Little Things

I titled this "Little Things" because that is what we have been focusing on since the first of the new year. With the temperature dropping our heating bills have gone up so in order to stay within our budget we have redirected some of the home repair money to heating. The plus to this is that now we can focus on the little touches that tend to get neglected from time to time. So the first one is the china cabinet. Image the cabinet without shelves, the top falling in, the back and sides missing and plaster (along with other debris that I will not mention) inside of the cabinet. That is what it looked like several weeks ago but now we can actually use it. Here are the results:

We have been without a shower for 3 years (but don't misunderstand, we have taken baths during that time). It is nice to have a shower now. We needed to do a tub surround but plastic just didn't look right so after some research we decided that wood could be used, it just takes more preparation. Then came the shower rod, we needed a rod that was free standing and circular in shape. We couldn't find one locally and to order it would have cost a fortune, which we don't have, so we made our own. Copper tubing works just great. Finally the curtain. It needed to be much longer than the ones sold in the stores so Chris made one by sewing panels of plastic/vinyl together.

Although not complete here is what the rest of the bathroom looks like. Chris made the curtains and hung the wallpaper.

                        












Last, but certainly not least, we wanted to use the speaking tubes. Couldn't find original mouthpieces for the tubes so Chris decided to make her own until we could locate originals. And yes, the tubes do work. She can talk to me from the bathroom when I'm in the kitchen.

Stay tuned for more of episodes of "Life with Chris & Richard"

Now that the holidays are over...

Last month was a busy time for us. We had two of our daughters (Camille and Marie), one grandson (Kanoa) and Marie's friend (Daniel) here for the Christmas Holiday. So we had to prepare rooms for them. Nothing finished, just drywalled. They were lucky, the major cold spell came after they went back home. Now that the holiday season is over I should get back to working on the house. Maybe after this week is over. But I did want to post some of Winter's Artwork for those of you who follow my blog. In keeping with the adage "A picture is worth a 1000 words" here goes:

 

Some of our accomplishments

We tried to get most of the high work done while the lift was here. In addition to fixing the chimneys (mentioned in an earlier post) and taking down two massive trees (also mentioned in an earlier post); we painted the cedar shakes and repaired and painted trim work. So here are the before and after pictures:

Front of house (before).......................(after)


East side (before)..............................(after) (notice that the bay window has been painted as well)

and portions of the east dormer needed to be rebuilt (picture of the rebuilt dormer).

I'm grateful for lifts!

(My sincerest appreciation to my beautiful wife for her insight, talent and help; and my thanks to Dean Machinery for the rental of the lift.)

So how big was that maple tree?

I'm sure I couldn't tell you, but it was over the top of the house, a good 45' in the air.


Now that it is down I can show you a comparison with my size 12 shoe. Thanks Tad, David and Richard for helping to take down the maple tree. Now, how do I move it out of my driveway?

The Beehive is down

Remember my situation, how to get the beehive down and move the bees?


The beehive in the tree is down, but the bees are still in it. (Well they did come out when their portion of the tree hit the ground.) I guess they will remain there for the winter and then next spring I will work on getting them out and into a new hive. (Oh yes, we missed hitting the side of the house by about 6 inches.)