Trip to Texas

Well, our purpose in coming to Texas was to assist Kate’s recently widowed mother who needs help painting a few things at her house.

We were going to paint the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom and also repaint a couple of doors/door frames and a breakfast room.  By the end of the first day we’d pulled everything out and the place looked like an absolute wreck!  But things have to get worse before they can become better!

 

  We all tried to work together…

…and Lydia was a great help.  She’d be on top of anyone who tried to lie down on the job!

 

 

 

 

 

That is, if she wasn’t sleeping herself!

 

 

 

 

 

  Thankfully by the end of day two we had wrapped everything up as illustrated by the picture of a sticky ball of tape to the left.

 

 

 

 

 

  The next and final day we visited a Civil War Museum and shared a dinner with Kate’s sister and niece who also live in TX.  We enjoyed looking at their pug…SO ugly it can become cute over time.

  We headed home the next morning…

City skyline

The highways/toll ways were a bit confusing through Dallas and there seemed to be a very limited amount of highway signs and directions-things that would’ve made navigating much less confusing.

We made hit thunderstorms and rain at Joplin, MO, so partly because of that we didn’t get home until 1:45am.

Aug1-4

Ballet, Raccoons, Water Heater & Painting

Before we left for the ballet performance we found that our water heater was leaking…on further exploration we found that the bottom of it had become rusty and could bust anytime. The thought that at any time 50 gallons of water could suddenly start gushing through our basement and into our new carpet wasn’t too soothing.

We attended the performance of the Nutcracker that night. We’ve never watched ballet before so it was…well…a new experience. I enjoyed the first act because it looked more like a play than a ballet, but after that it was pretty much just a bunch of twirls and such.  The music was fantastic.  Hey, but you never know!  It was something new to try! Who knows but maybe the three of us would’ve gotten hooked on it and would’ve demanded that we start taking ballet classes ASAP!?!  (After watching a few movies of Fred Astaire I started taking tap dancing lessons.)  Well, unless one of us takes up football I don’t foresee ballet in our future.

  We got some nice family pictures while we were dressed up but unfortunately the SD card got corrupted and I’ve lost those photos.

This morning Benjamin found a raccoon in one of his live traps by the trash cans. This is the third raccoon that he’s trapped and he’s never skinned any of them. The first time he gave the raccoon to a fellow trapper and the second time it was real young and he let it go. He cautiously released this raccoon as well.

Kate left this afternoon to make a final Christmas shopping trip and Benjamin & Mom dropped off the new water heater at the house before they went shopping.

 

Aaron stopped by and hung out for awhile    We’ve taught the word “Aaron” to Lydia and she likes him a lot

Prepping the hallway bathroom for the paint

Grandma & Glenn came over to the house and worked on getting the new water heater installed.

 

While I painted and Glenn worked on the water heater Grandma and Noah setup the Christmas tree.

However, Noah decorated the tree by himself and did a pretty good job.

We hauled out the old water heater with the dolly so that we could take a look at the rust forming on the bottom of it:

(Middle) You can see the hole where the water had been leaking out

2

I replaced the light fixture in the bathroom and found the last remnant of wallpaper behind it…I can still remember listening to a Faith & Freedom Tour album while I was scraping off the wallpaper a few years ago!

I continued painting the bathroom and was halfway finished with the second coat until Benjamin and Mom got home after midnight.  They had bought more groceries home than anything else, so we had to put those away before we headed for bed. I packed up my painting supplies and went to bed. Kate got home a little before 3 am.

Oh yeah, our Christmas party got rescheduled at my Aunt’s house so thankfully we won’t have the stress of trying to get the hallway bathroom setup tomorrow.

Dec 22

We’ve been making progress since I have last posted though, we’ve had to take a little break of a few days to finally do some Christmas shopping, which, thankfully, we were able to do almost entirely online. It’s been awhile since I have posted, but I’ll just publish a few photos in non-chronological order.

Mom has been working on the trim at least a little bit each day and on Monday we got the bookcases moved into the living room.  The miter saw is still in the living room, but it’ll only be a few hours more of work before we’re finished with the trim and can start decorating in preparation for our party on Saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Glenn had to totally redo the electrical in the kitchen and hallway, but not we have light and we also replaced the fixture in the kitchen with one that was brushed-nickel to match the other hardware in the house.  Wow, the photos I took of the light turned out pretty cool!

The venetian plaster in the back bathroom has been sealed and is now finished.  Venetian plaster takes a lot of extra work and time because it requires a lot of different coats and you have to wait for each coat to dry. However, thanks to the extra effort venetian plaster looks fantastic and we may end up using it in a couple of other rooms.

 

 

One of our biggest priorities now is to get the hallway bathroom semi-functional for our guests. We’ll paint the walls in the bathroom with the same paint we used in the laundry room, you can see a sample of the color in the above picture.

 

 

 

 

 

Today we got the water/ice system for the refrigerator hooked up!

 

The original water line had rotted and we also had to replace the water filter. The fridge had been delivered exactly 363 days ago, so at least we can say that we got the water system hooked up in less than a year!

 

 

 

Our growing collection of Christmas cards

 

Well, now I’ve (reluctantly) have to get ready for a ballet performance of the Nutcracker that we’ll be attending tonight…should be interesting…