I’m baaaccckkk

Hi everyone! It’s been a while since my last post, so I’ll try to catch you up on what we’ve been up to these past few weeks. We’ve had a few fun weekends up here and have been enjoying the fall colors as they’re appearing. The waterfalls have been incredible since we had a pretty wet September.

Since my last post, we’ve managed to get all of our doors and drawer fronts and install all of them. They look great and we’re really pleased!

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So, have you noticed something missing still? Countertops? Well…there’s a story here. They actually came to install our countertops last week. See? I was so excited I even took a picture of the truck with our granite in the back!

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Unfortunately, that was as close to the granite as we got. We found out our cabinets weren’t level. Wait what? We had leveled ALL of the rails that the Ikea cabinets hang from. We had checked level when we hung them. Without boring you to death, here’s what happened. Ikea provides these little clips to help you get exact level of those rails. But once we hung everything and put in the drawers, etc. the corner cabinets dropped by 3/4″. We didn’t realize it and when they came to measure for the granite, the measuring guy didn’t catch it either. So, the granite guys came and then they left with our granite. Keith ended up staying back an extra day to take all of the lower cabinets off and level and rehang them. 😦 On a happy note, the granite guys are scheduled to come back tomorrow. But until then, you’ll just have to admire some more pictures with our lovely plywood countertops!

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The kitchen is fully functional in spite of the unfinished nature of it. Just to make you jealous, here’s the big pot of gumbo we made for dinner today.

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We have gotten some other things taken care of around here. Our ceilings in the den/kitchen are finally finished and painted. Now we just have to put the final ceiling trim and baseboards up. We had run out of all of that, so today Keith & I ripped down some more MDF to make the last of the trim. I’m not going to lie. As I was sanding all of it down, knowing that I still have to prime it all, I decided I am GLAD we are almost done with that trim! I’m so over sanding and painting it, and when we were pulling the MDF out of the truck, I sustained a little injury.

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Ouch, right? I am having to wear my wedding bands on my right hand right now as it’s not gone down any in a week. 😦 I am taking this week off of work, so I’ll begin the fun task of painting all of that trim tomorrow and we’ll hang it later this week.

Now on to my next project. You may remember the dilemma I had around the unsightly crypt looking wellhead. I finally started building the box/planter to cover it! I was able to use leftover pressure treated lumber to build the box. I have to buy a few more deck boards to make the “lid” which will be a shallow planter box, but good progress was made today. I’m hoping to have it done to show you next week.

Here are some pictures of how I went about making the box.

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And here’s a preview of the box on the crypt. This thing is HEAVY and solid! One thing to note. If you look inside the box, you’ll see a ledge about 4″ down. That will hold the base of the planter which will be removable. I’ll put some landscape fabric down on the bottom of the planter portion and some drainage holes. Once I make the lid I’ll paint everything white and I found some reflective house numbers on Etsy which I’ll put on the front of the box. It should look great!

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Mom is here visiting, so in addition to house projects, we’re going to do a few fun things. We’re taking a train ride to see the fall colors, we’ll probably go see some waterfalls, and who knows what else we may do! It will be nice to have some quiet time. We were supposed to be on a European River Cruise with her this week to celebrate her 85th birthday, but since Covid took that away from us, we’ll try to enjoy some mountain time instead! And Chloe is certainly happy to have her DeeDee back! She’s barely left mom’s lap since she arrived….

Hopefully I’ll have some more pretty pics to show next week, but I’ll leave you with this view from the deck taken this afternoon.