It's been forever......

...since I last posted here. I've been busy.

Ed and I have been finishing the media room. I bought new doors for the closet but I haven't hung them. We pulled up the carpet and the padding, as well as removed all the staples and crap from underneath it. The floors in that room aren't in very good shape, but they're red oak none the less...... so we pulled up the dark green crap from the living room for 'transplanting' into the media room.

The floors in the living room are resurrectable and we've gotten bids at $3.50 per square foot to have them redone by a pro. Looks like a plan.

Anyway, we're going to put the dark green carpet down in the media room this weekend, hang and paint the doors, trim the screen, and refinish all of the trimwork that needs touchup. I wanna get that room DONE so we can move forward.

Ed has a plan to do the guest bedroom next. I can't say I blame him, but I need to finish the ceiling project in the sun room and get the walls in the living room painted. The painting projects are jobs Ed can do. We just need to concentrate on getting our paint coverage more even.

So, it looks like we'll be moving back into the "future bathroom" instead of being in the "guest bedroom".

After we get the living room, the guest bedroom, and the media room finished, we can start hanging enough of our artwork to clear out the downstairs bedroom. Then we can live down there and finish the upstairs.

Oh, we also moved the hot tub on Sunday so it's closer to the deck. Now I have to build a short walkway from the deck to the tub. Yippee!

Pictures will follow soon.

The Oddest Thing.....

Something pretty unusual happened today as I stood in the kitchen looking out over our vast holdings (mess of a backyard).

We have hummingbirds (that's not the odd part, we have a hummingbird feeder so we know they exist) and a male I'd never seen before flitted into view.

The odd part was that he hovered between the feeder (hanging below the eaves) and an adjacent cheezy lantern I haven't taken down yet. He looked from one item to the next as if to say, "Bob told me to come over here for a good meal, but which one of these joints was he talking about?"

Yeah, I realize that's anthropomorphism at its worst, but it honestly seemed that he was confused. (It was sorta like I feel sometimes.)

After a good 5 seconds making up his little birdbrain, he buzzed toward the lantern first, realized his mistake, and then zipped over to the feeder. The little pig stayed for 3 big gulps and then flew off again. I've seen him 3 or 4 times since. Maybe he likes the food but doesn't care for the decor or the service.

SAT/SUN Feb 4/5

Saturday it rained, so we spent half the day shopping for stuff, half a day working on the media room, and the evening watching NunSense 2 an the local musical comedy troupe half a mile from the house. Everything was good.

Sunday was sunny, so I worked Ed's ass off outside. Installation of a deck light, shoveling compost, replanting bulbs, and spraying weed killer took up most of the morning. Our Dallas friend Chris flew into town and we did lunch with him, and later we had dinner with our local buddy Ming at Pomodoro (good stuff). Later, Ed went out galavanting with Chris. They were out late, but didn't get into any trouble.

Progress happens one foot at a time.

Today.....

....I fixed the leak in my truck cab lamp (or at least I serviced it, I dunno for sure if it's fixed). I used a hair dryer to dry the carpeting in the truck. Hopefully I did a good enough job to prevent mold and mildew.

Then I went up on the roof to figure out why the kitchen fireplace is always full of water. Oddly, there was a tile on top of the opening, but the tile was below grade, so rain would just puddle up there and run down the inside of the chimney. Gravity is an amazing thing. My solution? I cemented the tile to the chimney and covered the fresh cement work with plastic so it can set up correctly. While I was up there, I also taped and trimmed the HVAC outlets to prevent drips. Preventive maintenance.

I registered the R1. $212.25

Oh, and I sprayed some of that high dollar brush killer. I'll let you know if it works.

EDIT - The high dollar brush killer won't work. It started raining again. Damn!

Rain, Rain, Go AWAY!

A bazillion inches of rain have fallen this week. We're something like 5 inches above the norm for January. Yeah, +5" in a single month!

We've found the source of the wet spot in the downstairs office. It's the fireplace. Someday when it stops raining, I'll put a tile on the opening to the kitchen fireplace since this seems to be the source. Unfortunately, a steel roof and incessant rain make it impossible to go up on the roof.

I've also discovered that the seal for the bed light at the back of my truck's cab leaks like a sieve. I'll probably spend part of tomorrow with a hair dryer inside the truck so the carpet won't get mildewy. Obviously I have to fix the leak.

The pilot light went out in the water heater overnight. This is the second time this has happened since we moved in. I have to get that thing moved and properly vented this weekend. Yippee.

We planted herbs by the front door last weekend..... Ed checked to see if we had shoots yet. Horticulture isn't his thing.