Promised Pictures

Our flight home was uneventful, and we actually arrived a few minutes early.  Although there is construction around Billy Mitchell Field in Milwaukee, we were able to make it to the car and leave the Super Saver parking lot in record-breaking time. Rick drove us home, for which I am very thankful.  I know that he was as tired as I was, but in the evening, his eyes are better than mine for driving.  Since I had cataract surgery a couple of years ago, I see fine, but the glare at night from oncoming traffic really bothers me. Our "northern" bed felt great that night!

Seeing the bare trees again and the frost on the rooftops was a bit of a jolt to our senses and our systems.  However, we have adjusted to the layers of clothing, the frosty ears if we venture for a walk (I hate wearing hats!), and the too-early darkness that is just a part of this time of year.

I finally have been able to download some of the pictures of our brief progress in Gladys, so enjoy them.

Then: Gladys' kitchen in June 2011. The refrigerator blocked
the view, and the countertop ended halfway across the dishwasher.
The kitchen had two drawers and no pantry.

Now: Gladys' kitchen in October 2012. Taking out the wall oven and
moving the refrigerator to the end allows a full view of the kitchen and a
full pantry.  By taking the 1960's "eat-in" part away from the south end, we gained a full kitchen with lots of drawers and counter space.

The opposite view shows how much more counter space I have in this kitchen now.  Since the dining room is on the other side of the small section next to the stove, we put all of our dishes in the upper end cupboard to make it easily accessible to the dining room.

Lots of room for dishes (upper cabinet), a dishwasher, and tons
of drawers and storage.

The granite on top of the half-wall next to the oven allows us to serve hot dishes buffet-style with access to the dining room.

A countertop on which I can place hot dishes, a granite cutting board
and a granite-topped wall all make the kitchen much more
convenient.  The bottom two drawers are deep enough to hold pots and pans.

Finally, I add the picture of the bookshelf that we bought at the Container Store and brought down in component parts.  This bookshelf and desk, located in the guest bedroom, gives us a quiet place to keep track of our bookwork while having access to all of our files in the boxes on the bottom shelves.

A new desk, file boxes, and desperately needed shelves all
in a room away from the television allows us to work.

Gladys still is not "finished," but with each addition we are making her more of the home we dreamed she could be when we first took possession of her.  In just eight short weeks we will return to her.  Depending on our budget, we will see what further transformations are in store for our new "old" home.

Granite Groans and Grins

As expected, my phone did not ring on Thursday evening with a time when the granite people might come; however, I did get a call early on Friday from the company telling me that they would be at our house in approximately an hour.  By this time Rick was so angry and upset that he just left for the day.

When the granite people got here, they put in the small piece next to the stove first so they would not lose or damage it.  Then they brought in the piece that they had broken last time.  Before they could fit the last one in, I asked them about fixing the hole that the last installer had left in the wall.

"We were not told anything about fixing a wall," one installer said.  "We have nothing in the truck to fix drywall."

"Well, the owner said that you would fix the wall, so hang on," I replied.  I went to our garage and brought in a scrap piece of drywall and some drywall tape.  They carefully cut a piece, screwed it into the exposed wall studs, caulked around the whole patch, and then topped it off with the drywall tape.  Since the whole patch is behind the backsplash, they did not have to do more, but since that wall was an uninsulated outside wall, we wanted it covered.

After the repair they brought in the rest of the granite and completed the installation.  This time they did not chip the sink, and they did an excellent job with the installation.  They took their time and knew what they were doing.  Our only problem with the granite now is that the bill was $100 more than what was quoted to us earlier in the week, and about $1200 more than the original estimate on the whole job.  Rick is upset with that; I am just to the point where I want no more hassle.  I paid the bill, and I hope that we do not have to have any more Florida contractors ever in our house.

The kitchen is completely transformed.  I now have a spacious, modern, clean, convenient kitchen to return to in January.  We did not have enough time to hook up the plumbing and the dishwasher.  That will be our first task of the new year.

We are leaving later today for Wisconsin.  We awoke to fog this morning, but that has since burned off and the day promises to be sunny with highs in the upper 70's to low 80's.  When we woke up this morning, Green Bay had a temperature of 28, and we expect that we will need our winter jackets when we get off the plane.  I am happy that we left a car at the airport.  We have a later flight, so we will not get home until about 9:30 this evening.

I really do not want to go back to work, but I have six more weeks of class to cover.  Then I will truly be retired, and we hopefully can enjoy the Florida sunshine.

A Frightful Halloween

I have neglected this blog for days, so I will try to do a quick recap of the week so far.

We arrived on Saturday to an unseasonably cool and very windy day.  It seems as if we brought the cold Wisconsin weather with us, but in reality the strange atmospheric conditions are just due to Hurricane/ Super Storm Sandy that made a colossal mess of New Jersey and the rest of the East Coast.  When we unpacked the trunk, I am sure that we looked like a couple of circus clowns piling out of a small car.  No matter how much we took out of the trunk, we always could go back for another armful of goods.  Finally we got it all into the house, and we still had time to get the refrigerator going and make a quick run to Publix.  I have to admit that since we have only been in Florida in the summertime, having the sun set so early is a bit of a disappointment, but it just reminds us that we are now into the late fall months of the year.

Sunday was a nice, though brief, reunion at church.  We met another couple from Wisconsin who have owned a home here in Florida for many years, but who still go back to Wisconsin for the summers to be near family and friends.  We will have to get to know them better this winter.  We also were treated to the chime choir.  We used to belong to a chime choir at our old church in Green Bay, so that is something else that we may explore to a greater extent in the future.  We spent the afternoon working in the garden and clearing some of the reappearing pepper trees and mother-in-law tongues from our supposedly cleaned-up backyard. Now if I could only get a money tree to grow...

The reason we came down to Florida now was to get the granite in the kitchen removed (since they botched up the installation in August) and to get the new granite installed.  Let me go on record as saying that something just does not want us to have granite in the kitchen.  Monday saw the workers from the granite company -- and the owner -- come to our house to remove the installed granite.  The owner took careful measurements and promised that they would be back on Wednesday to install the new granite.  So far, so good.

The granite people were gone by noon, so we took the opportunity to go to the Clerk of Courts office in Pinellas County to declare Florida domicile.  We are doing so both to save income tax in Wisconsin and to have the right to declare Florida as our "homestead" which also gives us some tax protection.  We plan on spending more time in Florida than Wisconsin, so the declaration just makes sense.  We waited in line for about half and hour, filled in one form, showed the clerk our Wisconsin drivers' licenses, and were declared residents of the state of Florida.  No problem.

On Tuesday we ventured to the Tax Collector's office to get new drivers' licenses.  (I know, the combination of taxes and DMV sounds strange to us, too, but remember that this is a state that combines the garbage collection with the water bill... need I say more?)  At any rate, thank God that Rick had done all of his research so that we had the correct paperwork, or we still would not have licenses.  At the DMV, we told the man that we wanted to register the Camry and to get new licenses.  While we had to prove NOTHING to gain Florida residency, we had to show our Wisconsin driver's licenses, our passports, our Social Security number cards, and two documents that showed we owned property in Florida before they would consider letting us get a Florida driver's license! After passing the vision tests and getting new pictures taken, we were each handed a new Florida license.  I am delighted that we actually kept the same number, minus the final digit, since I memorized my driver's license number over 30 years ago.  Registering the car took less paperwork since we had the title with us, but had Rick not done the research again, we would have fallen to the floor when we were told that registration, a new license plate, and two drivers' licenses would cost us $565.00.  Being prepared for that, we just gulped and paid the bill.

Wednesday arrived and the granite people showed up with our beautiful new countertops.  The owner's daughter helped us pick out this granite, and I must say that she did an excellent job.  We both love the color and the pattern in the new granite.  The workers put the first piece in next to the stove.  We have a full backsplash that goes to the top of the half-wall since we capped that with the same granite.  The workers did an excellent job of putting it all together.  As they were about to install the large piece to the right of the sink, once again disaster struck.  That piece had an "arm" that stuck out to go above the sink cut-out, and when they were trying to position this 400 pound chuck of stone, the arm hit the wall and broke off.  Game over.  Happy Halloween. They could not install the piece to the left of the sink until the broken one to the right was in place, so once again I am without countertops for the kitchen.  This is a terrible disappointment because we are running out of time to have the granite installed before we go home.  Since the caulk on the granite has to cure at least 24 hours before we can hook up the plumbing, that window of time also is quickly disappearing.

We hoped that they would come back with a new piece of granite today, but as 10:00 a.m. came and went, my hope departed with it.  I called the company, spoke to the person who broke off the arm on the first piece, and was told that they were cutting and polishing the granite today.  He promised that he would call me before he left today to arrange a time to come to put our granite in tomorrow.  I am not depriving myself of oxygen waiting for that call to come in.  We have been promised such things before by a whole army of Florida contractors, and usually the phone never rings.  If I do NOT hear from him tonight, I will be on the phone at 8:30 sharp tomorrow morning looking for answers.

The good news is that we have accomplished some tasks while we are here.  We opened a checking and savings account that will allow us to transfer money back and forth to and from Wisconsin. We removed a tree stump next to the house that our landscape people had told us they would remove before we returned... another Florida promise that did not happen until we took the initiative to start it.  We successfully set up the bookshelves and desk which turned out to be much more study than we had originally thought.  I wish that I had remembered to bring down the camera card reader so I could publish the results of our labors, but that will have to wait until I return to Wisconsin.  When I finish here, I will tackle the hall closet.  Now that we have the bookshelves, some of what was stacked in the closet can go on the shelves, and I can clean out and organize the rest.

We continue to make progress, but once again we are waiting on contractors.  I know that I am beginning to sound like an impatient old lady; however, Gladys has been waiting for a long time, too, and I really want to start to put completion on at least one more room in the house.  So this mystery of the hour is this: will my phone ring tonight, or will the granite company's phone be ringing early tomorrow morning?  Time will tell...