sure they take more effort but then you'd gain a better understanding of what you want/need. After all it wasn't so long ago that no one had power tools! BTW: if you need to strip paint, don't try to just sand it off. Use a paint stripper (that you can buy at Home Depot or Lowe's) and a scraper to remove most of it. Then you can sand it. But if you're hoping to strip it down to the bare wood for refinishing with something clear then, don't do it! You'll; never get all of the old paint off. Good luck, Emma

I'm going to start banging my head on my desk in numb misery. Researching good brands is painful, the reviews are HORRIBLY boring reads and I want to spork out my eyes. How many things can anyone say about a power sander? I did make a little progress despite the mindnumbing horror, found one that catches dust through the pad, so while I have no iillusions it will catch ALL the dust, minimizing as much as possible sounds good in theory. Nikki and I are both a wee bit lazy on the manual labor part, and sanding down a whole kitchen by hand sounds...painful. Right, don't wear gloves, because I won't be able to feel anything. That is generally my experience with gloves of any kind. I have a weird aversion to sleeves too, although I do force myself to deal in the winter. So that is a great relief, thank you Emma! We do have the power drill and a bunch of bits, but we need some sort of power sander for the kitchen and power saw for building the built in bookcase/shelving unit in the office and the folding craft table thing I found, we're sorta settling on a convertible guest room/craft room for the offsprings old room. So when we have guest there is a place to put them, and when we don't it will function for his art/modeling and my scrapbooking/origami/whatever new thing I decide to try next. And we plan to work very slowly. Grandpa was a big proponent of checking and rechecking until you have what you are going to do in your head for sure, and testing it out (hence the weird dollhouse thought) to practice. I'm not entirely useless to Nikki in this, I got a B+ in woodshop and learned a lot growing up with Grandpa. But Nikki is definitely way more skilled and forepersonlike in this mess. I'm sorta the idea/slave labor assitant! STill super excited about my art though. I can't wait til he has time to paint it!

Good to hear you are doing well. Take care of yourself over the next few weeks and do get out and take short walks.

Dear Bree and Emma, Think it's wonderful to see two women building/decorating together! Had studied carpentry decades ago and I must confess I miss it. Was very proud of my tools. Always bought the best I could afford and took great care of them. One of my favorite jobs was working in hardware/lumber stores (decades ago) and I learned so much from the pros and do - it- yourselfers! Your friend, Monica