Getting back in gear . . .

I am suddenly feeling very energetic!  I stopped yesterday morning on my way to work and got an inspection sticker for the truck (the old one had expired back on 7-30 -- oops!). 

Then I called Liberty Mutual and got them to reinstate our flood insurance.  It had expired on 8-23 but I wasn't able to renew it until AFTER Isaac had gone by.  Luckily (and it's JUST luck) we had no flooding here during Isaac.  But there are more storms out there heading into the Gulf so I'm glad I was able to reinstate it NOW and not have to wait until next year sometime!

The house renovations are moving right along now, too.  David has gotten Mark's bathroom well underway.  There was a leak in the shower floor and the floor in there had rotted, his vanity had begun to fall apart, and the toilet was one he really disliked.  So a year or more ago he cleared everything out -- he threw out the vanity and the toilet, pulled up the flooring AND the floor itself.  For a while there it was possible to go in there and climb down between the beams and go under the house!  (AND for things like bugs and critters - and the garage cat, for that matter - it was possible to to climb up INTO the house, too!)  Eventually, he repaired the studs and replaced the plywood flooring, but the room has remained empty for quite a while now. 

 

But now David has put in a ceramic tile floor and ceramic baseboards, and moved the vanity down from one of the guest rooms upstairs and installed it down there in his bathroom.  That vanity matches the built-in cabinets in there - something we were never able to find in a store.  And now that it's out of that upstairs bedroom (it was in the room itself and not in a bathroom), the room looks SO much larger.  Very nice.

He got that electrical outlet there right behind the faucet moved over to the left of the vanity.  Mark's old vanity was super tall, so that outlet before was BEHIND the vanity and was never actually used.  So once David got it moved over, he installed a really cool outlet that comes on as a night light whenever the lights in the room aren't on.  I hadn't even seen one like that before.  Very cool.

And then, once he got the tile installed, he repaired another two feet of flooring in the bedroom that had also been removed back when the floor was pulled up.  You can barely tell at all  now.

 

 

Oh, and that window alcove in our bedroom is finished now, to, and it's very very nice.  Of course the rest of the room is full of boxes and things because he's been painting the interiors of those two closets next to the alcove, but eventually it WILL be really nice to be able to sit there and look out the window or watch TV or read in the bright light.

 

I will eventually get curtains up there - they've been ordered for a couple weeks, but just got shipped a few days ago.  They're a nice sage green and they're 150 inches wide.  I couldn't find any locally that were wide enough.  I don't like curtains that look completely flat when they're closed and since those windows are 74" wide the standard 84-inch-wide curtains actually WOULD be flat when closed. 

 

 

And I LOVE that marble windowsill!  I got it because it was something Joey couldn't eat - but as it turned out, it LOOKS really good!  And for that matter, that Joey-proof "gauze" formica on the wall below the chair rail looks pretty good, too!

 

And speaking of Joey-proof walls -- in the bathroom David installed  beadboard over the walls in there where Joey had eaten holes.  Again, I didn't buy the bead board because I wanted it to look good -- I just wanted the walls to be Joey-proof.  But now that it's there, I really like the way it looks.

 

AND, David painted the trim around the TV alcove in the livingroom.  I guess that wasn't a big job -- but it hadn't been done in the year or two since we built the thing!  Sigh.

 

Now that David has finished up my bathroom and the closet interior, I'm planning to put away all the "stuff" that's piled in the middle of the bedroom floor.  About time!  Today I let Joey in and then went to get myself a drink before sticking him in his crate.  Biiiiiig mistake.

 

Joey, Joey, Joey . . .

 

Once the paint in the closet is dry, I'll be able to put all that "stuff" that's piled in the middle of the floor away.  Hey!  what's going on -- I am actually beginning to FEEL like tidying up! . . . and that's really saying something for me.  Obviously, that kind of thing RARELY matters that much to me.  (Sorry, dear.)

 

I've also been happily skipping out to the barn a few times a night since those stepping stones make it possible to run in and out in whatever shoes I happen to be wearing! Love it! AND since Bryan cleaned out the stalls last weekend Duke is back to keeping his stall pristine, so I am generally a very happy woman at the moment.