Freedom!!!! (Coming in one year and one day!!)

Taking her test!!


Success!!! I can seem freedom in the distant future!!


Driving Reba (the RAV4) on day one.

No more paint ever. (Please???)

No really.
I. Never. Want. To. Paint. Again.


Two coats of trim. Note the fridge is moved. The water supply line was long enough to reach over to there after being released from its coil. We taped it down and shut it off, but I wasn't strong enough to get it off the spigot under the sink :o/


Doors for the lower cabinets and drawers. Still debating the wisdom of painting the drawers but they were HORRID. So. They had to be dealt with.


Doors for the uppers drying.


All of the lower cabinet items drying.


The cabinets done and waiting for Angela and I to get cleaned up and get hardware from Home Depot.


Doors all lined up in order of installation. And paint items drying on the ladder.

So... We came home to get showered and head to the store to get hinges. Found the ones that look just like the old ones but in a nickel color. Find hinges. Find magnetic latches. Get one of the door pulls to see how it looks on the doors. (Silver with glass) Get 15 sixteen foot long pieces of shoe moulding. Get that strapped to the top Of the car. Drive home. Comedy of errors getting the LONG pieces of shoe mould bundle into the house. No windows were lost however a few chuckles where had.

We then put the hinges on the cabinets and they don't quite fit. Sigh. Ok. Give up on that one. Move to the door handle. Nope. The hole isn't all the way through the door. Sigh. Ok. Give up on that one. Move to the door in the hallway and they are the wrong size. Yeah, it's time to go on to the house. On that note amid much chuckles and ribbing of each other with "oh NOOOO, we don't need the original to compare sizes, they're all the same".

Hahahaha. Horrible. So we quit and came back to the house to a wonderful dinner with Sally! Always a great dinner with Sally :)

Day two

Angela wanted to know exactly what restrictions are on spackle and WHY they have restrictions.


Some of them were interesting. Then the paparazzi showed up - ha!!


Two coats of primer. Toe kick NOT painted.


Toe kick painted. Shocking what that toe kick being painted does for the dark pit under the cabinets!

Today we wimped out on the job and worked only half day.

You'll also note a hole in the drywall in the interior of the cabinets (third from the right). Sigh. Electrical routing holes. Something to patch. Ah well. Small price to pay, I guess.

OH the other HUGE thing done was Angela finished up the potty door for the hall bath. It was funny I was on the stool in the kitchen and hear her hollering for me. She locked herself into the bath - door knob in hand. Hahahaha. I got a screw driver and let her out ;) the GREAT news is this means we now have TWO potties with doors now - YAY!!! It's the little this in life, right?

Tomorrow is trim paint. Two coats. And cabinet doors. They have trim paint (and Kilz) on one side. Now for the inside of the doors to be finished. And the drawers and doors for the lowers is on the list as well. Maybe we shouldn't have slacked off today??

Spring break

Ok not all of spring break has been work, Saturday we drove down and Sunday we shopped at the commissary.
Monday. Well, Monday is a work day.
Butch left the cabinets looking like this:


What you can't see is the paper is still in all of the cabinets





NOW it is not!! What a mess. Two layers of paper to pull up and out. Note the DUST in there as well. Another present from Butch. It's now cleaned up as well :)

Half way through our work we heard a mower! Margarita (the mower has a name) made it through the gate! Sally had sweetly driven over to mow!

Angie took a break from painting to learn how to mow. She did a great job!











Uppers done!


Primer on the doors!


A lizard friend in the house


Of course I had to catch and release. :) he was cute


Angie was a good sport about my bad knees and sanded the bottom half of the cabinets for me :) she did and awesome job!


And here is where the paint pan ran out of paint. Almost 100% done with the first coat of primer on the top half. And the bottom fully sanded and ready to go.

It's going to look awesome when It's done!

Oh and the original color of the kitchen was a nice sky blue (inside the cabinet ceiling). Cute!! May have to go back to that color in time?


AND an awesome dinner of steak and crab legs. Yum!!! Sally is such an awesome cook and spoils us so much!!

Let there be light!!

I'm so excited, look at the lovely pictures that Sally was sweet enough to send over from the kitchen and the new can lights that have been installed.

 yes, yes, yes, I know, to the untrained eye this looks HORRIBLE.  To me, it looks like progress!!!  This is looking towards the back door - these lights will be over the dining area and the "hall".  The square hole to the left is where the OLD light was in the ceiling.  The round hole in front of the middle can is the AC vent.  I need to load THOSE pictures too - Butch worked on cleaning the vent covers while I was in Florida weekend before last and they are looking NICE!  Also small hole in the wall from them fishing through the lines.

 Looking towards the cabinets (obviously) there are a few of the cans that don't currently have bulbs in them, however, the coverage is looking good for light.  Again the square hold in the middle is the OLD kitchen light over the sink and the one to the left has a larger hole as it was where another original light box was installed for the "hall" light.  The "L" in the right middle is where we took out the wall - and obviously needs to be repaired... now to ask the electricians if they will be fixing all the holes around the lights where they made the holes bigger to accommodate their fixtures and on the wall where they did the fishing...

And we keep on marching forward... slowly but surely.  Maybe it's time I learned how to drywall?  Hum... maybe, maybe...

Brainiac child....

Elizabeth is officially a brainiac.. she has been invited to attend the American Physical Society (APS) Physics March meeting in San Antonio, Texas.

http://www.aps.org/meetings/meeting.cfm?name=MAR15 

She’s going on a grant from her University.  They will be staying the week and getting a feel for the speakers and how to present THEIR paper next year.  Yep, it’s official I have no idea where this came from… nawh, she’s all her daddy’s daughter!  The two of them could do math around me in circles.

 

So awesome that she’s getting this opportunity!  I guess this is the grace of being at a research based university. 

Go Lizzy!

 

 

 

Anti-versary

Our 21st Anniversary was this year (on the 19th).

Butch kept calling it our Anti-versary. We went to dinner with Mom, Dad and the girls. Elizabeth even came home for the weekend - she claims it was for the free dinner :)

We had a very nice dinner at the Long Horn in Perry - STEAK yum! Then we went to Mom and Dad's for a rousing game of Push the Dummy. I thought of Nick with my score. Had Liz not caught me with a hand of 155, I would have finished the game at under 100 points like he did over Presidents day weekend! Ha! No such luck. Liz still ended up winning at less than 200 points. A good time was had by all.

A poopy solution

My pooping menagerie has grown over the years...


And they are now forced to live in a very cramped area of a cubicle instead of along the top of the cabinets in the office.


So I found a solution for them. Aren't they just happy little poopers now? Ha! Pretty soon they will crowd out the girls.

And yes, that is a spice stadium rack they are on now :) the better to see them all.


Cube sweet cube (note Dads clock front and center?!)


Maybe a bit toooo wide angle standing in my neighbors cube looking towards the hall door. I'm one cubicle over from the window view, but I'll live. The squirrels were always a distraction anyway ;)

You would think moving from an office to a cube would make me sad but it didn't. I'm happy to be back in maintenance and even if the system does have problems. Glad to be back in the mix of things.

Presidents Day Weekend - Florida....

Headed down Friday night. Ready to WORK





Beautiful sunset!

Day one - Saturday. Got over to the house and hung all the bathroom cabinet doors and put all the hardware on...no pictures :( not sure why at this point cause there was no reason to not have taken a quick snap shot.


Angela started in on the doors they are fully primed and were drying by noon on Saturday. Even flipped over once too :)


The cabinet doors before.


After being sanded in place. We went to Home Depot to get better sanding pads. We got home, had some lunch and headed back to the house ...that's when I stared to feel off. Not quite right. A bit pukey. And it didn't get better. So I gave up and headed to Sally's. I took a shower and No sooner got out of the shower then I became quit ill. Poor Angela happened to be outside the door for part of it and she thought I was dying. I wasn't. Just sick.

Poor pitiful me. I was in and out of sleep Sunday. Thank goodness for Sally, she took excellent care of me while I was quietly dying inside.

Today I was feeling a bit more human and ready to drive home.

First stop was to get a car wash as the birds had taken target practice on the car while I was down and out.


Then the drive home.


Angela's goofy toy from Wendy's. Ha!

Day three and we have a GATE

Well up and at'em again











Nailed to the gate section but not cut loose.





Can you see the blade going through the bottom?


And it's OPEN!!!!








Tweeked tweeked and more tweeks


And the edges installed again. And it's looking GREAT and like it's not there at all!





I'm so excited. Easy access. Fast treks to Sally's. Whoot!!