Three's a Crowd

Lots of stuff going on in the kitchen last weekend. In the red vests, two guys from Lowe's are delivering our new refrigerator and trying to see how big a project they can make out of changing the door swing. Turns out they made quite the afternoon of that little project, at times looking a lot like 2/3rds of the three stooges...

Since the Lowe's guys were very late (they got lost driving to our house, of course), my schedule sequencing went right out the window. So meanwhile in the white t-shirt, my texture & paint guy Jose (the only professional construction help I have) is demonstrating that I made the right decision not to do that work myself. He's really good. And instead of being annoyed at the Lowe's guys for getting in his way, he seemed kinda amused. Maybe I'd have been amused too, if it weren't OUR new refrigerator and kitchen they were mess'n with.

So now the kitchen and dining area is much closer to being done. I'm putting up some light fixtures now and need to hookup the sink, then I'll declare this area "done enough" for awhile and move on. Still no flooring and not much ceiling, but done enough. Next we'll put in a counter top in the master bath vanity area made from crushed glass beer bottles! Really.

Stoned

At long last we now have counter tops! Dark green granite, shown as the installers were setting the largest section in place. So NOW it is prudent and proper to have our good friends Pat and Chuck over for a visit. Capable of running circles around Ann and me in the kitchen, now we'll now at least have a nicer kitchen to show them. And we can even pretend that we know what to do with all that nice granite, besides just placing take-out pizza on it. So come on over Pat and Chuck, and feast your eyes. Even if we can't prepare much of a feast for your tummies.

Up and Down Again

Here are two photos from different perspectives on our front porch, finally installing some light fixtures so that getting into the house at night won't be such an... adventure. Vanessa took this first shot looking up at me doing the actual installation, here hooking up the flexible PVC conduit to one of the junction boxes. Actually kinda fun work when it goes together right.



The second photo by me looking down at Vanessa shows that she's being considerably more creative. She was my electrical assistant, passing tools and materials up as I needed them, but while not helping she was draping the extra conduit around her, making a fabulous fashion statement. She took it off before we went into town for dinner, which is probably a good thing in a town as small as Wimberly. Now, if she has worn it down on 6th St in Austin, especially late at night, probably nobody would have even blinked.

Rude Welcome

Arriving at our property Friday I had one of those brief moments when your brain can't quite catch up with what it is seeing. Took me a second to figure out that yes, I was in the right driveway and no, I was not going to be able to enter. Seems our recent high winds had taken down this large cedar, or at least a big chunk of it, creating a perfect roadblock.

Luckily the rest of my weekend visit went much better, and I'll soon be posting all kinds of new photos to show lots of progress inside the house. As for the tree, at least it gave me a chance to break out the chainsaw which had been little used since I started working inside the house. Nothing like a roaring chainsaw to eliminate some detour-driven frustration.