Saturday

• Scrubbed and sealed the brick sunroom floor
• Picked up the new kitchen cabinets in Louisville
• Assembled the new kitchen table and four chairs

Sunday

• Laundry day!
• Assembled all the new kitchen cabinets
• Moved the old kitchen table and chairs into the newly finished sunroom

Monday

• Spent 3 hours online looking for a new kitchen faucet and sink online
• Ordered faucet (Delta)
• Picked out sink (Kohler)
• Went to Home Depot and ordered the Silestone countertop and sink
• Ran errands – groceries, school art supplies, sushi for lunch
• Jim baked a cake (no occasion, just a craving)

Today

• Paid bills (yuck)
• Posted new yarn on Etsy
• Loaded up the trailer and made a run to the county dump to get rid of cabinet boxes and other junk that had collected during the renovation
• Nailed the metal siding back down on the barn that the wind at torn loose over the year
• Installed the new 24 x 22 x 2 cutting board in the cabinet slot beneath the stove
• Installed trim over the front door where we put in a new storm door last month
• Got out the dreaded white paint (I hate painting white!) and painted the trim around the garage doors and the front door
• Burned the 3 brush piles that had collected from last month’s landscaping chores

Tomorrow

• Not sure what’s on the agenda for tomorrow but if the weather continues to hold out (in the 70’s) there may be more painting outside or landscaping
• Jim also wants to start dem0-ing the old kitchen island, although as soon as he does I’m without a kitchen sink for the next 2 months (waiting for the countertop to be custom made for the new island)…and yes, that means I’m sink-less through the holidays. Oh well.

Thursday

• Back to work. We’ll need to go back just to get some rest!!!

My craft room is overflowing with wool. I really need to spin more!

This morning I finally hung the hand forged dinner triangle we bought at an art fair about 5 years ago. The sunroom was finally worthy of it.

Now we can call the cats to dinner in style. Of course, it’ll probably scare the bejeezus out of the them the first few times!

Finally finished the renovation of our sunroom (aka. the cat porch).

This was a year in the making. Our roofing contractor offered to cover the old porch siding with vinyl while he was doing the aluminum fascia and gutters last year. We took him up on the offer and rushed to replace all the old aluminum storm windows with double hung Pella vinyl windows before he hung the siding. We didn’t touch the room again until last week.  The old ceiling texture was peeling off, so I scraped the entire ceiling and painted. Then installed the wood trim around the windows. Painted walls, trim and doors. Then spent today on my hands and knees scrubbing the brick floor. I just finished sealing it with some masonry waterproofing (after this picture was taken). Tonight the cats are sleeping in the garage. They’ll get to move back in tomorrow with all new beds and new food bowls. Their new beds are wicker baskets filled with straw. They’ve already used them a few times and they look like Easter bunnies when they’re all curled up asleep. So cute. I switched them to straw bedding because the cat hair from six cats was impossible to get out of their old blankets and rugs, so now I can just throw the straw out in the compost pile when it’s ready to be changed. Problem solved.

I had the day off from work today, so I headed to an antiques store in a nearby town. I was actually there to look at large furniture pieces. I’m considering an overhaul of my kitchen, and was thinking that if they had any beautiful ‘have to have’ pieces then it would help the design along. They didn’t have anything, although a dry sink did catch my eye. Kitchens aren’t very useful without water though, so that threw a wrench in the dry sink idea. So no kitchen finds, but I did come home with this cast iron fire screen. The thing is h-e-a-v-y. I think it’s great, and it was only $45! That’s less than half the price of the flimsy things I see at retail stores. I can’t wait to see it with a nice fire behind it.

For a few moments on Wednesday my son, Errol, was a Japanese chef behind the teppan yaki grill! His dream job. Thanks Kansai!

Just a few scenes from the farm on this sunny afternoon.

Growing garlic in coffee grounds. The idea came from the college age son. He swears it works and that a friend grew some in the dorm this way. I didn’t ask what else they grew in the dorm…

The oregano that I neglect is thriving. I have found that any plant I actually pay attention to dies, so my most effective garden method is to completely ignore everything. If it was meant to grow…it will.

Auron the cat followed me around hoping for attention. He got an ear rub for the effort.

Our horizontal willow. Victim of the ice storm a few months ago. His will to live is heroic. We are taking a wait and see attitude. If he can survive the normal August drought, then the family consensus is that we have no right to deny him life just because he is vertically challenged. He will become a living art installation and we will landscape around him and post a bronze plaque with the word ‘Perseverance’ on it to honor his efforts.

The koi that lived in the fountain were not as lucky as the willow. They did not survive the ice and electrical outages over the winter. The local frogs do not seem very heartbroken about this fact. The nightly croaking chorus has reached a fevered pitch lately, and I expect lots of tadpoles to arrive very soon. And without any hungry fish maybe this year they will actually survive to adulthood. The waterlilies and other greenery also seem happier…it’s like an apartment complex where the one bad family finally moved out. Everyone just lets out a big sigh of relief and enjoys the peace.

Well after months and months of back breaking work, we’ve finally finished the master bedroom renovation…or at least 95% of it. Why are those last few details so hard? The closet doors still need to be hung, the trim where the baseboards meet the floor needs to be nailed down, and the electric outlets and light switches are still waiting to be swapped out with nice new white replacements, but besides those few things…we’re done.

I love the bamboo floor. The pictures above the bed are also a favorite. They are cut from a book that I found on sale at Barnes & Noble (on clearance for $2.99!). They are Japanese prints and part of a series called One Hundred Views of Edo by Hiroshige. The hardest part was picking just six to hang. The black and white photographs are by Gary Sendel, a photographer we met at the Louisville St. James Art Festival two years ago. They are shots of very old stone statuary in European cemetaries. Morbid, I know…but they are just so cool. The one above the small dresser is of a lady with a tree that has grown up through the statue and out her head.