Can you see all the snow that slid off the roof? There's a huge pile out there. And speaking of snow, I am developing quite the talent for meeting all the neighbors who own plows. Roxie and I were out shoveling my other driveway when a guy in a pickup drove by. A pickup with a plow on the front. He stopped and asked if I wanted any help. I asked if he would help with half the driveway - the outside half that included the berm made by the town plow. I needed to shovel something because I need the exercise. Turns out the neighbor is named Byron; he and his wife live about half a mile up the road and poodle and I sort of met them a couple weeks ago when we were out for a walk. He was quite nice and offered to plow both of my driveways anytime I need some help. Awe. Some.
"And now, the continuing stooooory of a quack who's gone to the dogs."
(HAHAHAHAHAHA! Anybody remember that one?)
Anyway, back to the continuing stooooory of a remodel that's .... I don't have a good ending to that sentence. So here's a little story that has nothing to do with the remodel, but illustrates my one-step-forward-two-steps-back theory. Since I am technically a new customer with the propane company, they had to come out and do a free site inspection to check for leaks. I also asked if they would cap the other propane line (I've got two tanks, one for each of the gas ranges in the two kitchens) and remove the extra tank. Remember, I'm replacing the range in my soon-to-be-new kitchen with an electric range so I'm not completely surrounded by fuel sources. So the guy comes out and instead of looking at everything and telling me it's all hunky dory, he tells me the safety valve on the range is defective and he has to turn off the propane and lock the tank until I get a replacement part and someone comes back out to install it. (Read $200 or so.) Plus, the tank itself has a leak, so that baby needs to be replaced. AND the tank is too close to the door so when they come to swap it out they need to relocate it several feet farther down the driveway. I briefly thought about getting rid of this range and ditching the propane altogether, but my new electrician friend told me it would be a nightmare to run wires for an electric stove. So I ordered the part, which won't get here until Thursday at the earliest. In the meantime, I have no cooking apparatus, except my toaster oven. Yay me.
When the propane guy went over to look at the other tank next door, he said it isn't one of theirs so he couldn't remove it. He did turn it off and lock the tank and shove the gas line down through the kitchen floor, but it took several phone calls to other propane companies before I found the rightful owner of the tank. They must have taken it away sometime on Thursday when I wasn't looking; we got a crap ton of snow Thursday night and when I noticed the tank was gone on Friday, there were no footprints in the new snow.
But let's go back inside. The kitchen went from looking like this on Thursday:
To looking like this on Friday:
Here's the other side of the room:
I still need to slap some Kilz on the walls and ceiling of the pantry. Did you know they make that stuff in a spray can?!? I found it at Home Depot and almost did a happy dance in the paint aisle. I also want to fill in the cracks between the beadboard panels before I paint everything. Ann says I can get wood filler that squeezes out of a tube like caulk, which is exactly what I was hoping to find. The flooring installer is coming end of the week so I have a couple of days to get this done. I forgot to take a picture of the kitchen ceiling - Erin and Jeff took those "beams" down for me. If I get my act together, I will paint the ceiling this week too.
Up in the bathroom, the Thursday-to-Friday transformation isn't very spectacular:
The beadboard has been wrapped around the room as far as it can go until the bathtub gets installed. I need to figure out how to deal with that mess I found/created behind the mirror before I can paint the walls in here. I also need to figure out how to deal with the skylight. If you remember from previous pictures, it looks like raw wood, which just doesn't seem like a good idea considering the skylight is above the bathtub. I'm going to paint it high gloss white but I don't know if I need to seal it first or if the paint will act as enough of a seal. And I want to make sure the damn thing isn't leaky. Again, flooring installer is coming end of the week and I'd like to have the upper walls painted before he gets here. The beadboard is going to stay white but I think I will wait until the tub is in and the rest of it is installed before I bother with filling nail holes and painting it.
As a final unrelated note, poodle and I found out our friend Cisco headed off for his journey across the Rainbow Bridge. In the same way that Ubu went during a lunar eclipse, Cisco went while there was a beautiful rainbow across the Flathead Valley. Back in December Cisco gave poodle a going away present, and she has been really good at keeping it in one piece. Here they are together in the jeep somewhere around Minnesota, and again at my mom's house at the end of the trip:
We named the toy after Cisco so we will always remember him, and poodle will keep him close to her heart.
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