We told ourselves that today would be a relaxing, down day, and so far we have been able to just stay around the neighborhood and chill out. It feels great. I awoke with a headache, so about mid-morning we went out into the 40+ degree weather and tried, for the first time this year, a walk around the block. It felt so good to get out! I made it around the block with no problem, although I must admit that I took a nap this afternoon. A loving family, a new grandson, understanding friends, supportive prayers, and the ability to nap when I want to do so. I have much to be thankful for!
Tuesday evening turned out to be a rather wild day in Florida. Storms were predicted, and they came in during the early evening with very strong winds. Unknown to us, we actually had tornado warnings for Pinellas County. Hmmm. A tornado. In Wisconsin, that is a part of living in the state. When the warnings come in, one just watches the TV and the clouds outside, and then heads for the basement if threatening weather appears. But a tornado in Florida? That is something we had not considered since we have no basement into which to retreat should threatening clouds swoop down. After some thought, I guess we would have to retreat to the more enclosed areas within the house -- either the tiny coat closet in the hallway or the bedroom closet in the guest room. We have the security of the wind-resistent windows and doors, so I think we would be safe; however, a tornado is something I had not really thought about before. We have already determined that if a hurricane heads this way, we will just get out early. A tornado, however, does not give that much advanced notice.
The only consequence we had from the storm was to wake up early to the sounds of our charging phones beeping loudly as we lost power in the house. After we both took quick showers before the 50 gallons of hot water in the water heater cooled, Rick drove to McDonald's to get us a fast, hot breakfast. By the time he arrived home, the power was back on.
I struggle each day with the desire to do many things around the house, and then find that I do not have the energy to do much at all. I threw in a load of laundry, and then watched Rick vacuum the whole house. Terrazzo floors are fantastic, but we could vacuum each day to keep them clean. Maybe that is a good thing. With carpet, the dirt just sits there, undetected. At least with the terrazzo, we can see when we track in dirt and sweep it up, making the house cleaner. After he vacuumed the main debris, I dry-mopped the whole house to pick up the dust. At the time, it felt good to exercise. Last night, I ached all over. Maybe I over did the cleaning a bit.
Rick and I had found an area rug for the living room at the furniture store, but it was both too large and way too expensive for us. Steve suggested that we look at rugstudio.com. He has had good luck with their products. We actually found the rug that we saw in the store; however, we are still not sure we can get it in the size we want. We are going to wait until we have the sofas in place (probably sometime in February) and then determine the size of rug we need. The good thing about the rug online is that it was about half price from the rug displayed in the furniture store.
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| A square jars holds change while the round one works for my lancets. |
Another stop yesterday was to a millwork shop that we have used in the past. We got the laundry room doors there last year with the intension of replacing the other room and closet doors in the house with the same style of door.
The current doors in this house are terrible. They have probably all been in the house since it was built in 1960, and as hollow-core, cheap doors, they are all starting to delaminate. For now, we have glued them back together and slapped on a fresh coat of paint to clean them a bit, but they still look pretty tacky.
We had to wait for our saleswoman for a while, so she suggested that we go to their new showroom and look around. In the showroom we found Paul working. He is one of the partners for the shop. We started to tell him about our problems concerning bedroom closet doors. The current doors are 1960 original doors, and not only are they short on the bottom part to make room for much-needed storage on the top part, but also they are falling apart and do not really fit our modern lifestyle. Rick talked about closing off the upper part, but we badly need the storage space it provides since we do not have a basement in this house.
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| The bedroom closet doors are held together with glue and paint. They need to go. |
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| The guest bedroom has the same configuration, so they also need to be replaced to match the other doors that we want in the house. |
We had not considered larger doors, but we think that with a little rebuilding of the structure and frame, we can have the closets that we want internally with the matching, clean look of new closet doors on the outside.
Our door budget took a bit of a hit because we also decided to order pre-hung doors instead of trying to strip the original frames. I am afraid that they may contain lead paint, and I do not want to deal with that hassle or health-hazard right now. The bid came in, naturally, at twice the price of our original budget, but that bid includes the four slide-by closet panels for the bedroom closets. Rick has to figure out a bit more on the engineering side of rebuilding the interiors of the closets, but we are excited about the potential results.
We are thankful for the progress and decisions that we have made so far, so we are looking toward putting the plans into action when we return after the holidays.
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