Bits and Pieces

I have not written for a few days because we have been busy building walls, running to Lowe's, mudding walls, running to Home Depot, sanding walls, running to Lowe's, painting walls, running to Home Depot, cleaning up, running to Lowe's.  You get the picture.  We make daily (sometimes multiple) trips to the home improvement stores buying all of the bits and pieces that we need to complete a project.  Right now we have so many pieces of projects in our house that we cannot even fit them all in the garage or one room.

I currently have two primed doors drying in the garage, sheets of drywall resting in the middle of the Florida Room, and 6 pieces of 16-foot baseboard moulding lying halfway between my living room and the Florida room.

We also have a ceiling fan/heater for the master bath that awaits installation, and a new light/fan for the master bedroom to replace the wobbling, noisy, scary ceiling fan that will not stop if we hit the wall switch for the light. (The chain to change the speed of the fan and to turn off the fan has long departed the premises.) We bought a new mirror today for the master bathroom.  The non-hygenic medicine cabinet with the chipped mirror is on my list of Most Wanted Things to Dispose Of in Monday's Garbage.  We need to repair the afore-mentioned hole in the wall that the medicine cabinet will leave, but neither of us will miss it in the end, and we may even end up with a more structurally-sound house.

We have a new central vacuum to install, but that has to wait until we have room in the garage to install it!  We also have miles of the baseboard to paint and put in, and then there are the new electrical outlets in the kitchen...  and the list grows daily.

Tonight we went to Lowe's to buy inexpensive blinds for the kitchen.  We have lived since the windows went in with nothing on them, so our house has been less-than-private.  The time for blinds was here since the kitchen faces the street.  In the picture below, the kitchen windows are the bank of three windows next to the garage. Rick installed the blinds (he's getting quite good at this!), and we will worry about shortening them to the proper length later.

Gladys with her new windows.

I took new pictures of the front of Gladys now that the trees in back are down and the new windows are in.  I will publish even more pictures when we get the new front doors installed.  Hopefully that will be this coming Monday.  Debby threw a fit, so we had to wait for the weather to behave before we can take out doors.

New paint for our master bedroom.  I cannot wait
for the new furniture to arrive.

The one thing that we are pleased with is the colors in the master bedroom.  Although pictures do not do it justice, we are happy that everything (so far) coordinates well.  We painted it an icy aqua color, just a shade lighter than the color in the duvet cover. The new bedroom furniture, coming July 10, will have a bench with a cushion that will be a deeper aqua.  We will paint the new master bathroom walls that same deeper aqua. In the end, hopefully the room will come together and will be a haven for us at the end of the long, stressful, busy days.

Our "just right" granite choice... sorry about
the flash reflection in this picture!

Once again, we are at the end of the budget.  We ordered out kitchen cabinets yesterday (River Run Dalton series in a light honey birch).  We also went to Depot Granite to choose a countertop.  We ended up with something called Colonial Gold.  The woman at the company said that they had two different lots of that granite, and that we should go out to the yard to choose which one we liked since each lot is different.  (Mother Nature does not like to duplicate herself!)  When we got to the yard, we actually found three different lots.  One was very dark brown and quite veined with a yellowish-clear part.  We did not like that at all.  One was very light and contained lots of veins of grey, and that also quickly was off our list.  The third is the one that contained a few shades of grey but lots of honey-colored areas, so that is the one that we chose.  Hm-m-m-m. One is too dark, one is too light, and the third was jus-s-s-t right. I think I read Goldilocks one too many times as a kid.

All of the big ticket items that we purchased were planned in the budget, so we are not in trouble...yet.  We need to quite spending, though, and concentrate our time in putting all of the bits and pieces together in their rightful places.  Gladys has certainly gone through a transformation in the two and a half weeks that we have been here, and once we get the rest of the painting, cabinets, doors, and baseboard in place, she will be even better.  Last year we did a lot of the infrastructure (heating, electricity, insulation).  My friend Rose reminded me then that we had to make sure that Gladys had clean underwear before we tried to put a new prom dress on her. The underwear is now clean and new, and she is now patiently standing still for her fittings for her new wardrobe of prom dresses.

Rains and Planes

Tropical Storm Debby is being a tease to Florida, sending blinding waterfalls of rain followed 10 minutes later by blazing, muggy sunshine.  The strong winds seem to be everywhere, however, and some of them continue to destroy homes and to kill people.  We heard last evening of a mother who died when she clung to her three-year-old as a tornado tore them from their home.  They found her a field away from her home, her body still protecting her daughter who is injured but expected to survive.

Stephanie removing garden soil.

Yesterday graced us with sunshine for most of the day even though our neighbors to the north and the east did not fair as well.  While Rick worked on the bedroom wall, Stephanie went out to the front flower garden to remove some of the soil.  We need to have the garden near the porch leveled and some type of platform or pavers installed for Chris and Frank to stand on when they put in the new front doors. We thought they were coming today, but in conversation with Chris this morning, Rick learned that they are going to delay the installation so I do not have 40 mile per hour winds blow through my house as they take out the old door and put in the new ones.  Good plan.

The newly transplanted rose garden behind the garage.
This garden is now visible from the Florida Room.

A blank slate for a new porch.

I had already transplanted some of the rose bushes in the garden away from the door, but in looking at the half-dismantled garden, I decided to transplant the whole rose garden into the back yard.  Stephanie and I then took out the rest of the ugly, crumbling-brick retaining wall and leveled the whole garden.  We took the soil from the garden by 5 gallon pails full to fill in the back corner that floods each time it rains. Now the soil is higher there, the garden is level, and new possibilities open for us since we will have to reconstruct the front porch.  Stephanie suggested a huge front porch that reaches from the double doors all the way to the end of the bedroom wall, going out toward the street.  She said that we could put a nice bench on it under the bedroom window and some flower pots to dress up the whole entrance.  Rick was not too thrilled with the idea of that much concrete-- because, of course, you cannot put in that much concrete in Dunedin without a permit and two inspections.  Honestly, I will bet the Permit to Change the Toilet Paper proposal is on the City Council's agenda as I write this!

The latest in bedroom design: the mudded drywall look!

Rick made progress with the wall, adding drywall to the outside.  It is really beginning to look like a genuine room again.  By the end of the day, he had the whole thing covered in the front, and the back corner by the shower done also.  A tricky part was taking out the old framing from the ceiling.  Overhead work is difficult and really puts a strain on these old bodies of ours!  Naturally, Rick wants to do it all, so he gets the brunt of the work... but also the blame if things don't go right.

Today we took Stephanie to the Tampa Airport.  As we approached Highway 19, our GPS said, "Road closed" and directed us down a different route.  With all of the flooding in the area, we were not about to argue with it.  We got her safely to the airport and on her way with no problems.  She arrived safely in Minneapolis this afternoon and should be home soon in Rochester.  I am sure that her own bed and lots of loving from her cats will be therapeutic before she heads back to work.

After we left the airport, we decided to go further east in Tampa to the vacuum cleaner place to purchase our central vacuum.  I worked all this past semester to come out with a little over $1000 from Cengage Publishing with the sole idea that I would use that money to purchase the vacuum.  The bill for our Simplicity vacuum did, indeed, use the allotted money, so now all we have to do is agree on a place to hang the vacuum and hook it up to the piping that Rick installed last year.  No more shop vac to clean the floors. I think that shop vac (Stephanie called it R2D2 since it looks like the Star Wars character) has a nasty habit of scratching the floors, so I cannot wait to get the new central system up and running. I know, Rick, I know.  Just one more job to add to our ever-expanding list.  If you are a fan of this blog, you know that no day passes without something being done, yet the list seems to get longer instead of shorter, even though our bank account gets lighter by the day.

More work lurks in the back yard.

We went through a couple of squalls and a scary, windy ride over the causeway to get home from Tampa only to discover that the wind had taken down a large branch on the cherry (?) tree in the back yard.  We want to take down the rest of the tree anyway, so God, if you are listening, take the rest of it out tonight, OK? There really is not much left of it, so we would like to start from scratch.

Whoever said, "If only these walls could talk..." really has never renovated an old house.  The walls DO talk, and Gladys told us quite a tale this afternoon.

Berries, birds, and roses... not my vision for this room!

Her story started when we took out the existing bathroom cabinet in the master bath.  Behind it we found two layers of very 1960's wallpaper.  The original was orange and yellow flowers, and the second was blue flowers with green vines on a lovely ivory background. When we took out the toothbrush holder, we discovered the best of all: the lovely print depicted in the picture.  Already Gladys revealed three phases of the master bathroom's life.

The shocking part of the story was the tale of horror she told about workmen chipping away half of her structural cement blocks to fit in the bathroom cabinet.  We can literally knock on the backside of the outside wall, and I shutter to think that that west wall is supporting part of the roof over my head!  We need to fill the cavity with insulation, maybe support of some kind, and drywall over it.  We will install just a mirror in the bathroom and use the cabinet to hold the former contents of the medicine cabinet. These are two more of the sad stories from Gladys' past.

I am sure that Gladys has thousands of stories of good times, too.  Thanksgiving feasts and Christmas celebrations.  Bowling championship games (Jackie, the former owner, won many bowling trophies that we found stored in the garage) and picnics on the patio.  We don't see evidence of them in the structure of the house, but I hope that they outweighed the times that were not so good.

We enjoyed having Stephanie come to visit and hope that Lindsay and Chris can make it here soon.  We want this house to be filled with good memories for the family by making Gladys a strong, secure, snug little house.

Birthday Uninvited Guests

Yesterday was a gloomy, sometimes sprinkling day, so we spent the day working indoors.  Rick focused on getting blinds in the Florida Room and, more importantly, on building the new bathroom wall.  We were lucky enough to still have Stephanie here for a visit because getting the wall up took all three of us to lift it and to position it in the room.  The pictures tell the story better than I can.

Rick securing the new wall to the floor.

We built the frame in the room and then the three of us put it up.  Although the fourteen inches that we moved it out do not make much difference in the master bedroom (which is huge), it will make a world of difference in the tiny 1960's master bath.  We now will have room for the monster cabinet that Rick built.  Imagine... toilet paper and fresh towels all in the room where we need them instead of having to walk down the hall to the main bathroom! We also will have a chance to get rid of the hideous blue sink and eventually to enlarge the master shower. Right now we are content with the blue sink because that is the only place we have to wash out paint brushes and other construction utensils.

The old wall (right) crowded the "throne" while the new
wall gives us room for the cabinet.

     I am so happy that Rick knows what he is doing when it comes to building.  He drew up complete plans in AutoCAD which made cutting and constructing the wall easy.  What was NOT so easy was actually getting it in place and securing it to the rest of the house.
    By the time we went to bed last night, the storms outside had started to intensify.  We heard the rain intermittently through the night and awoke this morning -- Rick's 60th birthday -- to our first encounter with an uninvited guest: Tropical Storm Debby.
     Debby is NOT being a lady.  She is way out in the Gulf, but she is moving very, very slowly toward the Florida panhandle, leaving behind band after band of rain showers to wash up onto shore.  She is not a hurricane yet, but she leaves a mess in her wake anyway.

Lake Anderson at the corner junction of the Florida Room and the guest bedroom.

Our side yard lake as it merges with the Rock Lake in our neighbor's yard.

    Although we are far enough from the Gulf that we have no danger of high tide or floodwater problems, we do have a problem with a very uneven yard that unfortunately slants in too many places toward rather than away from the house, and we had over 5 inches of rain today alone.  The resulting pictures may be hard to see, but look closely, and you will see the flooding in our yard and around our house.
     We also have the unique experience of hearing about tropical storm tornadoes.  These are not the Big Daddy tornadoes like we have in Wisconsin, but these mini-tornadoes can be very destructive.  Some pack as much as 90 mile-an-hour winds, and sadly we learned that one person died today when tornadoes hit inland and leveled five homes.  We also have watched weather reports all day and have seen trees falling on homes and (worse yet) trailers and campers. We are SO glad that we took down that dead Holly tree last week before this weather hit us.
    This afternoon Rick went into our master bedroom with the idea of painting the ceiling only to see a small, damp water spot.  A climb up the ladder to the attic showed no great leaks in the roof (thank you, Lord), so we think the driving rain which seems to come in sheets of water, is somehow slowly getting into the ridge vent.  That will be a problem to deal with once the storms have passed.
     The girls gave Rick money to plant a tree in honor of his 60th birthday.  I think that is a great idea, and since we have to plant a tree anyway, this will be a wonderful opportunity to satisfy the city and to plant a living legacy to him and to all of his hard work on this house and yard.

Sam and his lovely mate, Maude, who came to wish Rick a happy 60th birthday!

    Oh, yes, we also had some other birthday party crashers today.  When Stephanie got up this morning she took out the insulated panel that closes off our front window and was confronted with this pair waiting for some birthday cake.  (Actually, I think they would have preferred some good fish or fresh bugs.)  She screamed which attracted their attention, and they came even closer to the house.  Keep in mind that it is pouring rain outside.  The two dumb birds stood together in the yard, faces to the driving rain, seemingly contemplating the glories of Mother Nature! We decided that this was Sam the wood stork back, and this time he brought his mate which Stephanie named Maude.
     I am sad that the storm is supposed to rage for the rest of the time that Stephanie will be visiting with us. We had planned on doing a few other great things outside, but that will have to wait for a future visit.  Her flight home on Tuesday also concerns me because the winds and rains are still supposed to be with us.  For now, though, we are snug in Gladys, and Steph and I are even with three wins each playing Scrabble.
     Rick did not get to do many fun things for his birthday, but I know with all of the visitors we had today, it is a birthday that he will never forget!
   

Fabulous Flowers

After getting up fairly early this morning, we packed a lunch and headed out for a day of fun.

Pathway toward the Visitor's Center of the
Botanical Gardens in Largo.

Bananas growing on the trees.

Mosaic bench in the Wedding Garden.

Our first stop was the Pinellas County Botanical Gardens and Historic Village in Largo.  The gardens are acres of ponds, wetlands, and other lands filled with trees, shrubs, and flowers.  Since it is a Botanical Garden, most of the species are named, so it is a great resource for what I want to plant later in our yard.  They also have experts to answer questions about how to plant a butterfly garden or a hummingbird garden.

The Gardens contain acres of ponds, streams, and rivers.

The grounds were laid out well, so we enjoyed a stroll through the acreage.  Fortunately, although signs caution people not to feed the alligators, we saw none.  I did see a mama and baby turtle, but they never really surfaced other than their heads, so they blended in too well with the muddy water to get a good picture.  As you can see by the other pictures, though, we were able to see everything from bananas growing on the trees to some magnificent flowers.  I would return next spring to see what we missed as far as the blooming plants go.

 I want these in front of my house!

One of the few birds we were able to see at the Gardens.

Rick was disappointed that we did not see much wildlife.  Geckos and a few birds were all that were present.  Apparently one must get to the gardens very early in order to see lots of birds.  That trip also will have to wait until another time.

After the gardens, we ventured south to the Florida Orange Grove and Winery Company.  This was a return visit as we like their Hurricane 5 and Blueberry wines.  The make award-winning fruit wines, so we picked up a couple of bottles of Coco Polada (coconut/ pineapple wine that tastes similar to a pina colada) and one bottle of White Gold which is a peach wine. (Thank you, Lindsay and Chris.  We used the gift certificate you gave us at Christmas to buy the White Gold wine!)  I cannot wait until Chris and Lindsay can come to visit.  FOG Winery sells both a banana wine and a banana smoothie mix that I am sure Chris will want to try!

We came home via the beaches of Treasure Island, Indian Rock, Bellaire, and Clearwater.  Some people just have way too much money!  I just keep thinking that if I owned any of those mansions on the shore, with my luck a hurricane would wipe it out or I would be miserable because I could not afford a cleaning lady to keep the place spotless. Sadly, most of the beach towns are little more than high-rise motels and condos with a few mansions thrown in for good measure.  The beaches of Clearwater will act as a barrier against the worst that a Gulf hurricane wants to throw our way, so I am glad they are out there as a buffer to all storms except those that come directly up the coast from the south.  Unfortunately, as I write this I know that meteorologists are watching a tropical storm off the coast of South America as it grows and moves north into the Gulf.  Floridians have long learned to take weather forecasts seriously.

When we came home, we noted that our lawn still has not been cut.  Tim was supposed to come on Tuesday, and since this is now Friday, we have given him more than enough chances.  Rick called him up and told him that as of the end of this month, his services were not longer required.  They have billed us incorrectly twice, sent us the wrong contract, and have failed on numerous occasions to please us with the job they do cutting our lawn.  We have made arrangements to work with a different lawn care service starting July 1.

Stephanie is a great photographer, taking a picture of us
having fun in the Botanical Gardens.

Tonight to celebrate Rick's birthday early, we are going to go to The Gallery for haddock.  Friday fish-fry.  I feel like I am back in Wisconsin until I look out the window and see the palm trees sway in the wind.  Today was a beautiful day (high of about 88) with a great breeze to keep us comfortable.  We have worked very hard, so I am happy that Stephanie came down to force us to take the day off.

Windows, Doors, Walls, and Chores

Chris and Frank were able to complete all of the windows yesterday, and they even had time to install the back door that will lead into my laundry room and the garage. They said they would be back next week to complete the other doors.

Frank prying out the old kitchen window.

Exterior view of my kitchen with a very "open air" look to it!

I have to say that I am thrilled with the front (west) windows.  I have a big picture window in the middle of each opening with two side panels that slide to the middle for ventilation.  See Frank and the attached pictures above.

The big excitement of the day again centered around wildlife.  This time a gecko came into the house through the front door and Stephanie started screaming and jumping around like the poor little thing was an alligator.

Rick yelled, "How do we catch him and get him out?"

"Use a broom," I answered, having done so successfully with a gecko that was in the garage.  Rick cornered him near the front door and then used a broom to literally sweep him off his feet and back to the great outdoors.  I really wish I had a movie of the whole adventure! The Keystone Cops or the Three Stooges could not have been any more funny.

No modesty in this master bathroom!

Rick started to remove the wall in the master bedroom yesterday to enlarge the master bath.  What a dusty mess!  We filled the garbage bin with plaster, so I held my breath this morning when the truck pulled up.  They have an automatic arm that lifts and dumps the trash, but the plaster dust that flew out of the top was so great that the driver actually glanced in his rear-view mirror to look.  I know that the city has a weight limit on the garbage in the can, and I suspect that we probably exceeded that limit by a pound or two... or 75!

And the old wall continues to come down.

Stephanie said that our new bed in the guest room was very comfortable, but since she had to sleep on a blow-up mattress on a concrete floor during her last visit in October, a real mattress just had to be an improvement.  Sadly, she woke up with a bad headache, so her first day here has not been great.

Rick spent the first part of the morning ripping down more plaster and wall.  The plaster has a wire mesh that looks like chicken wire behind it, so as he reaches the edges, he has to trim all of that old, rusty wire away. What a pain!

We went to Leader's before lunch and actually ordered out our new master bedroom set.  It is the fun set I described before with the pineapples on the bedposts and pineapples for feet on the dresser.  We will have a white dresser, headboard, mirror, two nightstands, and a chest that will set at the end of the bed. It will fit beautifully in the room.  Other companion pieces are available, but for now I think that will more than take care of my needs.

We came home for lunch and then set out to pick up some blinds for the new windows.  That is the only problem with spending money on new windows... now we need to spend even more money on blinds to cover them!  I must say that the former owner of the house must have found a tremendous sale on wall anchors.  I remember last year removing 38 wall anchors from the Florida room, and today we removed at least 30 more.  I promise that if and when we ever change the blinds we are going to put up tomorrow, we will remove the old wall anchors before we put up new ones!  If you have stock in a company that makes wall anchors, sell.  Jackie does not own this house anymore, so I am sure that sales are down!

Everywhere we look, we have 10 jobs to do.  This year seems even worse than last year, and we seem to get pulled from job to job.  We have to remove the dirt in the front flower garden and put in pavers so Chris and Frank will have something to step on when they put in the new double front doors next week.  All of the windows need washing, and we need to hang blinds in all of them... after the plaster dries from patching anchor holes and after the paint dries from painting the inside of the window openings.

One task that I did complete today was trying to find a way to arrange the living room furniture (or what we have of it right now). Rick made a cocktail table and a TV stand this past year, so they join the couch, two Ikea chairs with footstools, two end tables, and the sofa table.  Stephanie and I rearranged and rearranged furniture this morning until we found something that seems to work.  That's the way it will stay until we can get rid of the Ikea chairs and buy some better stuffed furniture to go along with the couch.  Mind you that once we both go on retirement checks alone, the money for furniture may be years and years away.

We have plans for the rest of the week even though rain is predicted each day.  Tomorrow we would like to see the Botanical Gardens and try to get some pictures to put up in my photo gallery display.  (Steph also helped me pick out a good place for it.)

We want to go down to Florida Orange Grove and Winery in St. Petersburg to get some more wine.  We know that we can buy it locally, but the winery is a fun place to visit.  On Friday we want to try The Gallery for their Friday night fish fry.  Sunday is Rick's birthday, so we will have to come up with something fun then to celebrate him turning the big 6-0!

Funny, we keep getting older, but with all of the improvements we make to Gladys, we are bringing her up to date and giving her a whole new lease on life.

New Windows and Visitors

Yesterday (Tuesday) brought about a complete transformation for part of the house as the window installers (Chris and Frank) came to start the new window installation.  We chose Simenton double-hung windows for most of the house, but since I wanted slide-by windows for the kitchen, we had to go with a different manufacturer called PGT for the hurricane rating on those windows.  That is important since the front of the house -- kitchen and master bedroom -- face west. We chose the same window configuration for the master to make them match and give the house a cohesive look.

Chris removing the old aluminum windows. Say goodbye...

The installers started with the Florida room windows, and since that room has more windows (and more energy loss) than any other room in the house -- perhaps with the exception of the floor-to-ceiling louvers next to the front door -- we were glad they chose that room first.  As you can see by the attached pictures, the transformation of 1960's ugly aluminum to 2012 hurricane-resistant, low-E, double-paned, white vinyl-clad windows was remarkable.  The old windows were so decrepit that they came out quite easily.  I was horrified to see that they were held in by eight tiny little screws, and I think a wish and a prayer.  The new windows are bolted into the cement block structure with 16 three-inch Tapcon screws.  They are going nowhere for generations to come.

The new windows: secure and clean!

Chris was very meticulous in his installation techniques which pleased us both immensely.  We believe the windows are installed securely and will protect us and our children and hopefully grandchildren for many years.

In one day's time, Chris and Frank were able to install the six windows in the Florida room, the two windows in the guest room, and the single windows in each of the bathrooms. Ten windows in one day was more than I expected, but they worked hard and steadily all day long. They plan on completing the three master bedroom windows, the two kitchen windows, the garage window, and one of the four doors they need to install by the end of today.

Sam, the wood stork. What a bird-brain!

While everyone was busy working on the house, we had a new visitor to our yard.  I am surprised because we were making lots of noise, and everyone was running in and out of the house constantly.  Apparently, though, curiosity got the better of this old bird because when I looked out the window, this almost four-foot tall wood stork was walking through the front yard toward the house. I went outside to get some pictures, and as I approached him, the bird actually walked toward me instead of keeping his distance! I snapped some quick shots and then went into the house.

"Don't feed him," Frank said. "If you do, you will never get rid of the damn thing.  He will be in your yard every day."

Now storks either have to the the dumbest or the smartest bird around.  Apparently someone in the neighborhood must have been feeding him because when I looked out the front door, I almost had a heart attack. There he was, standing on my front porch about two feet away from me.  That bird -- I call him Sam -- was huge!  If I stood next to him, his head would be almost even with my shoulders.  I say they are dumb because they are not afraid of humans, and if someone wanted to throttle him, he would be easy prey. (If he keeps visiting my front porch, I may be the one ready to throttle him.  After all, I have a very large crock pot!) I say he may be smart because his approachability probably is what prompted someone around here to feed him.

Stephanie just texted us that she is on the plane on her way to Florida.  While the welcome sign will be out for her and for the window installers today, I certainly do not need any more visits from our literally bird-brained guest of yesterday.

Small Successes

I have been up since 4:45 this morning, awakened by weird nightmares about falling and having my right arm cut off.  I know that the falling nightmare is usually associated with people who feel they do not have control of their lives (or budgets!), so that one I can somewhat understand.  After scrubbing walls all day Sunday, my arm and shoulder ached so much that I think, subconsciously, I wished someone would cut off my right arm.  At any rate, as I rolled over to try to get back to sleep, Rick started to snore, so I knew I was better off out of the bedroom.

I came to the computer and solved one mystery.  I looked up online the owner of the house behind us.  His name was Richard Robert Pusey, and according to city records, he died on February 1, 2012, at age 81.  The house is vacant most of the time apparently because the family is moving things out and trying to sell it. That explains the property agent and the seemingly abandoned nature of the property.  I hope that the house sells to a nice couple who will take care of it. Since it is an estate, it has yet to hit the MLA listings.

When Rick got up, our first order of business was to get the master bathroom sink repaired.  I always wondered why something that looked like a capital J was called a P-trap, but after watching the trap fail due to a large hole in the bottom, Gladys did, indeed, pee out all of the water in the basin.  Maybe the name is descriptive and appropriate after all!

Rick discovered that two trips to the store were necessary because modern replacement parts do not always fit 1960 plumbing configurations.  Market tip: if you have not yet purchased stock in Lowe's and Home Depot, do so now.  With our daily trips there, the value of both corporations is sure to go up.

Rick starting the trim work for the guest room transformation.

The completed paint job.  New windows will be added
in a few days.

After we repaired Gladys' incontinent issues, we were ready to start painting the guest room (which really was what Rick wanted to do from the moment he woke up.) The attached pictures show the results.  What the pictures do not clearly show is that the blue walls really make the blueberries in the cover "pop" from the background. We both love the color of the room and are happy with the results.  We cannot paint the inside window frames yet until we get the new windows installed.  The baseboard, white paint on the closet doors, and a little art on the walls will complete the look. By the way, I do work, too.  I never am shown in the pictures because I am always the photographer behind the lens.


After lunch we went looking for a replacement tree for the yard, and we once again collided with yet another Dunedin dilemma.  The paperwork from the city says that we have to have a tree in before September 31 (yeah, I know...) of this year, so we went to a really nice nursery today.  It was closed but its companion garden center store was open.  We talked to the vice president of the company who told us that even if we planted a crepe myrtle tree today, it still would die.  He suggested that we get an extension on the permit and plant one in January when we come back down.  We went to the city and talked to an engineer named Alan Mayberry.  He told us that if we planted in January and watered until May, the tree probably still would die.  He said that the tree needs water in June - September (the growing season) in order to really establish the root system. So no matter what we do, we are not planning on being here long enough to water the tree and to keep the darn thing alive.  Sigh.  Sometimes this home ownership in two different states really is a problem.  We are not sure what we are going to do because when we leave, we turn off the water to the house.  Even if we asked the neighbors to water for us, we are not sure they are reliable, and we would be asking them to use their water.  While we can pay for the water, Rick is not keen on the idea of imposing on the neighbors. This dilemma has yet to be solved.

Tonight we got the house ready for the window people to come tomorrow.  I am really excited to see what changes will happen to the look, insulation, and security of the house with new doors and windows.  We have been trying to fix, patch, and doll Gladys up.  Now we will give her some new glass(es) so we all can see the world a little more clearly.

The Guest Room

Since Stephanie is coming to visit next week, we have been referring to the guest bedroom as "Stephanie's room"; however, our youngest daughter took exception to that, so we have made a conscious effort to refer to it as a "guest bedroom."  We want to try to keep the second bedroom available only for our immediate family members and perhaps an invited friend, but we do not want our home to become a free hotel for whomever decides to invite him or herself down. That may sound antisocial, and I guess in a way it is, but people would not think of trying to stay in our Green Bay home, so we want to keep the Florida home on the same status. Besides, when Rick really works hard and is overtired, I need another room to escape from the snoring so I can get some sleep too.

The "before" guest bedroom.

We are excited to have Stephanie come, and if nothing else, that has prompted us to do what we can to prepare the room for human habitation.  Rick was up by 6:14 this morning, so we got an early start.  After taking everything out of the room except the bed which we draped in plastic, I armed myself with a bucket of water laced with tri-sodium phosphate (TSP) and a bucket of rinse water.  A couple of minutes later, Rick walked into the room and could see exactly where I had scrubbed and where I had not. The last owner of the house smoked, and by the nicotine stains on the walls, I do not think she heeded the Fire Department's warnings about not smoking in bed.  Stains outlined where every picture had hung in the room, and the juncture of wall and ceiling housed a brown line of nicotine soot.  Also, at one time someone must have dropped or slopped a cup of coffee in the room because two walls were splattered with coffee drippings. How in the world did we ever sleep in that room temporarily last year?  I guess we were just too exhausted at night to notice or to care.

I finished washing three walls before lunch time.  Meanwhile, Rick had removed the baseboard in the room, scraped the offending "paint line" above the old baseboard, and started to patch what needed patching.  We discovered that Gladys has 3.5" baseboards, and the new ones that we can buy are only 3.25".  Without lots of scraping and plastering, the new boards would obviously be a replacement. We also forgot to take out the base shoe in that room, so when we had the floors redone last year, the floor was not polished under the base shoe.  I may need to do some serious scrubbing along the walls in the room.

Although beautiful, the fan does not seem safe.

Another thing that needs our attention is the fan in the room. Rick took a bucket of water just to wash off the layer of dust on the fan blades.  We have a replacement fan that we need to install before Stephanie comes.  While I really like the looks of the old fan, it shimmies more than a stripper dancing to fast music in a cheap bar. Neither of us would want to sleep under the wobbly fan!

A sample of the blue that will adorn the guest room.

Rick was able to paint the ceiling today, and tomorrow we will try to give the room the first coat of wall paint.  We have chosen a blue to make the blueberries in the comforter cover "pop" when you look at it.  I really like the color and think it may be the most dynamic in the whole house.  We would like to add some wooden blinds to match the tan color in the comforter cover also.  Once again, all it takes is time and money.

Gladys' latest surprise.

After a delicious dinner this evening, I went into the master bath to wash my hands.  When I turned off the faucet, I heard a steady stream of water.  Oh-oh.  I called Chief Running Water who looked at the trap under the sink and sort of laughed.  There is a hole that finally has worn through the old pipe.  Please keep in mind that this is the house that had SCOTCH TAPE on all of the drains when we bought the house. Thankfully, we keep a plastic garbage can under the sink, so the dripping water was safely contained in the plastic bag in the garbage can.  Although we could have made another run to Lowe's, we decided that we had other functioning sinks in the house, and this latest disaster can wait until tomorrow.

I look forward to seeing how the guest room will turn out once it is painted.  Obviously, we now face a plumbing job tomorrow as well.  We have worked from sun-up to sun-down, and beyond, every day that we have been here.  We still have a thousand things to do, but that is part of the challenge.

Gladys sometimes gives us gifts and sometimes gives us these little surprises just to see if we are really paying attention to her. We are here for eight more weeks, and something tells me that Gladys will get more than her fair share of attention.

Too Many Possibilities

We spent most of yesterday morning working in the yard and the afternoon trying to figure out what we were going to do next.  We have too many tasks that need to be done, and Rick is already starting to panic that we are not working fast or hard enough. (Please note the blog up to this point for the number of tasks that we HAVE completed!)  Last night, though, for the first time since we came last Saturday, we took a drive down to Weaver Park near the bay -- actually, St. Joseph's Sound, if you want to be technical.  Unfortunately, the Park was holding an outdoor concert, so we bypassed the gazillion people and parked in the "other" big city park near the Marina.  We walked out onto the pier and were able to watch a beautiful sunset over the water.

Before that wonderful sunset, however, we cleaned out the Florida room off the living room and painted the first coat of Pratt and Lambert's Ocean City Blue. The room is a pale blue, and the best thing about it is that the paint color separates it from the living room for the first time. Sadly, because we had to paint, we also had to take down all of the window blinds. This leaves the whole back of the house totally exposed, and that is not really a secure feeling right now, especially considering the house behind us.

As I mentioned earlier, the house behind our property (separated from us only by a chain-link fence) is unkept and the back yard is filled with rolls of insulation, an old pontoon boat, and God only knows what else.  We saw a lock box on the handle of the back door, so I thought that the house was for sale or in foreclosure.  Rick and I took a walk around the block last night, and much to our surprise, we saw that someone was sitting in the house watching a TV. OK, so the guy is just not into yard work...

However, today when we came home from Lowe's (our second home), I heard a lawn mower running. Sure enough, a man riding around on a standing lawn mower was cutting the grass in the neighboring house's back yard.  Only lawn service people use that kind of mower.  Then he came back and trimmed around all of the trees, using a blower to clear grass from the small patio in the back.  As he turned his back to us, we saw the words Property Agent on the back of his shirt.  Generally if  a bank owns property, they will hire a service to take care of the lawn.  Before he left, we saw the man take out a camera and take pictures of the back yard, the house, the pontoon boat, and the electrical meter!

I have no idea who we saw in the house last evening (a squatter, perhaps?), but the pieces of the puzzle all seem to fit that the house is in foreclosure.  We hope that if it is we can get a nice, quiet family who will take care of the property and be good neighbors. The other options would be either that someone does own the house and is just a slob, or that the house is for sale and may end up as a rental.  Too many possibilities exist for what may become of that property; consequently, Rick and I have renewed our efforts to find the money to put up a 6 foot privacy fence around our whole property.

We started today by adding a second coat of paint to the Florida room, using every last drop of the gallon to cover all of the walls. To escape from the paint smell, we went out in late morning to buy more paint and to find a Woodcraft store in the area to get stain for the vanity.  We wanted to check out some other nurseries for our tree options, but we spent too much time at a store called Leaders.  This store specializes in high-end wicker and rattan furniture.  The is NOT the cheap junk found in most stores; this furniture must pass quality standards and the upholstery is all done in North Carolina, so at least part of it is American made.  We wanted to see what kind of a sofa/love seat/chair grouping we could find for the Florida room that would match the new color on the walls.  We found a pattern of green palm leaves, blue flowers, mauve accents (think Monet impressionism) that went well with the painted piece of drywall we took along.  We had already selected the style of furniture that we wanted last year.  As the saleswoman started added the pieces together, I wandered around the store.  Then I saw it: a white bedroom grouping of louvered doors and glass over woven rattan that I had been seeking.  The headboard was proportioned well, the nightstands had a drawer and louvered doors below, the dresser would be adequate for our clothes down here, the mirror was the right size for the bedroom wall, and it had a matching cushion-covered bench for the end of the bed on which to sit to put on shoes. (The current chair in our bedroom for that purpose is constantly covered with clothes that we intend to wear the next day since we usually have "work clothes" and "store clothes" going at the same time.)   The bench even came with two louvered drawers in which I could store the bed linens.

"Rick," I said, "You have to come and see this."

As I started to walk toward the bedroom set, Rick later said that he knew exactly what set I had chosen.  Although the quality is not up to Ethan Allen or Rick Anderson-made standards, it is not bad and will certainly suit our needs.  The only problem:  too many possibilities on what we wanted to buy from the store, and too little money to cover it all!  We got a price for the whole Florida Room set and for the bedroom group, but we ordered nothing yet.  I cannot make that commitment until we see if there will be any hidden costs with the windows and doors going in (other than the expected cost of all new window coverings!), and until we see how much the electrical updates will be in the kitchen.

Everywhere we turn, there are things to do and great possibilities that present themselves to us.  Our task right now it to prioritize what needs to be done, what we can afford, what we really need, and what can wait until me have more time... and much more money!

Gladys became a little more beautiful today with another room painted, and she will get even better when we finally tackle the guest room tomorrow.  For now, the styrofoam insulation boards are back up in the Florida room windows to give us some privacy, and our bedroom furniture includes Lindsay's old dresser and mirror, two ancient Ethan Allen end tables that serve as night stands, no headboard, and an old desk chair that Rick used in high school.  The house's "decor" is early American marriage, and that is OK.  How else can two old fogies like us feel like newlyweds again as we struggle to turn a beat-up old house into a beautiful southern home?

Building for the Future

Rick digging Tongues behind the bushes I just cut down.

Today was a much better day than yesterday, partly, I think, because we both felt that we had accomplished something.  We got up early and decided to work outside before it got too hot.  Rick went back to digging out the mother-in-law's tongue, and I finished topping off the remaining bushes that we wanted to keep.  The photos show that we have lots of brush to get rid of, and we have not even begun to take out all of the leaves and debris in the gardens.  We literally have at least 50 bags of debris to rake up and dispose of before we can begin to plan our new gardens.  The actual planting will have to take place next year when we have some money saved... with one exception.

Today in the mail we received an envelope from the City of Dunedin.  I actually thought they were sending us paperwork for the permit we need to take out to put up a fence, so I was dumbfounded when I read a notice from the city saying that since we removed a diseased, nearly-dead Holly tree, we were required before September 31, 2012, to replace that tree with a 2 - 3" wide trunk and 8 - 10 foot high ornamental or shade tree.  We also received a booklet of what trees were "approved" as replacement trees.

Now while I consider myself a "green" person who recycles and tries to keep the environment safe, and while I also really love trees and understand the city's desire to keep Dunedin green, at this moment buying a $150 - $200 tree is just taking "green" from our already tight budget.  We have no choice, though, since the city inspectors will check to see if we have been compliant with their orders.  We purposely did not buy a house in a gated community because we did not want all of the neighborhood restrictions, and now we find that the whole freaking city has more regulations than the most exclusive of addresses.

My cactus flower!

One nice surprise this morning was that with the sun finally able to reach the cactus, we actually were able to see it bloom!  The blossoms on this "arm" of the cactus were white, but Rick thinks that, strangely enough, the other "arm" has pink flowers.  That arm has yet to open any of its buds, so we will have to see what develops.  With the sun in the garden, we also noted that our newly-discovered magnolia tree has some beautiful white flowers, too.  

Magnolia in bloom.

Rick also was able to patch the holes in the wall in the guest room, and we hope to have that room painted before Stephanie arrives next Wednesday.  The only drawback to her timing of her visit is that we received a call from Jeff telling us that his crew will be here to put in the new windows starting next Tuesday.  Since they will take approximately four days to install all of the windows and doors, they will be here (and we will have to be home) during most of Stephanie's visit.

Rick resting after constructing the vanity. The drawers are
stacked in the background.

After lots of running around to a half a dozen different stores after lunch, we came home and Rick started to assemble the bathroom vanity.  Talking to the kitchen contractor yesterday convinced us that white furniture may not be the way to go, so we have decided to stain rather than to paint the vanity.  The pictures show the vanity frame all together.  Tomorrow we will clean up and rearrange the garage enough so we can stain the vanity.  We have no idea what we will do for a vanity top at this time, but for now the $10 cast-iron Kohler pink sink that I purchased from the Habitat for Humanity Resale Store in Green Bay will be my "temporary" bathroom sink.  We figure that when we are finished with it, we will take it back to the Resale Store and they can sell it again.  That way, the green cash from the sales will go back into that organization.

My goal tomorrow is to NOT go to any stores and to NOT spend any money.  I want to devote much of my time to scrubbing the tobacco stains off  the guest room walls so paint will adhere to it, and I know that Rick will want to stain the vanity.

We have had our mail forwarded here from Green Bay, so today I got the monthly notice of our investments.  As anyone with stocks knows, the market has not been kind the last two months, so we have lost an astonishing amount (at least according to MY meager budget) in the last month alone.  This Old House TV show always talks about the value of "sweat equity" in a restoration, and while we may not have the money to do everything we want here, we are willing to do as much as we can to make Gladys a snug, beautiful, welcoming home. Sweat is something we have been doing profusely, so we hope that the equity part will come about as the weeks progress.

Disappointing Day

Today turned out to be a terribly disappointing day.  We had planned on meeting with the kitchen cabinet guy, letting the pest control people in for the semi-annual treatment of the property, and then getting some painting, scrubbing, assembling, or digging done before the day's end.  Sadly, we accomplished little instead.

The day started out well.  We got some paperwork needed for the window installation notarized so the installation can commence next week.  We then talked to the city planning office about a permit to build a fence. (For those of you new to the blog, in Dunedin you need a permit to do anything short of changing the toilet paper roll!)  Next we went to Dunedin Plumbing to find out what we needed to do to get the shower remodeled in the master bathroom. We learned that we probably cannot afford to do ANYTHING this year with the shower... we may keep what we have and just cap off the new wall at this point. We also learned that we cannot change the position of the water heater from our not-yet-enclosed laundry room, and that a soft-water system is not in our near future. This is where the disappointment started. Money, as usual, is the problem.

By 10:00 a.m. we were back home in time to meet with Michael, the cabinet contractor.  That is where the disappointment substantially increased.  He brought in a sample of the cabinet he proposed, a beautifully constructed maple cabinet in a honey-blonde finish.

"Can I get this in white?" I asked.
"Ah, no," he replied. "This cabinet only comes in this and a darker color."

My mental picture of my beach-front white cabinets against a robin's-egg blue background crumpled before my eyes. I am not a great fan of the 1950's blonde furniture, and these cabinets were just a shade or two darker. I was so disappointed that I wanted to cry. Michael went on to explain that the white cabinets are only available in a lacquer finish that will crack over time, leaving a pencil-like line at all of the joints.

However, that was not the end of the disappointment. We went on to plan the rest of the cabinets, deleting some of the features we did not want and adding some slide-outs and other things that we wanted, all the while keeping the budget in mind.  Rick had mentioned this morning that counter space was limited in our current set-up, and in looking at our original plan, we did not gain too much more.  Michael suggested getting rid of the kitchen desk to gain more cabinet and counter space.  While I really like and use my desk in the kitchen at home, we could gain four more cabinets and another six feet of counter space by deleting the desk.  So with a sad, sad sigh, my heart was further broken as the desk disappeared from the plan.  Rick promised me a desk in the spare bedroom, but being stuck in the back corner room is not the same as being in a sunny kitchen.  I will adjust, but the rest of my mental image of my bright Florida kitchen disappeared forever.

Further disappointment arrived when we reviewed the electrical set-up in the kitchen.  The plug for the refrigerator that we paid a fortune for last year needs to be moved 6 inches to the right, and the plug for the stove also is not in the right place.  We have to move the upper outlet next to the stove, and we have to add at least four other outlets (all in concrete walls!) to bring everything up to code.

After a brief lunch, we met with the pest control guy who sprayed the house for bugs.  He told us that the flying white bugs we noted in the backyard as the trees fell down where, indeed, flying termites. Then I asked him to look at a mysterious hole in the side yard which I told Rick was probably a snake hole.  Rick insisted it was not, but the pest control man equally assured me that it probably WAS the abode of a black snake.

"But don't worry," he said with a smile. "Black snakes are good because they eat lizards and fruit rats and other nasty things."  Yeah, right.  And he thinks a black snake is NOT a "nasty thing"?

By the time the pest control man left, we were at late afternoon.  It was still too hot to work outside (so scratch the digging idea), too late to start to assemble the bathroom vanity (scratch assembling), too late to start washing down the guest room walls in preparation for fresh paint (scratch scrubbing), and I was too disappointed to try to be creative with a paint brush in the Florida room.

Rick suggested we go to the store to buy curtain rods for the master bedroom.  I had bought thermal insulated curtains from Plow and Hearth for that room last year, but had not taken them from the package yet.  We found two rods reasonably priced at Sears and came home.  While Rick worked on putting the rods up, I went into the spare bedroom to iron the curtain.  More disappointment.  One of the panels had some darker threads woven into the white curtains, so there were actually four "lines" in one of the panels.  Additionally, the panels did not iron worth crap.  They still looked wrinkled when I was finished with them.

We hung two of the panels on the rod Rick had put up and immediately noticed the rod start to bow even though the curtains were not that heavy.  Chalk up disappointment number six of the day!  Rick called Plow and Hearth and arranged to have the curtains sent back.  Then he took down the rod, we repackaged it, and returned that to Sears.

I want to cry.  My kitchen plans are changed, and it will take me a while to get used to the new look and new plans for the room.  Black snakes have moved into my southern flower garden, and termites are in the air. Nothing seemed to work out as planned today.  I cannot even say that it was a productive day where I completed a single task beyond making dinner and washing the dishes.

I know that I should not be so ungrateful.  The cabinets Michael proposed are made very well, and I am sure that they will still be bright, new, and very functional in the room.  The revised cabinet plans also are going to give me lots of storage space and counter space to use, so in the end that too is probably a good thing.

Black snakes DO eat other pests, and they are more afraid of humans than (supposedly) humans are of them, and I still have the old shades in my bedroom, so the windows are covered for the evening.

I am going to bed.  I hope that when I wake up tomorrow, I will do so to a better day.

Clearing the Jungle -- Part II

After I posted the blog last night, I settled down and took another look at the glass bowl that we resurrected from the back yard.  Years of being addicted to Antiques Roadshow has taught me to always look for some kind of identifying mark on any glasswork or pottery.  Much to my surprise, I actually found the number 36 and the words Arcoroc France molded into the glass.  An investigation online (whatever did we do before the Internet?) told me that we had found a bowl made by a very famous glass and dish maker in France.  We have the diamond and star pattern, and currently one auction at E-bay is starting the bidding at $14.00.  Other sites have the same bowl offered for between $9 - $12 dollars.  Who would have guessed?  I thought the bowl looked similar to the ones my mother told me she bought early in her marriage at Kresge's for 29 cents! I guess Gladys really did give us a nice gift.

The Holly tree coming down.

After a very restless night, we awoke this morning to the prayed-for good weather since Boen Tree Service was coming today to remove our trees. We had an almost dead Holly tree that Jeff from Boen told us last October should be removed "before the next hurricane season."  Since we are now IN the next hurricane season, we felt that removing the tree before it fell on something would be a responsible thing to do.

Before the tree people came this morning, I moved two small plants that were growing next to the patio.  I have  yet to find them in my garden books, so I am not sure what they are, but they seem happy in their new home behind the garage.

The back yard before

...and after.

Along with the Holly tree, we also contracted for the removal of seven Brazilian Pepper Trees and Wild Cherry trees.  As the pictures show, the crew of four did a fantastic job of removing the invasive or dead trees and transforming our back yard.  In the course of removing the contracted trees, we also ended up removing the palm tree next to the patio that was fighting with the Live Oak tree for space and sunlight. Additionally, we gave permission to take down a Queen palm that we did not even know we had (that was tangled in the electrical wires and would have been removed anyway by the power company) and a thorny, almost-dead orange or lemon --citrus for sure -- tree hidden in the middle of the "jungle" we called a back yard.

Now that the trees are gone, so is some of our privacy from the junky back yard of the house behind us; however, we now have a clean slate on which we can plant and build the backyard that we really want. Once the tree people were gone, Rick and I tackled what was left.  We want to eventually prune the remaining Cleyera shrubs down to about 6 feet so they are a manageable size while still giving us some privacy.  Rick spent over 2 hours digging up about 10 feet of  Sansevieria trifasciata (Mother-in-Law's Tongue) that has tried to take over the back yard.  We still have another 30 feet or so of that to remove.

Our latest gift from Gladys.

Gladys also gave us another buried treasure.  As I was working toward the fence line, I spotted the cement head of a deer looking up at me.  Both ears were missing, but the steel rods that once supported the ears were still present, giving the deer a rather horned, Satanic look.  When I tried to pull the head up from the dirt, I felt great resistance.  Further tugging revealed the statue in the picture, a reclining deer that was literally buried up to its neck.  While I should be grateful that Gladys keeps presenting me with gifts, I would have preferred more glassware to the cement statue that will go out with Thursday's trash. Hm-m-m.  Today is Steve and Chris' wedding anniversary.  Maybe Rick can be the cheapest little brother on the planet and leave them the statue as a 41st wedding anniversary gift.  (Just kidding... I promise the Dunedin landfill will be the final resting place of this dear little deer.)

Happily, tucked way back in the northeast corner of our property is a wonderful magnolia tree that we also did not know we owned. Now that all of the Pepper trees are gone, the magnoila might actually get enough sunlight to bloom!  We eventually would like to introduce some other flowering shrubs along with some other perennials to bring some color to the back gardens.

And speaking of blooming, I might actually get to see the giant cactus in the back yard bloom.  Each time I have been down here, the cactus had buds, but we always left before we had a chance to see the flowers actually open.  The cactus now has full sun, and Rick counted 9 buds on the cactus arms, so I will have to include pictures if I actually get to witness the cactus bloom.

Will the garden be done this year?  No way. We are trying to stretch the budget to include kitchen cabinets and a new fence  on the south side of the house this year.  We have no money left for frills like flowers and shrubs.  Those will come in time, but until we have some discretionary money to spend on such things, we will have to rely on God to fill in the greenery left in the back yard.