Doors, Dirt, Festool, Face Frames, and Fan

We have been so busy working both inside and outside of our house that I have not had much time to update this blog for the past week. We continue to make progress putting our disheveled house back together.

I'll start with the outside.  Lat week Steve of Economy Stump Removal came and took out the three stumps in our back yard.  Then he "followed the roots" of the main huge tree and pretty much made most of the back yard look like an angry ocean in the midst of a hurricane.  We were not upset about that because we needed to get those roots out, and we knew that Travis would come and smooth the yard out with his tractor.

Steve runs the grinding machine to remove
the large cottonwood stump in the middle of the back yard.

Steve and his son, Kyle, hauled away a huge trailer full
and a truck full of wood chips.

On Monday of this week, we noticed that water was standing in some of the deeper ruts in our neighbor's yard, causing a muddy, smelly mess.  To solve that problem, Rick shoveled 10 wheelbarrow loads of dirt from the back yard into the neighbor's yard to our south.  I distributed and smoothed the so the rain would not settle in deep puddles anymore.

We tried to be good neighbors by filling
in the ditches in our neighbor's yard.

The next day, while we were out of town, Travis came with his tractor and somewhat leveled the back yard. He wanted to do this so the yard would have a chance to settle before he returns at the end of August to add topsoil and grass seed to our yard.  He smoothed out the neighbors' yards to the east and to the north, and he spread out grass seed in the hopes that some of it would take.  Thankfully, we got a good rain last night, and today it has been misting/ raining all day.  That is just what the seed needs.  I hope that at least some of it takes and fills in.

Inside the house, Rick finished the pocket door and hung it.  We now will be able to close off the noise in the laundry room when we run the washer or the dryer.  The door matches all of the others in the house, and I think it looks really good.

Our new pocket door as seen from the kitchen.

We discovered when we took down the door molding to that room that the paint next to the door in the kitchen was peeling away from the wall.  We use Benjamin Moore Aura paint, so we knew that cheap paint was NOT the problem.  I was able to peel all of the paint off that wall in big sheets like one would do to remove old wallpaper.  Rick took one of the sheets to the paint store, and the owner told him that the problem occurred with the original plaster job of the house.  Apparently, the plaster was not mixed properly, leaving an unfinished and chalky surface.  Paint will not stick to that forever.  She told us to wash the wall with TSP, rinse it well, let it thoroughly dry, and then prime it with an oil-based primer.  Once that primer dries, we can paint the wall with a latex paint.

Once the pocket door was in place, we were able to buy, cut, and install the drywall in the laundry room on that side of the door.  We are still waiting for the plumber to install what needs to be done on the other side of the door, but at least we can finish this corner of the room.  That will allow us to start to build and install cabinets.

Drywall completes the pocket door wall. Rick
has since plastered the corner.

Yesterday I washed the wall twice with TSP, rinsed the wall twice with water, and we are letting it thoroughly dry.  Rick bought the oil-based primer, so that will be our next step.  We want to repaint the kitchen anyway, so we will start with that wall and with our new paint color.  Neither one of us really wants to paint the kitchen RIGHT NOW, so that task may just have to wait in line until we finish other jobs.

Thank God the wall I had to wash down was
not too large!  Once this dries, we can prime and
paint it, but that will force us to paint the entire kitchen.

We received a call from Shawano Wood Products that the 1 1/2 inch red oak that Rick ordered had arrived, so we took a drive to Shawano to pick it up.  Today we spent the day building the face frames for all of the cabinets in the new laundry/ craft room.  We bought a new Kreg K5 pocket hole screw system, and it worked beautifully as we put together the face frames for the cabinets.  I even drilled some of the holes... until the collar slipped on the drill bit and I did not notice it, so I ruined one piece of wood.  That was the end of my pocket hole screwing career.

Face frames for the lower cabinets line the wall.  The gap
in the middle will be where the desk will go.

All of the face frames await further construction
as we build the cabinets.

Our final task of the day was to install the new ceiling fan for the room.  Originally I did not want a light in the fan, but Rick and I found a fan that we both liked while we were at Lowes' in Appleton.  We like the sleek look to the fan, the size, and the fact that since it is remote controlled, we have no chains hanging down into the room.  The fan was a wiring nightmare, but it now is up and works well.

Before...

and after we installed the new ceiling fan.

We have had a very successful day, and we certainly are looking forward to dinner and resting this evening.  Tomorrow, if the rain ends tonight, we will be off to buy plywood so we can make the boxes to the cabinets.  For tonight, though, I am just going to rest.

Let there be lights!

After almost killing ourselves each day this week, we are finally finished with the garage renovation.  The ceiling is painted with two coats of flat white paint, and the fire code walls all have two coats of the pale yellow paint we chose. We still have to install the vinyl baseboard, but that has to wait until the paint on the walls thoroughly dries.  We'll get back to that task later this summer.

Rick has moved on to working on the new first floor laundry/ craft room / office.  He finished the framing for the pocket door, and we picked up the solid oak, six-panel door a few days ago.  Right now he is staining the door and getting it ready to hang.

Today Rick was up before 7:00 (I "slept in" until 6:57), and we both were working in the laundry room before 7:30.  We planned where we wanted to install the ceiling can lights, and then Rick started to draw the plans on the ceiling and to cut the drywall where the cans will go.

Rick cuts the first hole for the seven can lights
that we installed today in the new laundry room.

Three down... and wired... four to go.

The first three cans went well.  We even were able to fish through the wire from one to another with few problems.

Then we moved to the other side of the room.  The first cut did not go well because we ran into some unexpected 2 x 4 framing in the attic.  Duh!  Of course!  We used to have a corner fireplace in that area, so the added framing was supporting the structure of the fireplace.  We removed the fireplace years ago, but the framing remained in the attic.

A quick trip to Home Depot showed just how distracted we were.  I elected to stay in my work clothes, but Rick made a quick change into some "good clothes" for the store.  The only problem was that he got distracted in the middle of the change, and ended up with some interesting footwear.  Neither of us even noticed until we were walking OUT of Home Depot.  Ah, well, maybe Rick will start a new working man's fashion trend.

OK, so they did not quite match...

After adjusting the placement of that mis-cut can -- and patching the errant hole with a new square of drywall-- we were back on track, or so we thought.

We decided to change the layout of the lights on that side of the room since that is where the cabinets, desk/ sewing table/ and storage unit will be.  We moved the lights to better accommodate the tasks that will occur on that side of the room, and are we glad that we did!  When we moved the lights, we double-checked where rafters might be and discovered that our original plan would have run into rafters in three of the four planned lights.

With the holes all cut, we moved on to fishing through more wire.

With the new plan intact and the holes successfully cut, we once again pulled the wires with little trouble.  Then Rick went into the attic to connect the wires to the junction box that an electrician friend of ours had wired years ago "in case you ever need some extra lines."  God bless Mike for his brilliant idea to run those lines from the attic to the electrical box in the basement.  He made our job today 1,000 times easier.

By 5:30 this evening, we had seven brightly lit and functioning new can lights in our laundry room.

Tape on the floor marks where the new cabinets
will lie.  The lights above will give us task lighting
for everything we hope to accomplish.

Seven lights will give us the illumination we desire, and the fan
in the middle will be replaced with a non-lighted, white fan
for ventilation.

That was one more major project, and we both are happy with the results.  Each light can be adjusted from 2500 - 5000 K of light.  We set the lights at 4,000 K (cool white), and that will give us more than enough light to work at the computer, to sew, to weave, and to find the lightest of stains on the laundry.  If we leave the blinds up, we also can light up half of the back yard.  I think we have enough light for anything we want to accomplish in that room!

Inside Jobs

In addition to watching the trees come down in the back yard, we also have been keeping busy with inside jobs.

As I mentioned earlier, we are putting 5/8 inch firewall drywall in the garage.  We have lived here for 28 years and never noticed that there was nothing between the garage and our house except 1/2 drywall on the interior walls, a bit of insulation in the walls, and 1/4" paneling inside the garage.  That seems to have been the way of building houses in this neighborhood in the 1970s since many homes still have their garages lined with brown paneling.  While we painted the paneling a light yellow years ago, we never made any other improvements.  We were long overdue to bring the house up to code by adding the firewall drywall in the garage.

For the last couple of weeks, Rick has been hanging, taping, mudding, and sanding that drywall.  Yesterday we actually were able to put a primer coat of paint on the south wall between our garage and living room.  By tomorrow, we hope to be able to finish the sanding of the east wall between our garage and family room.  Rick worked on it early this morning, but it just became too hot outside to continue that task.

We stated the day delightfully by meeting Lindsay, Christopher, and Owen at the Botanical Gardens.  They have a Lego Exhibit there staged throughout the gardens.  What amazing things engineers and artists can do with just Lego blocks!  Each exhibit listed a fact about what was constructed and how it was connected to the garden.  The placard also listed how many blocks (literally tens of thousands) were used in each exhibit and how many hours (think: hundreds) the builders took to complete each work.

This purple peony-- complete with a bumble bee--
was at least four feet across.

We were trying to figure out what kind of internal
structures were used to keep the Lego hummingbird
suspended above the yellow trumpet flower.

Workers used tens of thousands of Legos to build this magnificent peacock.

Even two gardeners and their wheelbarrow
were constructed of Legos! 

Once we came home from the gardens, we decided to get started on renovating the family room into our new laundry/ craft room.  Down came the crown molding, off came the baseboards, registers, outlet covers, and window coverings.

The dark family room awaits renewal.

We start the transformation.  The blue will work much better
for a laundry and craft room.

After Rick and I cut in around the edges of the room, he really started to transform it by rolling on our new light aqua coat of paint.  The color is Antiguan Sky, and the room definitely will need two coats of paint to cover the dark umber that has been on those walls for many, many years.

I think that I am going to love this room when we complete it.

I am pleased with the results so far.  The room looks larger, brighter, and more clean.  We needed a change, and this certainly is creating a new look for that corner of the house.  With the trees gone in the back, we will get more morning light in that room, too, so many elements are affecting the look of the room.  I hope it becomes a bright, welcoming place to not only do laundry, but also to create new items on the loom, on my sewing machine, and on my computer.  We have a long way to go yet, but if that room turns out as well as the laundry room at Gladys did, I will be very happy indeed.

Housing Horrors and Staying Put

As most of you know, we had a whirl-wind couple of weeks as soon as we arrived back in Wisconsin for the summer.  Our financial advisor told us we should look for a new house to better suit our interested and our needs, and he gave us the name of a good realtor on the Thursday after we were back in Wisconsin.  On Friday we contact that realtor, and she immediately started to send us listings of homes.  On Saturday, she took us to a private showing on a house in the neighborhood of our dreams.  On Sunday, we made and offer, and on Monday, the offer was accepted.  All was good... until the inspection report came back with failures in several areas.  Long story, short:  after $2400 worth of expenses, be backed out of the offer.

Our next step was to look at brand new homes, but we soon discovered that for prices almost beyond our means, those houses did not come with tiled bathrooms, granite countertops, six-panel solid oak doors, a huge kitchen, heated bathroom floors, Kohler fixtures, or triple-paned Pella windows.  We would have had to invest $20 - $30,000 just to bring those houses up to the standards we currently own.

Since the first-floor laundry was a huge consideration for moving, our next query was to learn how much putting a laundry addition on to the back of the house and enclosing our porch into a four-season room would cost.  The answer: way too much!  One contractor told us not to put that kind of money into this house in this neighborhood.  He suggested that we take one of our three bedrooms and convert one into a laundry room.  That idea did not appeal to us since we did not want to leave our daughters with a two-bedroom house to try to sell someday.

However, I did have another thought.  Traditionally, a first-floor laundry room is located next to the kitchen and near the garage, and we happened to have a den that fit that description perfectly.  Yes, we had to move the TV into the living room, but we are adjusting to that scenario well.  Also, the plumbing for the washer and the duct for the dryer both are located right below where we want to locate the units on the first floor.  Getting the laundry installed into that room will take both time and effort, but in the end this may be the perfect solution for our dilemma.

Since we decided to stay where we are, we have to face other problems and repairs in this house.  The first thing that had to go were the dangerously large and brittle trees in the back yard.  We had an art least 120 foot cottonwood that dominated the back yard.  While it has provided good shade all of these years, it also is old, brittle, and subject to killing us or our neighbors if it happened to fall in a storm.  We also had a very leaning cottonwood at the back of the property and a smaller ash tree on the property line that we wanted to take down.  That process started on Thursday of this past week.

This huge cottonwood dominates the back yard.

A worker in a boom truck cuts off the upper
branches on the smaller ash tree.

The cottonwood before...

during...

more during...

and after they finished "topping" the tree on
Friday.  They will return to remove the trunks
and the debris on Monday.

Lots of debris needs to be removed from the neighbor's yard and from our yard.

The trees did not come down as we expected.  First, they are taking more time than the owner of the tree service anticipated, and secondly, they are in our neighbor's yard as well as in our yard.  We are going to owe the neighbor some restitution for the damage to his clothesline and his garden.  In the end, though, we will be glad to have them all gone.

Keeping Busy

We have been keeping busy since we ventured north for the summer.  I'll quickly try to recap the "high points" of the last couple of weeks.

Gladys Glitches: A couple of days before we were set to depart for the summer, we awoke to water in the garage.  Our HVAC system was on the fritz, and the day before we flew home, we had to cough up over $6,000 to replace the HVAC system.  Not our idea of a good time. Now we just pray that everything is working while we are gone.

The Flight North:  We arrived at the Tampa Airport for our flight north with plenty of time to spare.  We easily walked to the head of the line since we have Pre-TSA; however, once again I was "randomly selected" for additional screening.  Of course, the full body scan revealed my insulin pump, so I had to be hand-checked before I could go further.  Sadly, that required a female TSA agent who happened to be busily checking a cast on the woman before me.  I probably waited at least 10 minutes while the woman removed the walking cast which the agents then sent through X-ray.  When I finally had my turn, the TSA agent searched my upper arm... and found nothing.  Then I told her the other item seen on the x-ray was my insulin pump, so she just had me touch it and then tested my fingers for explosive residue.  Same old routine with the same results.  I have learned that they are just trying to do their jobs to keep everyone safe, so the fastest thing to do is just to follow their directions.  I finally was able to join Rick.

Our flight was supposed to leave at 4:40 p.m.  Rick thought we might be able to squeeze in between two approaching storms, but no luck.  We watched the grey skies continue to get more and more dark as the cloud ceiling descended.  As the darkness filled the sky, the clouds opened into a torrential downpour.  It rained so hard that we seemed to be in a dense fog.  Then the lightening started.  Of course, that meant that the entire airport shut down since the law requires that all personnel must get off the tarmac in the event of rain.  Our plane, due to land from a Denver departure, eventually was re-routed to Orlando as it got low on fuel from circling so long. Long story short, our plane was not sent back to Tampa until almost 7:00 p.m, so we did not take off for Wisconsin until 7:30.  Once we landed in Milwaukee, we still had to drive north.  We did not arrive home until just before midnight.  I do not know how Rick was able to complete that drive.  We both were exhausted.

The Weather: Strangely enough, we seem to have brought the Florida weather home with us.  Just a month ago, Wisconsin received 30 inches of snow.  For the first few days that we were home, the temperatures were in the low 90's with the humidity to match.  Rick did not have to wait long to wear his shorts again!

My Health:  Just before we came north, I made a quick appointment with my rheumatologist to get medication.  I have been in remission from Dermatomyositis for the past 18 months, but my legs have started to ache again, and I am noticing weakness and trouble swallowing.  She prescribed the same medications I was on for two years, so now I am dealing with a suppressed immune system and an upset stomach from the Prednisone.  Forgive me, my friends, if I do not want to go out to lunch!

Wisconsin Work:  As usual, we came home to a number of jobs that needed our attention.  The warm fall lead to a late leaf drop, so the yard was covered with leaves this spring.  Lindsay came to rake the worst from the front yard, but our lawn service still fertilized around the groups of leaves. They also miscalculate the square footage of our yard, so we were paying for more than we owned.  We have cancelled their contract. Other projects include trees in the back yard that need to be removed to the tune of $8,000, and a possible fence to screen out the neighbors.  We no longer like our neighborhood, so we have some serious decisions to make.

To try to keep the house looking nice, we tackled the yard today.  While Rick was at the dentist this morning, I raked the leaves from the front flower gardens.  Once home, Rick mowed the lawn, and then we edged the whole front area.  After that, we picked up two yards of new mulch and spread it around the front gardens.  We worked until 4:00 this afternoon, and we both are exhausted.

The truck holds approximately a yard of mulch,
so we had to make two trips.

The new mulch nicely outlines the hostas and
the daylilies growing outside the front door.

The rest of the shaded garden now has a new layer of mulch.

The above are all reasons I have not been logged into this blog.  Each day brings new adventures.  My goal this summer is to clean out every nook and cranny of this house, and to simplify our lives by getting rid of the last 28 years of clutter.  Our lifestyles have changed, so it is time this house reflects that new way of living.

Packing Up

Since we only a few days left in the muggy, hot South, we are starting to assemble items we want to take North, items we want to stow away, and items we want to throw out.

We started the day by going over to Steve and Chris' house to check on their home and to add water to their drains before we leave for the summer.  All looks good.  We decided to take a walk in their neighborhood just to see some new scenery.  We had a delightful walk on mostly shady streets while the breeze was strong and the temperatures had not started to rise much.

From there, a quick stop at the Library for me to drop off the two books I had borrowed will now keep me in their good graces until the fall.  I was surprised at how busy the Library was just as it opened this morning!

Once home, I worked in the gardens a bit, trimming the Podocarpus, cutting out the dead branches on the front Firecracker plant, pulling a few weeds, and driving fertilizer stakes under the palm trees to give them a boost for the summer.  A bit of water kept them all happy.  I did not spend too much time watering because we are supposed to get rain for the next three days.  (Note: We were supposed to get rain for the last three days, too, but we did not get enough to even use the windshield wipers on the car! Meanwhile, Orlando is flooding because they have had so much rain.)  Pray that the rain finally comes here in the next few days... a good, slow, three-day soaking would be just fine.

While in the front yard, I noticed a lone Freesia plant blooming amidst the crab grass.  I emptied a cottage cheese container, added some potting soil, and transplanted the Freesia from the front yard -- where it would get mowed down on Monday -- into the new container.  If it lasts the summer, I will find it a new pot in the fall.

The Freesia I dug out of the back yard and put into a pot seven years ago is still going strong.  I usually get one or two blooms in the spring, but today I went outside and found a lovely surprise: five blooms on the plant!  This is the same plant that the bunnies almost ate down to nothing a couple of months ago.  The Freesia gave me one last look before we leave.

My Freesia plant blooms once again.

I love the pale pink blossoms.

We both are bummed because we had been saving for a lanai roof for next year; however, this week we noticed that the air handler in the garage (read: our air conditioner!) was leaking water.  We had had the whole system checked just a couple of weeks ago, and now it was leaking.  We learned that the pan is cracked and the insulation around the unit is soaking wet from the condensation.  Grrr!

We were quoted over $1500 just to fix that part of the system. Since we heard no guarantees, though, that the "fix" would work for very long, we decided to have a whole new, matched system installed.  We were told that our unit should have lasted longer than the seven years we have had it, and the current company we are using said that the problems we are having were probably due to a "poor installation job" and faulty equipment to begin with.  We went with a cheap company at the time because they were the only ones to offer financing, and we had a million places to go with our money.  Lesson learned.  My Grandfather used to say, "If you buy something cheap, you GET something cheap."  He was so right.  The new system will go in Monday.  We pray this one will work fine.

The only good part of the HVAC story is that we will get our money back from the "all is well" check from two weeks ago.  Not much, but better than nothing...

After lunch I helped a neighbor pick out new colors for her house.  She took one of my outdoor plants home for the summer and will water another of my plants that is too big to carry.  I "paid" her with a two-pound brick of cheese from Wisconsin.  Since she is a Minnesota gal, she loved it!

Since our garage will have to be open for the new air handler installation on Monday, we brought the two bikes into the Florida room for summer storage.  Rick put another coat of paint on our metal chairs today so they can dry in the sun today.  Then we'll bring them into the house for the summer also.  We hope that will protect them from getting too rusty.

As we continue to organize the house, we move closer to having the house ready to face the summer while we seek cooler weather in the North.  So far, so good.

Retirement

We went to church, and I prayed for rain.  We finally got some late last night, and it is still overcast and trying to sprinkle as I write this.  Rain is predicted for the next few days, and we so badly need it that I don't think people here will complain if they have to get wet.  Our grass actually "crunches" when I walk on it, so any green that the rain produces will be much appreciated.

Yesterday I asked Rick to take a picture of me standing next to our hibiscus.  I want this to be the "before" picture so I can take an "after" picture when we return in the fall.  That way I can judge how much the hibiscus has grown over the summer.

Right now, the hibiscus is just a little above my knees.

We've been a bit lazy the last day or so.  Our actions continue to pack things away or sort things out.  We passed about five rummage sales yesterday. (Must be that time of year!)  Rick asked if I wanted to stop at any of them, and I replied, "Truthfully, no. There is not one more thing I need to bring into this house."  About the only thing I would even think of buying are books that I could pass on to several of the "little library" boxes scattered across the neighborhoods or puzzles that I could pass on to Chris or to the public library.  Otherwise, we have filled the house with all that we need.

Speaking of puzzles, I completed a small 300 piece puzzle yesterday.  It is part of a box of 8 puzzles that I bought at the Library for a couple of dollars.  They are so colorful that they are fun and not at all hard to do.  The 300 piece can be done in one day.  I finished both 100 piece scenes, and I have one more 300 piece one, two 500 piece scenes, and two 1000 piece puzzles.  They are a fun way to exercise my mind and to pass the time.  I'll definitely save them for you, Chris.

The 300 piece puzzle only took a little time to complete.

Other than that, reading, exploring what we want to build and to do next year, and scheduling a gazillion appointments when we travel to the North have taken up our time.  This is what retirement is all about.

Prepping to Go

In the last couple of days, we have started to lay things out on the bed in the guest room that we want to remember to take North when we leave in a couple of weeks.  We also are starting to prep the outside of our house.

Yesterday we turned off the freezer in the garage.  While our indoor freezer in the bottom of the refrigerator is still packed with several meals (and ice cream treats!), we now have "eaten down" our inventory enough that we can fit it all into our smaller freezer.  The freezer in the garage is defrosted, wiped dry, and soon will have a cover over it for the summer.

Today we started by dressing in work clothes.  We took the remainder of our weed killer over to church, and Rick sprayed the garden wall at the front of the church (which tends to grow weeds among the stacked layers) and weedy cracks between pavers and next to the driveway.  It will not solve the weed problem totally, but every little bit will help.  We hope the weed killer has a chance to work today before the (finally!) expected rain tomorrow.

After that, we headed home and Rick sprayed the last of our bug spray around the perimeter of the house and inside the garage.  Again, we hope the rain holds off for 24 hours so the spray has a chance to work.

We packed away the hammock for the season.  We have been experiencing a terrible drought, but rain is finally predicted for tomorrow and for each day in the coming week.  We could get as much as 3 inches total, and that would be wonderful for our trees, flowers, and lawn. Pray for rain or do a little rain dance, everyone.

Speaking of trees, yesterday the city arborist came out to look at our trees.  He said that the palm trees in the front yard look good, but that the bottle brush in the back yard was planted too deeply and that the roots have wrapped around the tree ("girdled it") so that it probably never will grow.  He suggested that we could try to dig it out, free the root ball, and try to replant it less deeply, but he offered little hope that it actually would survive.  That the tree was planted incorrectly angers me because we had the nursery both deliver and plant the tree for us.  We paid good money to have them plant the tree, and ultimately that is what will kill it.  We'll have to replace that tree in the fall when we return, and I assure you we will not purchase it from the same nursery.

We picked up a few other things in the garage, starting to store items away for the summer.  We emptied the gas can into our car, bought stabilizer for the gas-powered equipment that needs it, and generally are getting things organized.

When we finally leave for the summer, we still will bring bikes and our metal lawn chairs inside for safe keeping.  We'll move our park bench into the back to protect it from strong storms, and generally do what we can to make our house and neighborhood secure until we return.

We really do not have that much outside that we need to take care of yet.  Gladys really is not a high-maintenance kind of gal, so our transition out of here will be fairly easy.