May's Final Post

Susan and I are pretty sore from patting ourselves on the back after accomplishing so much this past Holiday Weekend. We feel that we are wicked awesome with trends leaning toward moderate skillfulness.

And yet, there is more to do. We are continuing our work on the bathroom, specifically, the tile. We could get really anal about this process. 

When one is down close to the floor and examining the tile up close, it looks pretty bad. 

But when you stand up and give the floor a cursory scan like any other person would do, it looks fine.

So we are trying to find the happy medium.

Memorial Weekend Mundane

We began the day with a mission. To go out to the Little Spokane River and procure some fernses. First we stopped for breakfast at Ferguson's Cafe.

Then we headed for the river...

...which turned out to be a total bust. There were no ferns to be had. If it wasn't for the fact that we got to go to the river, I would have been pissed.

So, we went to the Depot and bought the three ferns they had.

Assorted other things occurred that I don't feel like relating here. But we did manage to get some work done on the bathroom floor. We are at the point where we are cleaning the grout and deep cleaning the tile. Once that is done, we can seal the grout. Just one more step towards installing a toilet.

All in all, a great weekend to be an American!

Memorial Weekend Sundee

8:22AM: With the Indy 500 as background music, we are up and at-em with the projects for today. 

Phil arrived at 9:30 and got started on the siding project.

This is the first board in place.

The next thing Phil has to do is cut into some of the old siding so it feathers in nicely and doesn't look like there was ever a whole section of work done in this space.

Susan is back to work potting hanging baskets and will be returning to the front yard to finish the west flower bed.

I'm trying my damnedest to not go out and do any work. However, I think my time has run out. Yup! I just got yelled at. Gotta go!

4:22PM: Here is the progress Phil made today.

Unfortunately, we ran out of lumber. I need to purchase 95 more feet.

Susan finished all her planting and I finished my unplanting, getting this stump of a dead Arbor Vitae out. I

6:01PM: We are off to Mom's for dinner. I shall report back in the next paragraph.

8:30PM: We are beat. We stopped at the Hub and shared a pitcher with Mark. Now we will watch a couple of shows and then off to slumber bed. 

Good Night!

Memorial Weekend Saturday

10:45AM: We haven't done anything yet other than get up, read the paper, drink some coffee (with Baileys) and enjoy a wonderful breakfast of Cheese Eggs and Taters. 

There was a segment on "Ask This Old House" where they replaced a door into a closet with a book shelf that swung open like a hidden door, similar to what I want to do in the bathroom where the old stairway is. I recorded it so I can refer back it when I show Jerry what I want to do.

I've run some laundry this morning and I vacuumed the balcony. Now I'm going up to mop the balcony floor before I move on to my next project.

7:46PM: Many hours have passed and our yard looks better for it. Susan got one of the front gardens planted and all of the Geranium boxes for up stairs on the balcony. 

I cut down a couple of dead arbor vitae and cleaned up around the yard in general. While Susan accomplished a lot and it shows, I accomplished a lot and you might never know it.

Here is the other flower bed that Susan will plant tomorrow.

We went to check out our tile choices and will be ordering everything on Tuesday. After the tile store and a brief stop at "the Depot", we went to the Hub. 

Now we are winding down our day and going to enjoy some burgers, beer and an old Jimmy Stewart movie, "The Shop Around the Corner."

10:17PM: "The Shop Around the Corner" was remade in the 90's as "You've Got Mail". While neither movie was a laugh riot, we got a little joy out of it. It featured Frank Morgan, who is best known as the Wizard of Oz. The odd thing about the movie was that it was set in Budapest. Nobody spoke with an accent and it was really an unnecessary affectation.

Now that the movie review is over, lets have a pit fire and enjoy the first blurry S'Mores of the summer season.

Opening Holiday Weekend

4:51PM: It is the start of the Memorial Day Weekend. It's hard to tell what the weather is going to be like this weekend. It's supposed to be rainy today and tomorrow and nicer on Sunday and Monday. 

Right now, it's pretty decent out. Perhaps a bit cool but not so bad that I couldn't sit out on the front porch. Perhaps that is what I shall do.

8:36PM: We have been to the Hub and back after a couple of pitchers to launch our fabulous Memorial Day Weekend. I actually plan to take some time this weekend to remember the sacrifices that have been made by fallen soldiers so I can walk to the Hub and enjoy a beer.

11:38PM: We've spent the evening watching shows off Netflix. I think we have discovered a pretty funny new show called "Lady Dynamite". It stars comedian Maria Bamford. It's pretty off kilter and really unusual and funny. We watched the first episode and liked it.

Siding

It's a rainy day. In fact, it's been a rainy weekend. Almost an inch of rain fell yesterday. A few showers have happened this morning already.

We got trapped at the Hub Tavern for a while yesterday because of the rain. We walked over to watch the Preakness and while we were there, the skies opened up and it poured for a good long while. It finally subsided enough that we figured we could make it home without getting totally sopped.

I had Phil come over today to get started on replacing the siding on the house outside of the bathroom. The first obstacle to over come is removing the old siding. I want to hide the fact that a door had been there. 

There is also this giant gouge that has been inexplicably cut into the siding. I would like to fix that as well.

But there is an obstacle to the obstacle. You will notice the white post in the upper picture next to my particle board covering. That is the latch for the gate going out to the hot tub. I removed a couple of bolts that secured it to the deck but it was still attached.

With Phil's help, we managed to get it loose.

So we got to work removing the rest of the siding, trying to save as much of it as possible for re-use. After the undercarriage was revealed, we put up some tar paper and called it a day.

I am satisfied with our progress for the day. Especially since I didn't know what sort of progress we could make today.

The next step is the put some uneven cuts in the siding shown above up to the window. That will eliminate the gouge I showed above and hopefully make the whole side look uniform. Other than looking at this blog, no one will be able to tell there was ever a door in that area.

Primer Time

We made more progress in the bathroom last night but it is another case of  two steps forward and one step back. 

We got a coat of primer paint up on the walls and ceiling. It only took us a little over an hour and all went pretty well. 

 

However, there are a couple of spots that need to be sanded. They were not at all apparent until painted. Then they stood out like diarrhea on the Mona Lisa. (I'm thinking I could come up with a better comparative metaphor) (But I'm not gonna!)

So the sanding will happen tonight as well as touch up priming.

These Birds Don't Need No Bees

Wham!

Bam!

Thank you, Ma'am!

Sunday Mudding

We were hoping to get the floor cleaned up and sealed today but we have been talked into waiting. We also had plans to postpone tiling the shower until after we got the toilet and sink installed but were told that is probably not the best idea.

The problem is my anxious anxiety to get working fixtures installed. Now! 

I need to back off on that desire and do things in the proper order. 

We are finally happy with the dry wall. We will know for sure tomorrow if we are finished with the mudding. If that is the case, we will proceed to tiling. 

We looked at some tile yesterday and know what we want. We are awaiting the costs.

These are some pictures from the shower of our neighbors, Tammy and Lou. This is what we want to try and reproduce.

We like the decorative outside border and want to recreate that with our shower. We look forward to seeing what comes next.

Hurray! Hurray!

It's the Eighth of May!

If you know anything about anything, you know what that means.

It's also Mother's Day. And so the two kind of tie in together. I would imagine that a lot of Mother's got their start on the Eighth of May.

There is not a lot going on around the estate today although I must mention that our fabulous summer like weather continues. 

I'm doing some yard things and some house things. Susan is mudding right now and I just finished my area of influence, as far as the mudding goes. 

We are getting very close. I'm looking at Memorial Weekend to install a toilet and sink.

If I write it here, it will make me try to accomplish the goal.

Mexican Independence - Not!

In my continuing pattern of posting when I have nothing of substance to offer, let take this time to wish you a Happy Cinco do Mayo. This is a day that Mexicans celebrate the much vaunted victory at the battle of Puebla, where the Mexican Army defeated the Frenchican Army. 

It is celebrated in the U.S. as a day to drink heavily after just recovering from the heavy drinking we did on St. Patrick's Day. These two drinking Holidays prepare us for the big drinking weekend of Memorial Day.

Susan and I celebrated by going to Geraldo's, the Mexican Eatery that is within walking distance. While there, we purchased some gift cards for our neighbor to thank her for doing our taxes this year.

We celebrated the day early, having gone to Geraldo's last Sunday, but the sentiment was there just the same.

May the Fourth Be With You

It's Star Wars Day. 

I have no other reason for posting other than to say that.

But since we are together again, I will tell you that a little mudding and a little sanding are going on, inching us closer to the goal of possibly finishing the remodel of the bathroom before we die.

Bloomsday 2016

Susan and Mark ran Bloomsday today.

Susan finished in about one hour and thirty-three minutes. That's her same time as last year.

We followed our usual Bloomsday routine. I drove Susan and Mark down to the race and then went for breakfast. I drove back downtown after the Bloomsday runners had cleared out and the Police started to open up the streets. I got my excellent parking space outside the Onion Bar and Grill, got a table and awaited my runners.

Then we enjoyed a Post Bloomsday Brunch that couldn't be beat and finally returned home. 

Now we are in veg mode and Susan has expressed for the 100th time how glad she is that it is over.