More facelifting for the house on Parker

 

Take a look at a sampling of our interior doors.  Almost every one has a hole of some kind.  It is kind of embarrassing when music students ask “what happened to your door?”  I simply answer “teenagers”.  I might also add cheap hollow-core construction.  So, take a look at what we have in our garage….

 

 new doors!  The first one was installed today - it is the door that leads from our dining room out to the garage.  It still needs the trim. 

 

  It didn’t have a hole but it was the heaviest door ever invented and it didn’t fit well (thanks to foundation settling) and Steve cursed it (well, he didn’t actually curse) every time he had to take it off its hinges to move something in or out.  He is SO HAPPY now.

But, before the rest of the doors can be installed, the workman needed to do some ceiling repair on our two bathrooms.  The downstairs one was the worst (black mold due to leaking – yuck!) 

  

 

and the upstairs one was peeling over the shower.  

 

 

 So, why did I take the time to dust the entire upstairs on Monday when a fine layer of dry-wall dust was going to cover everything on Wednesday?????

Next week, I should have lots of lovely “after” photos

Some assembly required

In addition to our new floors, we have acquired some new items requiring Steve’s and my poor old brains to think – in reading assembly and/or operating instructions.  Sigh. 

 

Here is our “coffee” table (what does an LDS household call such a piece of furniture???) that came via Walmart.com in a big square box.  Steve got to put it together last Friday.  Aren’t the flowers lovely?  They were my anniversary gift from Steve.  We actually DID celebrate our anniversary with more than moving furniture. We went out to dinner Friday evening.  Guess where we went?  I will give you a hint:  no reservations needed (because Friday nights at eateries are so busy), it has a great selection of gluten-free foods, and it rhymes with Bolden Borral. 

 

Here are some doggie stairs for poor little Sadie who just slips and slides all over our wood floors.  Beckie suggested non-skid booties for her paws – not a bad idea.  Notice the new area rug under the “coffee” table that now enables Sadie to jump on and off the couch.  She is very happy about this.  She’s not so happy with our bedroom/bed setup so I bought these little doggie stairs and put them together tonight.  Now, will she have courage to use them?  Who knows?  I do have to say that the paw print motif is pretty tacky.  I might paint and re-cover them to blend in more with our bedroom decor......someday…

 

This is our new CD/radio alarm clock.  The buttons on our old one were failing so we started looking for a new machine with a CD player that we could actually program to awaken us playing tracks other than #1.  After extensive on-line searches and a visit to Best Buy and Walmart, we determined that what we wished for was just not available.  So, when we were in Target the other day, we just bought this Memorex and determined to be happy with waking up to track #1 every morning.  Well, when we brought it home, lo and behold – it IS programmable!  Now, can we figure out the instructions to make this happen?  Not yet!

Since we are talking of bedroom items, those cute beds shown in the previous blog were surprisingly complicated to assemble.  Lucky Steve got to put those together, too.  I helped.

 Finally, lookie at what I got!!!

 

A smart phone.  It is the next generation of the Galaxy Note that Sarah has and I absolutely LOVE it.  But, I still have a long way to go before I know all the things it can do.  Like, how do I get rid of photos that inexplicably transferred from my Picasa file on the desktop computer into my picture files on the phone????  Yes – Picasa is a Google product and I do use Google calendar (my omnipresent planner is eventually going to be a thing of the past, if you can believe that!) so maybe when I sync-ed, the phone thought I wanted everything??? I don’t know.   I will have to do some investigating (in my spare time – (laughing maniacally))

And, the assemblies are not done.  We still have a big box holding a Cracker Barrel rocking chair sitting down in the sports room that Steve and I will tackle someday – when we have LOTS of time and patience (and maybe chocolate)

Before and After week

Look what our house was like last week! 

 We FINALLY dealt with the little dog pee-stained  carpets in all three upstairs bedrooms by purchasing wood laminate flooring.  It was installed this past Thursday.  That meant Tuesday night, instead of attending Civic Orchestra, I packed up books from shelves and knic-knacks from all three rooms.  Steve took the day off on Wednesday to move all the furniture out of the rooms (I helped with the big and/or heavy items before I left for teaching) and then he ripped up all the carpet and padding and molding.  THAT was a HUGE job that took him all day.  Steve and I worked until late that night – he prying up the evil carpet tack strips that line the edges of the floor and I pulling up the staples that were left in the floor from the padding.  

 Here are the rooms all ready for the flooring guys.  They said they thought it would be a two-day job but they were finished by 5:00 on Thursday.  So, Steve and I spent our 38^th wedding anniversary moving furniture back into bedrooms.  And I spent all Friday afternoon returning books and knic-knacks.  On Saturday, Steve loaded up all the old carpet and molding and carpet tack strips into the truck and hauled them to the landfull.  It has been a physically exhausting week!  But, look at the results!  

Yes, those are new beds in our bedroom.  I just LOVE their old-fashioned look.  And, our 10-inch memory foam mattresses are divine.

We also recently purchased a new refrigerator.   

Now our stove and fridge match.  And, lookie what it can do…. Steve is sooooo happy.

After Christmas - watching the grandkids

For a Christmas gift, Emily gave Joe a getaway to Kansas City for three days.  They all arrived in Columbia Christmas evening and then they left the next day and we got to keep Noah and Lucy until Friday afternoon.  What great grandkids we have!  They were so good and so fun.  

Weather was pretty decent so we decided to cook our lunch out on the deck.  Hot dogs and s'mores.

Christmas Day photos

 

Christmas Day dinner with Ruth Marshall at Candlelight Lodge

 

 Lucy in her new hat!

 

 Emily, Kirsti, Sarah

 

Steve got a euphonium for Christmas!