Today's task was figuring out how to remove kitchen drawers from their rails so that I could paint them. I've already painted the rest of the kitchen cabinets in semi-gloss white on the inside, to cover up the previous owner's stains. I couldn't do the drawers while they were still in place, though. I have access to almost zero tools right now, but a coworker was so kind as to lend me his screwdriver with replaceable tips, the kind with a dozen different tips stored in the handle.
Drawers turned out to be more complicated than I thought. I started by unscrewing everything I could find to unscrew, which led to an unsteady rocking drawer, but the drawer was still stuck on the rollers and the rollers were still stuck to the inside of the cabinet. It seemed physically impossible to access the last two screws. Then I figured out there was a mechanism that was hooking the drawer in place. My fingers were too fat to get in there and trigger it, but I used a leftover paint stirrer on each side to make the mechanism rock out of the way, and then the drawer could slide out. Turned out I didn't need to unscrew all that stuff after all.
It looked like this:
Drawer #3 was more complicated because it was in a corner and the handle of the adjacent cupboard stopped it from coming out all the way. I had to take off the cupboard door to be able to get to the mechanism. By the time I got all three drawers out, there was no time left for painting, I had to go home (to the temp housing) and make dinner so I didn't end up gnawing the cabinet doors.
Yesterday's task was painting the room that's going to be my bedroom, so today I also got to strip off all the painter's tape and plastic and admire it.