drivel

We certainly did our part yesterday to continue the flow of good and services in this country. I finally couldn't stand it anymore that we had no seating (other than one papasan chair) in our sunroom, so DH and I ended up going shopping. We now have a new couch (courtesy of a local shop), and a new bookcase capable of handling the mountains of books daughter E collects (also courtesy of a local shop). This is on top of replacing the brake pads on the van this weekend (national dealership). So you're quite welcome, US economy.

(J writes here encouraging those of us lucky enough not to be unemployed at the moment to not become too cautious of spending. It's a cornerstone of our economy. If you can, then do.)

My heart is totally warmed by this couch, by the way, as the MOMENT the delivery guys put the couch in the sunroom, E grabbed pillows and blankets and a good book, and she has been parked there ever since. She's claimed her spot.



Note, at the time of this photo, E temporarily moved to the papasan chair because she wanted a snack and I'm forbidding food or drink on the new couch for a while. Wow - the walls REALLY need some color and some artwork, don't they? Regardless, Oh, I love our sunroom.

All done!!!

Well, pretty much done, at least. The painter is coming back to do another coat on the outside of the deck door and he has one more corner of a window on the other side to do (exterior). We also need to get a strip to go between the playroom carpet and the hardwood. Oh, and the electricians need to do the box for the hot tub. But that's it.



This is a chair from my bedroom that I put in there for now so it won't be completely empty. I now need to embark on furnishing this room. Help!!??

in the words of Emily Litella, "never mind."

When I was in high school, my friend Bev (who was just a total cut-up) used to do this act where she'd run up to a ball to pick it up but "accidentally" kick it at the last minute, and then repeat it over and over. We'd all double over laughing because she played the part so well. Her face would light up with anticipation of picking up the ball and fall dramatically as it would bounce further away out of her reach.

Well.

Here's the gorgeous floor, poly'd up and shining in our room. This is the last big thing that needs to be done. After the floor is done, it's just minor touchups, trimwork, hanging the ceiling fan, etc.



And here is what the floor looks like next to our existing floor (which it is supposed to match).


Sigh. It looks even more off in real life than in the picture. It'll be fixed - I talked to our contractor this morning, and our contract clearly states that the floor is to match our existing floor. But fixing it will entail sanding off the new finish and restaining it and doing it all over again. So my ALMOST finished room remains ALMOST finished for yet another week.

Please note my loverly toes in the picture. I didn't know you could see them when I took the picture, but I left them in on purpose. I had a pedicure for the first time in about 2 decades last weekend and my toes have never looked so beautiful.

another update

The floor is down!!! It needs to sit for 10 days before they stain and finish it. We also still need to have the ourside door painted (same off-white as the walls) and the interior doors will be stained to match the rest of the trim. I think it's mostly odds and ends that are left now.

sunroom update... (primed and ready to go)

We are almost there!!!! I am so happy with our contractor and with the speed and efficiency with which this is taking place...

Here's a view of the room from the door leading to the deck. The gray (unprimed) part will be a single door (9-panel glass) leading to the playroom. Notice one of the skylights on the ceiling. Thank you Dave for encouraging the skylights. Heaven. I think we are going to stain the wood around the windows (oak stain) rather than paint. We'll do the same with the interior doors. The paint color is a creamy, off-white. (E is very disappointed I didn't go with the fluorescent yellow she picked out.) I need to hold off on color. I can't "feel" the room yet. Gotta live in it a little bit before I know what color it is.


Here is a view looking toward the deck and the kitchen. The ugly red exterior door will become an oak-stain double French door later this week.


And here's the deck. Did I say I love this Oasis composite decking? Our friend was fooled - he thought it was redwood. No maintenance. Oooh.

while I was away...

Taken from where the deck will be:


...and from the backyard:

progress

Sorry. I do realize that no one is as interested in this as I am, but look what I found when I got home today! Wooo hoooo! There will be another big window that size on the wall that's not up yet, and the other one (leading to the deck) will have glass french doors. Sunshine!!!!

foundation

In the midst of my personal imploding, the construction on our new room goes on:


The foundation is done. (btw, that's not snow. It's white sand).
The cinder block portion (on the NEW foundation) is the side where the new deck will be attached. The cinder block portion on the existing house is due to us being cheap when we added that first addition and went with cinder blocks in the back of the house rather than extend the brick all the way around. I kind of regret it now, but oh well. Most of it is getting covered up with the new room anyway.

I was worried that it looked awfully small when it was just the footings, but it's looking like a nice-sized room to me now.

In other news, daughter E had a FABULOUS birthday and birthday party. More about that later. I'm off to SF in a few days. No, my talk is not even almost ready. Which is why this is going to be a very short posting. Just wanted my good friends out there to know I'm alive and barely kicking.

Happy holidays, all!!

one step at a time

We are now proud residents with a porta-potty in our front yard (BTW, dear neighbor M, I don't think you or your children should actually use it. I'm not totally convinced that it's real. Where would the, um...crap...go? Seriously? It's just sitting there on solid ground. I think this is another regulatory thing). This is courtesy of our fabulous contractor (I mean fabulous in all seriousness - he replanted one of our plants and did some fill-dirt work just to be nice). Pictures of the loverly porta potty to come soon. (And our back deck is totally gone and a bobcat is in its place.)



So what happened to the fall? I vaguely remember grousing about how the leaves hadn't changed as it neared Halloween. Then I blinked, and now it's after Thanksgiving. We're having fires in the fireplace. The leaves are glorious though they turned many weeks later than "normal." Normal is relative. The climate is changing and this is the new normal. For now. Don't get me started. (Ruthie, I KNOW I owe you some stuff about global warming and I so want to do that and will. I figure that you're so busy now anyway that you're not chomping at the bits to read it. And meanwhile I'm struggling to not burst into tears at the slightest provocation and to please train myself to stop resorting to canned ravioli and frozen dinners at night. Did I ever really have time to COOK for my family? When??)

I'm a bit busy. I have a talk to give at the AGU meeting (American Geophysical Union) in San Francisco in a week or so and I pretty much still don't know the direction it will take. I am not good with last minute stuff. So I'm panicking. And not sleeping. It's generally not pretty for those who know me. My sweet baby girl turns NINE YEARS OLD on Sunday, so we're having 6 additional little girls spend the night on Saturday. I called DH tonight as I was panicking over life in general and the fact that I had to make TWO trips to Walmart for the Brownie troop tonight for extra garland and ornaments for their cute holiday parade hats...and by the way dear neighbor M was NOT THERE to take my panicked calls, meaning I had to subject DH to the explosion of my sanity...which meant that I came home to a clean house and a fire in the fireplace and the decision that DH and E are going to totally take care of her party from the planning to the buying to the execution of it. That was a truly panicked phone call, I tell you. M, be glad you were at Kohl's. Or not. I was going to offer to buy the wine. Anyway. (I'm going to try hard to trust DH and E with the birthday party. I did have to remind them to think about buying a cake ahead of time if they want it specialized in any way. I appreciate them taking some of my load off. But this is my BABY'S BIRTHDAY!!!! Breathe, breathe)

But you know what? After the Brownie meeting tonight, E and I had to stop by the store for milk, and she picked up a Hershey's bar. As it was on the tip of my tongue to tell her "NO WAY, JOSE, you just ate a chocolate Santa at Girl Scouts!!" she said, "Mommy, I don't have any money with me, or I would buy this for you. I think you've had a hard night and you need this." (sniff) So I bought it.

At home, it was sitting on the counter. Q came in and asked me "Whose Hershey's bar is that on the counter?" Rather than sniping at him "No SIR, you may not have it!!" I simply said "mine." He said. "Oh good, Mommy. You deserve something nice like that."
Then, as I was cuddling with him on the couch, I chanted to him in my best brainwashing mode: "You will love your mommy forever and buy her lots of presents when she is old and let her play with her grandchildren whenever she wants to." Q looked at me with surprise. "Well, of COURSE I will, mommy!!!!"

O.M.G.

I have the best children and husband EVER.

If only they could finish my AGU talk up for me.

before

I know that the "before" pictures are the most boring, so I apologize.
Here's a very poorly patched-together picture of the back of our house which is set to be overhauled beginning on Monday.


Here's where the sunroom will be. From the left, there's a double window (office) then two sets of double doors, both red. One leads to nowhere and one leads to the current deck. The sunroom will extend from just to the left of the 1st double door to just to the right of the second. The double door on the left side will be converted to a single interior door leading from the playroom to the sunroom. The other doors will be changed to interior french doors to lead from the dining area to the sunroom. There will be a deck to the right of the sunroom. You can also see the lovely silt fence that the environmental control people in our county required us to have installed, costing us an additional many many many (nearly EIGHT) hundreds of dollars.



And here's yet another requirement from the environmental people. A permanent sign, set in concrete down in our woods:

Can you see it?




And here is the reason we're getting a sunroom. This is the current view from the back of our house.