A Month of Changes

I spent about 45 minutes this morning writing this post about the changes that we are experiencing, starting with the change to a new month today.  Unfortunately, I tried unsuccessfully to add a picture to the blog, and that "froze" the whole system for me.  I had no choice but to close down the entire computer, and thus I lost the whole post.  Remind me again, please, about how  technology is a great invention and a time-saver...

To recap my thoughts from this morning, we are looking forward to positive changes.  Our change of location hopefully will bring about better health and renewed energy.  Dunedin has two farmers' markets each week, so we want to frequent them often to purchase fresh fruits and vegetables.  Since we will be ripping out the 1960's harvest gold built-in oven and the scary-looking cook-top, our mealtime choices will be limited to raw, microwaved, slow-cooked, or grilled.  We hope that this change in cooking will bring about a better diet.  Coupled with the amount of physical activity we will experience remodeling the house, we look forward to better health (as long as we do not strain something or keel over from the heat)!

This will be a summer of destruction for the house.  We plan to rip out the rotting screen vents in the eaves and replace them with aluminum vents.  That task will be an early morning job before the sun gets too hot.  We also need to call in professionals to remove a tree that is leaning over the house. The rest of the much-needed landscaping, alas, must wait for a future budget.

The remaining work will be inside, and much of the necessary work this summer we will have to hire done.  We need to totally update the electrical service, and completely put in new HVAC duct work, heat exchanger, and insulation. The pros can do those jobs.  We also need to hire someone to replace the garage door with a new hurricane-proof door.  Building codes in Florida are a whole new experience for us!

Personally, we will be ripping down two walls, taking out the main bathroom vanity and sink, removing the rough plastered bathroom interior walls, replacing toilets, building walls to frame in a laundry room, and taking out interior doors. We will replace two doors with new pocket doors for added room.  The biggest challenge will be removing the three 4x8 sliding glass doors between the living and Florida rooms.  Rick and I decided that rather than making numerous trips to the dump, we are just going to rent a dumpster for a few weeks.

A positive change will be new fixtures for the bathrooms (toilets and sinks), a new vanity that we made for the main bath, and getting the terrazzo floors redone.  When the floors are finished, they should, as Rick puts it, "shine like a marble floor in a fancy hotel."  Of course, before we get the floors redone, we need to rip out the carpets in both bedrooms,  the ugly, built-in bookcase in the master bedroom, and all of the lower cupboards in the kitchen.

Bonnie asked me if I was going to take out the purple drapes hanging between the living room and the Florida room in the first hour that I was in the house.  I assured her that as my first act of ownership, I would take all of the smelly draperies down within the first 15 minutes!

While much of the anticipated change this month will result in a partially dismantled house, all of the changes will ultimately be positive.  This is a new adventure, and we look forward to the changes and the challenges before us.