A Day

So, I took a day off this week for no reason at all. On Friday I did a little catch up work, but then..... I did some cleaning. And shopping, there were a few things I needed. A load of laundry, put away my summer clothes and mopped the floor, how did it get so dirty so fast?...not much of a day off. It's hard to have any down time these days, every time I get five minutes I instantly want to use it to get ahead on everything I'm behind on. By the time I'm done catching up it's Monday again and off I go.

When I got up on Saturday I realized there was still plenty to do, but not that actually needed doing right now. So I went back to bed with coffee # 3 and read a few chapters of the book I've been trying to finish all week.  I took the dogs for a really long time outside to the old horse pasture and let them snuffle to their hearts content. They did not manage to find anything stupid enough to hand around, but they had fun. I read a few more chapters and finally finished the book. 

I binge watched The Mindy Project which is my new obsession. I always thought I would hate that show and never watched it until now. I saw one episode by accident and now I'm completely hooked, thank goodness for Hulu which has all 6 seasons! I of course was knitting, I'm working on blankets for my granddaughter and I'm 3/4 of the way through the first one. We are heading in the direction in the near future so I need to finish blanket #1 then I can start #2 on my way there. I was going to take my red shawl with me since that (only) needs about 32 more rows but it's too big and has the potential to annoy many people. Not to mention I do not want to drag too much with me. I did not cook, clean or do anything useful. I watched an entire season of The Mindy Project, drank coffee, finished a book and started a book, knit, played with the dogs and took a nap. And you know what? The world did not stop because I did. There is nothing wrong with taking a break from the universe once in a while.

Letting The Dust Settle

We were trying to remember when exactly we officially moved into this house - we had bought it before we sold the other one, but it sat for a while before we did anything with it. I was surprised that we have lived here for about two months, it seems so much longer than that. David has been moving along at lightening speed, but it's a bit disjointed. When you move into a gutted house you don't work on it room by room - you do what you have to to make it habitable, then you keep going back as you acquire supplies. David did half the bathroom and only one of the sinks is hooked up right now, then he started the siding. He spackled the living room, added the deck. Found the perfect tub (in Terra Alta WV), back to the bathroom,  finished the dining room, added steps out front, garage door. It will be a few more months before we fully unpack. 

Buying an older home is always a challenge, you become very creative with storage as there is usually only one or two closets in the entire house. Back when this house was built there were no Calphalon pot collections, you didn't have wardrobes, no Sams Club or Walmart, you had only enough to get by. Most older homes had no bedroom closets but hooks  on the walls, maybe one small bathroom closet if you were lucky and a few kitchen cabinets. David and I had seriously decluttered before we left the Mapletown address, I cannot count how many bins went to Goodwill and yet.....

there is still more. 

I have not switched over to my winter clothes yet but as we were moving stuff around (the Ikea has TONS of drawers between the underbed and dressers) and I got rid of more stuff. As I've said in the past you have to be careful not to go overboard and throw out everything only to have to re-buy it a month down the road. David cut out the walls upstairs into the eaves and added doors since we do not have an attic and the basement is already cramped with construction supplies and overflow. 

The other issue is the dust and the dirt - never ending! We sweep and sweep, mop, dust, vacuum, wipe down,scrub and by the next morning you cannot tell. We track plaster dust, sawdust, mud and dirt, grass, leaves - I have not vacuumed out my car in a month because it's pointless. This will end in a couple of months and then it'll be like we've lived here forever. We have the main living area pretty well put straight and once he gets done with the outside (before the weather turns) then we'll focus on the inside. I would like my front stairs done though so we can company!

Making Room

So, one of the problems with moving into a (not quite) half finished renovation is there is literally no where to put anything. David is currently trying to get the outside of the house done before the weather turns, then will have a few months to concentrate on the inside. Except for the floor and the walls in the kitchen part of the diningroom/kitchen area that is fairly finished so we could put away that stuff, and the bedroom needs a new ceiling and light fixture (the bare bulb, cut-rate motel look of the current one is just not doing it for me) so that's not bad. The rest of the house is Spackle, bare studs, or old walls. We did put the livingroom together for now, upstairs is pretty much storage. We'd put off buying new bedroom furniture since we pretty much got rid of everything we had at the last house, however, we are tired of sleeping on Dog Level which gives the posse full access. David has woken up just about every night being spooned by hunting dogs so it was time to step up our game. 

We had been using my grandmother's furniture temporarily but it's so old now I really don't like to use it. We'd been looking  but could find nothing that met our needs - one of the big problems with an older home is there is very little storage so anything we purchased needed to be utilitarian. And you know what that means...

Ikea. 

There's a store up in Robinson so we went Saturday, got there a bit early and  decided to have breakfast. David was not thrilled with the sausages but I did remind hm we were eating in a furniture store, not Bob Evans. I've been to Ikea, but never really bought much, David's never been and you never know how he'll react.

He loved it. 

I thought I would end up dying there we were there so long. I have to say I enjoyed it, they have the displays so you can really sit or even lay on the product before you invest. But David does indeed shop like a teenage girl at Hot Topic when it comes to furniture of building supplies. Long discussions with the sales clerk as they looked at every color, back and forth - I actually left for awhile to explore the store and came back only to find we went from Black/Brown to Natural Oak. We were no longer looking for just a bed and maybe a dresser - bed, underbed storage, two dressers, nightstands, shelves......and a bath mat since someone was getting a little crazy. 

Then we headed to the Marketplace which is a giant warehouse and you got down your list of Aisles and Bins. You have to be careful to read them because a lot of the items come in more than one package, we ended up with two of those flat carts  wandering around with other people with flat carts piled. You have to just about put blinders on because you keep seeing stuff you Really Need or Isn't That Cute or I Bet That Would Look Perfect In The Home Office I Don't Actually Have But I Might Some Day. We got through the check out only acquiring the aforementioned bathmat and a multi plug - David went and got the van. When we went to load they have a  staff member outside who asks if you need help, David said no thank you I don't need help and I said Oh Yes You Do - he said I Do? , Yes, You'd Love Some Help I replied   and then he told the kid well, I guess I need some help then. David got both the dressers put together, he'll do the bed and night stands tomorrow but it already looks much better. We've been moving furniture upstairs which will make the renovation a little harder upstairs, but not impossible. I'm ready for bed!

Sliding Into Fall

The weather cooled, then got hot, cool and now it's back to warm and very humid. I had thought about swapping out to my fall clothes, David had pondered taking the small airconditioner out of the bedroom window - we have done neither. I'm hoping things calm down a little bit more and we can hopefully get back to our regularly scheduled programming. I went to a festival a couple of weeks ago up in Saxonburg that was a revolutionary/colonial sort of thing with Ye Oldes and so forth. Not my usual cup of tea, but I had a reason to be there - the Alpaca ladies as they are known have hung up thier spinning wheels and will no longer be producing my beloved lace weight yarn. I had emailed them (twice) and Sharon told me she was bringing everything  - there is no better way to sell things then to tell someone it will never, ever be available ever again, is there? Some poor soul was trying to purchase a pair of socks while I piled skeins and then put them back and got another one, decisions, decisions. I finally bought 7 skeins (they are all about 2500 yards each) and left, texting my knitting group with pictures. I was back at the tent as one of my friends asked me to buy her a couple of skeins too....

We have been to the winery across the road - Thistlewaite Winery - I got home a little early one evening as my client was close by. We drove over and Rick, the owner met us out front - it is a really beautiful, high end establishment. We did a wine tasting and they have a lovely variety - they grow the grapes there and produce the wine on the property, hopefully at some point we can get a tour of the rest. Rick gave us two bottles of wine as a welcome to the neighborhood gift, how generous. One of our other neighbors Jane comes over to see (and report) the progress David has made. From what she and the other neighbors have said, they were very relieved when we bought the place with the intention of fixing up instead of patching it and renting it to low income. The neighbors continue to drive by and beep and wave - when we get to the point you can get in the house without having to navigate the mud and so forth we will start entertaining. The dining room is almost ready and the lving room is not looking too shabby.

Work has been very busy, we will be opening the new office in the next few months and I will be working much closer to home - that I'm really looking foward to! Right now it's not too bad, I found a nice back way and it's about 20 minutes - and 20 miles closer so my drive is not only 45 miles which in my head is reasonable. If you add it up I'm actually driving 200 miles less a week - I can live with that. I've been reading a lot, I got my new Kobo H20 2nd Edition which I've been waiting for -forever or at least 3 months. Which felt like forever. I had a little issue with it connecting to the internet but returning it would have been annoyingly difficult and if I have to confess -I do not want to do without it so I've decided I can live with it. I've been working on my Day Lily shawl and today am now on the last of the three rounds of 40 rows, hopefully I'll finish before I expire!!