I approach this not with regrets but with many happy feelings about how we took a run-down, bank-foreclosed property and made it into a home.

Remember this is what the house originally looked like! Yikes!

THE BIG RED MESS

This is what the house looks like now!

Yes, we still have a few projects to complete (after all it is a house that was built in the 1850’s!) but a few things have transpired which has given me inspiration to write about other things.

First and foremost, Lynn and I moved to the “Red House” permanently on June 27, 2019. Second, the point of The Red House Project blog was to describe in detail all the problems we had with renovations or contractors or just life on the property.  Over the years I also included some stories about our road trips or food-related articles, always trying to tie the stories into whatever project we were facing back home.

I loved writing about the house and the many challenges we faced throughout the renovation. I think I succeeded in making the blog a fun read. Hopefully, I also brought to life some of the characters I chose to write about as I tried to portray them as helpful, yet quirky, personalities. Going forward I have decided to write more about food and travel and anything that strikes me of interest in the Mohawk Valley.

The Red House Project blog will still remain online there just won’t be any further posts.

For the past nine years I have loved living in this Red House, even if it was only for long weekends or during the summer months. This passion, I hope, will never leave me.  That said, I’ve created a new blog, “Let’s Go!” that I hope will entertain you as I know the Red House did.

Here’s a link to my first post about the move.  So “Let’s Go.”

Since my last story (with its laundry list of “things still to do”), we have managed to finish at least a few of the projects.

But let us start with what happened in the spring. A really tall tree suddenly snapped and fell on our garage. Even though we want the garage to eventually go away, we weren’t planning on having it “go away” that way without a plan in place to replace it. Luckily, the way the tree fell, ever so lightly across the roof of the garage, and with a somewhat artistic flourish too (it was hanging off the side of the garage which gave a little piece of the property a sudden Italian trellis look), it caused no damage what so ever.

What prompted me to remember the tree falling on the house back in mid-April was the fact that now that 85% of the house is finished, we have had a slew of visitors (including Mom and Dad) which gives me lots of people with big ears (McCoys’ have big ears) to listen to “Red House” stories.

Apparently, I had never told them about “Bowling Bob.” But first let me get back to the tree.  The tree fell down in mid-April. In mid-May (yes, four weeks later), I finally got my “Tree Guy” to remove the tree from the garage and also cut down a bigger tree that we thought could possibly fall on the house (the kitchen, of course) which would be devastating.  I hate cutting down trees but we really had no choice.

The fact that it took the “Tree Guy” four weeks from my initial phone call to him removing the tree from the garage, is well, in my world, UNACCEPTABLE.

So let me now tell you the story of “Bowling Bob.” Back in 2011 when we didn’t have a furnace yet, we ordered one from Sears (I know, I know but they had a great financing plan). When the furnace was installed (incorrectly I may add) and water was pouring out of EVERY SINGLE PIPE IN THE BASEMENT, we called the guy, Bob, who had put in the new furnace (AKA “Sears Furnace Guy”) to apprise him of the problem. “Sears Furnace Guy” when told of our dilemma says he absolutely cannot come deal with our flood that weekend because his middle school age son was in a bowling tournament and that took precedence over our flood.  What????

Hence the moniker “Bowling Bob.” “Bowling Bob” has also come to represent many of the contractors we have been forced, cough, cough, I mean had the pleasure of working with in the Mohawk Valley.

Our current contractor Ron (who I do like a lot), understood that I wanted bathroom #3 renovated before Memorial Day weekend. He and I met early February to go over all the specifications and by April I was texting and calling him weekly asking for an estimate. When Memorial Day weekend rolled around, with still no estimate or bathroom renovation on the horizon, I started to get seriously pissed.  Since I mentioned that I had people visiting all summer, coupled with Lynn and I doing some much needed traveling, if it couldn’t be done by early June, it wouldn’t happen until mid-September since I didn’t want any of our guests to not have a bathroom. (Yes, I do want to make sure everyone has a place to pee, poop and even shower!) .

Guess what, he really didn’t care.

Back to our “Tree Guy.” When he did remove the tree from the garage roof and had a “Stump Guy” come and grind down all the stumps, he also promised us he would dig out a deeper trench in the back to deal with any possible flooding this summer might bring.  We had the conversation in May and after at least 10 text messages (maybe more) about when this could be accomplished, we set a Saturday date.

Saturday morning after assuming incorrectly he would be at the Red House at the crack of dawn, I finally texted him around 9:30. An hour later this was his response: “Who is this?”

I reminded him we had set up a “trench digging appointment” that morning which apparently he forgot about. Long story short, he showed up a day later with a back hoe and less than an hour later I had a trench.

It’s definitely not pretty, but we bought some of that landscape fabric that’s supposed to prevent weeds and new grass growth and once we line the trench with it we hope to throw in a couple of bags of rocks. In a funky color of course.

Before I move on to my current “Bowling Bob” story, let me show you what we have accomplished.

Escutcheons are up! Yes, I buckled and paid nearly $100 (!) for a box of them. And guess what they are not even real metal but plastic that’s been spray painted silver!  But in fairness, it does complete the look of the hot water pipes running through the house.

We bought the last four windows we needed for the attic and had them installed.

We painted the Bentwood chairs (and even a rocker) that had been lying around for some time in the bright colors we had wanted. I think they look pretty cool.

Notice how we somehow missed putting on a baseboard since it had been “hidden” by a really big picture we simply plopped there. (Big picture has been moved to another room, not yet hung up either.)

Luckily, we have been dealing with a heat wave with no chance of rain which has made perfect spray painting weather in the driveway with quick drying times to boot.

We also did some waterproofing of the foundation on a really hot day back in June (boy was that fun!). We decided to do the front of the house first primarily because we thought by now we would have a couple of stairs and some simple landscaping and didn’t want to worry about a foundation that wasn’t “waterproofed” when everything had been planted.

However, while our contractor Ron thought he could tackle this project too, he simply was swamped with work and gave us the name of yet another “Bowling Bob.” In fairness, this landscaper who also builds things was quick to meet with us, but then his father took ill and he simply couldn’t put an estimate together or commit to an install date. (Update: we now have an estimate, which I had to negotiate down, but the install date is still pending.) Which is why the front of the house still looks like this.

Meanwhile back on the farm, I mean the garden, we were proactive this year in putting up at least 1/2 of some rabbit-proof fencing material in hopes that “evil bunny” wouldn’t be able to get into the garden and eat all the veggies we had planted.

That’s when we discovered the fox. We have to assume the fox has “taken care” of the bunny so to speak since we have vegetables that are finally growing. We have peas and more beans than I know what to do with. Our tomatoes are starting and the lettuce is absolutely amazing. (It really is.)

I’m having the same problem I had with the zucchini as last year (all blossoms and no bodies, even after trying to help fertilize) but my beets are growing strong and I planted radishes that remind me of the spicy ones we would eat at many a Munich beer garden.

And we have the flowers, the day lilies and Stella D’Oro are particularly pretty this time of year.

We also discovered tiny clusters of raspberries that we had never seen growing before (thank you birds for dropping berry seeds there), and the sumac which had been golden yellow has finally turned red.

Meanwhile, we have definitely started to make the Red House a “real” home and threw out most of our old furniture (most of which we “appropriated” for free from the streets of Long Island). Thank you neighbors for hauling away all the furniture we put on the curb (including the church pews) within two hours, we love you! We bought some new stuff and even added some artwork from a local artist in Syracuse.

To say we have made tremendous progress this year is an understatement. So, even with all the “Bowling Bobs” out there who give me “agita” when it comes to trying to finish the Red House in a timely manner, I know eventually they do show up and do a pretty good job.

We are thankful for them.

And so begins the season. Enjoy the summer. I know we will.

And although we have been spending much more time up at the Red House (weeks off for vacation and multiple weekends), it’s the seemingly endless small projects that just constantly slow us down.

Take for example the following list of “small” projects.

1. Door Knobs. Even though we started replacing most of the glass door knobs with “fancy” metal ones, the fact is, we still have 3 or 4 left to do. While it may seem like a quick and easy task, inevitably there is drilling involved (removing the old door knob), spackling over what was drilled because the new doorknob is higher, and finally painting around the new one.

2. Radiators. Since we first painted the radiators nearly EIGHT YEARS AGO, some of the radiators are already peeling and look like crap.  So until we can get radiator covers, quite a few of the radiators need to be redone.

3. Escutcheons. (I do love that word!) Besides the old radiators, we also have old plumbing pipes in every room on the first floor of the house that bring hot and cold water to the upstairs. They are all badly in need of being “finished” off with escutcheons, also known as split flanges in the plumbing world. And after repeated attempts to find them online as well as roaming the aisles at two different big box stores, we haven’t been able to locate the exact size we need.  Plus they are ridiculous expensive. See here we kind of finagled one at the top, but are missing the second one.

4. Door Hinges. Another thing that took a lot of time was trying to get the moulding to fit around the patio door because of the hinges. Lynn had to painstakingly cut the moulding to fit but even with the help of at least three power tools and a handsaw, the cut still came out kind of messy. He tried to spackle around it but still has to paint. (This “little” project by the way took nearly 6 hours.)

5. Moulding And More Moulding. All of the moulding around the entry ways and doorways in the dining room has yet to be completed.

And even though the moulding around the front door to the house was finished YEARS AGO, (well at least two if not more) it was never painted.

Speaking of the front door let’s go outside for a bit.

6.  Steps. A couple of steps would be nice if anyone actually ever wanted to come through the front door. We are still waiting for a contractor to connect us with a mason who can build us a set of stairs. This year.

7.  Attic Windows. We also need at least four new attic windows since those were never replaced.

I particularly like the old vent on the left and the duct-tape-held-together screen on the right. (As in not.)  But let’s continue.

8.  Siding. Remember the siding that was done last year? A piece already fell off.  Luckily it was still under “warranty” and the siding contractor came out to fix it.  Yesterday. This is what it looked like before that happened.

Granted, it was not a big deal, but a piece was missing! But let’s go back inside the house.

9. Threshold. Going back into the dining room, wouldn’t some sort of threshold be nice leading into the kitchen? Unless you, unlike myself, like the idea of a trip and fall every time you are going from one room to the other.

We’ve also started to bring up some furniture that had been in our Long Island house in the hopes of renovating (or at least painting) them too.

10. Chairs. We have a lot of chairs. These green ones we picked up at a garage sale for $25.00. (That price was for all four, not each!)

And then these Bentwood-style ones that we recently had re-caned (the seats that is) but now want to paint the frames.

In funky, hip colors, of course.

11. Pictures. We have also started to hang up some pictures! Hip Hip Hooray! But with Lynn you don’t just hang a picture on a wall and hope it’s centered. You measure the wall (at least 3 or 4 times), then the picture (at least 5 or 6 times), and then hope to find a stud that will support the picture. Then you try to find a pencil that has a point so you can mark EXACTLY where the picture will go, and then when the pencil breaks you spend a really, really long time trying to find a pencil sharpener. (Ours just happens to be in the shape of Big Ben.)

These are just some of the smaller pictures, photographs and postcards that need to be hung up most of which we’ve collected over the years from traveling together. And yes, since quite a few of them are laid out on the ping pong table, this has curtailed our “tisch tennis” playing indefinitely.

Here is one piece that was successfully hung! And a shout out to my Uncle John for letting us buy his artwork at a reasonable price.

But let’s continue the list, this time noting the bigger projects.

12.  Guest Bathroom. We have one last bathroom to remodel. This means the tub is being replaced with a shower, and a new vanity, mirror, lighting, and walls need to be installed. We are still waiting for an estimate on this project from our contractor and need to decide on what kind of tile we want on the floor.

But let’s go back outside.

13.  Dead Tree. In addition to the “last bathroom,” we also have one last big tree that needs to unfortunately be cut down. Every time the wind blows, we are afraid it’s going to fall on the house; it’s been dead for years and at one point was one of two trees that held a  hammock between them that was ideal for napping and listening to the sound of the wind and the birds.

14. Stump Grinding. And although we have a “tree guy” who has cut down other trees on the property, he does not in fact cut the stumps down, so we have to get a “stump guy” to do that. (We have four stumps the last time I counted that need to be “stumped” so to speak.)

15. Foundation. We also need to chistle off the spray foam we put into the holes in the masonry a couple of years ago (yes, it does in fact look like orange vomit spilling out of the house), and figure out how to patch the stone foundation. (That’s a really fun project I’m so not looking forward to but it absolutely has to be done.)

16. Garden Fence. We also need a totally new fence around my garden to keep the rabbits and deer out so they don’t eat everything I plant in the summer! This will be a very big expensive project unless I veto some of Lynn’s very lovely but overly ambitious design ideas.

Did I mention the crappy weather we’ve been having? So absolutely nothing outside can get started until it stops snowing and turns warmer.

Let’s go back inside.

17. Staircase. In my last post in January, I had thought we were going to redo the stairs with a vinyl floor tile that looked like wood. When we discovered however, that EVERY SINGLE STAIR TRED WAS A SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT SIZE (and would need to be cut accordingly), we realized we would have been working on this one project probably for the rest of our lives.  Therefore, we quickly switched gears and decided (for now at least), to just paint them, add some moulding on three sides, and have them professionally redone down the road.

So, at least we have one down and one staircase to go. (Lynn informs me that on the second staircase (shown below) he is definitely not taping them first – way too time consuming. )

18. The Deck. Yes, we do in fact want to extend the deck and wrap it around the back of the house. And add a gazebo. And maybe a giraffe or two. Just kidding.

When our son Nicholas was small, I would always make him a chocolate cake for his birthday and put a plastic train (complete with a track) on top that you could wind up and it would circle the cake. Both he and I thought it was pretty cool. Our daughter, Rachel, got the same cake but her cake topping of choice were usually those little paper umbrellas (in pink of course.)  If I had to compare the Red House to my favorite kind of cake, it would probably be fairly simply (although the renovations we’ve endured have indeed been kind of complex.) Perhaps a lemon or orange-zest flavored pound cake with tiny strawberries and some delicious whipped cream?

So, friends, the Red House like any cake, is still “baking”. And yes, all my cakes were always made from “scratch.”

Yes, thank you for asking, I do, in fact, have a headache…

It’s Thursday, the day we’ve been waiting for nearly 3 months to get our bedroom floor installed.

Three months prior, this is the image that greeted us early in the morning. Boxes of wood flooring that had simply been dumped in our driveway. How they were getting up to the second floor bedroom appeared to be a mystery.

When we had two other bedroom floors done 3 summers ago, I don’t remember it being such a big deal. All the supplies and the wood got delivered IN THE SAME DAY and the installer came and did BOTH rooms in 2 days.

Now, we have one room, a narrow hallway and two small landings and it’s become a project that became impossible to schedule let alone have all the required materials delivered. Did I mention that this one room and above mentioned spaces is also costing roughly $500 more than both bedrooms combined?

Three guys and 8 hours later, we had half a bedroom and the hallway done. In fairness, they actually weren’t able to start until 10:30 a.m. even after showing up by 9:15 a.m. because even though the wood has been here for nearly three months, everything else they needed (plywood, matching wood thresholds and tar-like paper that is making the whole house smell like we put in a new driveway) was not and one of the installers had to go pick  everything else up himself at the BIG BOX store.

Obviously, this is no way to run a business!

The installers were concerned they were not going to be able to finish the job in 2 days so I had to give them the reality check that they might have to work on a Saturday (imagine that)! Christmas Eve I said would work for us too. (A small lie as to when we would next be back up at the house, but effective.)  Their response was they would be here by 9 a.m. tomorrow and bring a “fourth” guy.

In case you’re wondering, this is what the bedroom floor looked like prior to the installation.

Plus a hallway that was still covered in what looked like old snake skin patterned linoleum circa 1964.

And two very dreary landings. Here’s one of them.

Day 2.

8:56 a.m. The two original guys show up. No word on third guy (the boss) and the mystery “fourth” guy. The compressor goes on right away as does the radio where they’ve managed to find a station that’s playing Lynyrd Skynyrd. I can live with that.

9:59 a.m. Third guy (boss) shows up by himself.

10:20 a.m. “Fourth” guy shows up. He’s actually the guy who came out in JUNE to do the original estimate. We spend a lot of time complaining about BIG BOX store and how they don’t have anyone working there in flooring who knows anything about flooring. Really? I remind myself they are subcontractors and tell him this is our very last project with BIG BOX store.  Well, at least I hope so.

1:34 p.m. “Fourth” guy leaves to go do paperwork for another job and says he just came to “help,” and make sure they would finish today. We tell each other that we hope to never see one another again (in a nice way) but then I mention we were thinking about putting some carpet in one room and bingo – he does that too.

Meanwhile, when they’re working upstairs, I go outside to look at the garden.  This summer weather (oops, I forgot today is the first day of autumn) has resulted in very colorful wild flowers, lots of peppers and jalapenos and marigolds that look like they are just starting the summer season not ending it.

After the garden, I walk around the house and look at all the new gutters that we had installed Labor Day weekend which seem to be holding up so far.  Of course, it has barely rained in the past 3 weeks and even this weekend the temps are in the high 80’s!

One of the gutters is ridiculously long but we are hoping that the “pond” that collected on the side of the house after the last heavy rain storm won’t have a chance to form again if we try and divert the water as far away from the house (and down the driveway) as possible. The bonus feature of this gutter is that it actually flips up (so you can mow under it) which I thought was pretty clever.

Geez, it looks even longer in this shot!

2:55 p.m. One of the two original installers has to leave to go get a “haircut” since he has a second job bartending at a banquet hall that night. My reaction is why not just sweep your hair up in a”man bun.” He was already in his car before I could suggest that to him or even hand him a pony tail holder.

Now we’re down to two guys. I go back to the garden and look at the last remaining tomato still clinging to the vine, decide to leave it alone but cut the pumpkin since I figure evil bunny might eat it before I could at least admire it.  The pumpkin is heavier than I thought but I love its “wrinkles” and the vibrant shade of orange.

3:21 p.m. They claim they’re done and start packing up all their things. I go upstairs to look and yes, I am impressed, the floors came out really nice! But then I realize we didn’t pay for them to install any quarter round moulding around the baseboards so Lynn has yet another project to add to his very long “to do list.”

I happened to catch the sun shining in the windows after they left which made a pretty pattern on the bedroom floor.

The landing came out really nice, too.

But wait, why do we have so many boxes of wood left? FIVE BOXES to be precise. Did they totally overestimate the job? Yes, they did, Yes, indeed. We decide to put four of them in the car (the fifth box is broken and impossible to carry down the stairs) and return them to the store in the morning. Then, I think, we can relax for the rest of the day.

Relax? Oh yeah, I forgot, we need to put the bed back in the room so we can sleep tonight which means setting up the frame and dragging in the box spring and mattress and making up the bed. But before this can be done, everything in the room has to be swept, then mopped. Including the landing with windows and window sills that hadn’t been washed since we got new windows 6 years ago!

But wait, suddenly we realized that the installers had taken off all the doors – doors to the bathroom and bedroom and hallway – in order to install the floor, but hadn’t put them back up. And guess what, when we tried to put one of them back up, we realized it wouldn’t fit because now the floor was higher! So while we thought about taking the doors outside and shaving a bit off (as we have done for other doors in the past), the thought  of carrying 3 doors down the stairs, outside, and then back up again was daunting.

So Lynn brought the saw horses upstairs and we cut two of the three down so they’d fit. Then I made the bed – sheets, blanket and comforter – only to realize I had forgotten the mattress pad (!) so I stripped the bed and started all over again.

This final floor in our bedroom was our last project for the summer. Hip Hip Hooray!

I’ll leave you with a summery flower arrangement I put together from the Red House garden and hope everyone has a lovely fall and not too dreary a winter.

PS I just realized our new dining room table almost exactly matches the oak floors we put in the bedroom! Trust, me this was purely accidental.

Yes, there is still some painting to be done and insulation needs to be put around the skylight and we need a towel rack or two and a toilet paper roll holder would be awesome but the toilet flushes, the sink works (HOT WATER TOO), and no one drowned in the Jacuzzi.

Considering that we started this project on June 19, 2016 and it’s now September, the only thing I can say is that luckily it’s not our only bathroom!

Here are a few shots of the transformation.

And the finished tub!

We also did the floor in what looks like “distressed” wood but is in fact simply tile. I didn’t think it would look as good as it does so I’m quite pleased with how it turned out.

When we sold our Long Island house earlier this year, we also gave up access to a convenient washer/dryer. (Our apartment has neither.) Which means one of us (usually me because I have a shorter commute and thus home earlier) is doing laundry at the laundromat. Not the worse case scenario actually. What I didn’t realize with these new machines (ours in our previous house were really old) is that 1) they do laundry in half the time and 2) they do laundry in half the time!

So to take you back, this is what the “laundry room” looked like.

And this is what we have now! (I know it IS very exciting!)

Yeah, they’re not fancy front-loaders in designer colors. They are simple white. They were mid-range in price and they will probably last forever.

Since we have TWO other bathrooms to renovate going forward (the one that I dare not mention again until somehow magically it’s done), and the icky white bathroom we are using now, I can say I’m feeling most optimistic since this one turned out so well.

Bathroom done we are moving into the fall season with a huge list of projects.

1. We still have NO dining room. Exhibit 1A.2. We still have NO bedroom. Exhibit 2A.

3.  One of our staircases is still HALF PINK/HALF WHITE! Exhibit 3A.

4. What should be the “living” room is filled with “boy toys” to help do all the renovations! Exhibit 4A.

5. What should be the “family” aka TV room is filled with boxes from our old house. We can’t store anything in our basement since it has a tendency to flood (!) which leaves us with the attic. Unfortunately, we have some stairs missing so can’t physically get up to the attic until the stairs are put back. Until that happens, all the stuff that’s here will unfortunately have to stay here. Exhibit 5A.

6. We are most definitely not hoarders but even the staircase landing is filled with stuff! Exhibit 6A.

7. Did I mention the driveway is totally ripped up and an eyesore, too? Exhibit 7A.

8. We still have NO siding. Exhibit 8A!

9. Not to mention we need a new garage! Exhibit 9A.

I know at this point everyone is thinking  – WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU GUYS BEEN DOING THE LAST 6 YEARS!!! The answer is fixing everything else!

But let me continue.

10. We also don’t have any stairs to get into the front of the house. Yep, we need some landscaping, too! Exhibit 10A.

Compounding the lack of stairs and siding is the problem we face every winter in that the rain simply pours off the roof when we are going through the side entryway. (Shower anyone?) Also when it gets really cold we have very large icicles that form and drip off the roof onto the deck making an entrance into the house somewhat perilous.

To end this story on a happy gardening note, (yes, the thought of the cold and pictures of the icicles did frighten me), we did manage to harvest most of the garlic (we think) that was growing. The cloves were especially large this year and most likely the German Red variety. (Truthfully can’t really remember what we planted!)

Our bamboo is flowering and growing so well it has managed to create a “privacy” fence for a good portion of the property.

Our marigolds also did much better than any veggies I planted (except for the aforementioned garlic). Ditto for the geraniums.

So for now, summer may nearly be over but somehow when I look at our garden gnome I don’t see a smirk on his cute little face but rather a really really happy smile! Perhaps he knows there might be a cold spell but then an Indian summer that will grace our garden or better yet, at least maybe one of the ten projects we want accomplished will happen BEFORE next summer.

Well, okay in full disclosure, I also have a luggage rack that’s stuck in a corner. Why? Because I simply cannot stand having suitcases or bags on the floor in any hotel room or temporary abode I’m staying in. (I get really cranky.) Two years ago I stayed at a Hilton in Munich and they simply couldn’t provide me with a luggage rack. I asked various hotel employees where I could find one and some of them had no idea what I was talking about.  It got so bad that I even considered TAKING UP SMOKING to relieve the stress of the no-luggage-rack room but decided to simply keep asking every time I saw an hotel employee. This resulted in me kind of performing a strange SNL skit asking every single employee this, “excuse me do you have a luggage rack, excuse me…” along with a crude sketch of what I thought a luggage rack should look like that I carried around in my purse to show any hotel worker I encountered for the duration of my stay.

But I’m getting away from the story. Perhaps you will remember (I can’t remember if I told you actually!) but our contractor (that would be contractor #2) left us last October with a bathroom that was not finished. This is how he “resigned.”

He placed a set of keys (kitchen door, garage door) and a Lowe’s gift card I had given him if he needed supplies on our temporary dining room table. (PS – There was still $32.17 left on the gift card.) Remember, this is what the upstairs unfinished bathroom still looks like!

At first I was in disbelief, but in fairness, he had been ill and would occasionally say something about going “south” for the winter. I was dreading having to find someone new but I had no choice. I had 3 other people come in to do estimates. One refused to even give me an estimate, the second one said he could do it but then his boss said no he couldn’t because they couldn’t be responsible for someone else’s work and the third, well, the third contractor would only do it if the downstairs bathroom/laundry room could be done first. (Hint: downstairs room was going to be way more expensive to do.)

So, Lynn and I took vacation days from work which resulted in us having over 2 weeks of uninterrupted time up at the Red House. This was the most consecutive amount of time we’ve spent up here since the summer of 2010 when we bought the house. So, third contractor got hired through Big Box Store, contracts were signed and money was paid.  The plan was to start in two weeks.

Day 1. Everyone shows up. Yeah! Debris is hauled away. Old sewer pipe is taken out piece by piece. Plumbing and electrical are installed. This was all done in less than six hours. To say I was extremely encouraged and this new turn (and speed) of events is putting it mildly.

Here’s how the room looked before they hauled all the icky stuff away.

Day 2. Sheetrock is brought in on the back of a pick-up truck and a “helper” is there to put up the rock. It actually takes the “helper” less than 6 hours (including lunch breaks, pee breaks and every half hour cigarette breaks) to drywall AND spackle the laundry room. At this rate I was thinking could I possibly have a new bathroom by the end of the first week?

Day 3. “Helper” rocks entire bathroom before 2:30 p.m. after arriving at 8 a.m. Above mentioned breaks are ditto for day 3. I’m actually quite fond of the purple colored drywall. Maybe we should rethink our preferred color choice of all-white walls?

Day 4. We get a phone call that no one is coming to work today because they have to work on another house. Lucky them.

Day 5. Apparently today is camping day for every contractor in upstate New York. (I just thought it was Friday but apparently I was mistaken.) There is also a very loud and non-stop stream of RV’s, campers and Monster trucks on flatbeds driving past our house and heading up the hill to some sort of Monster Mud Truck Fest 17 miles further north.

Day 6 & 7. (Saturday and Sunday). Lynn and I decide to go up to Vermont.  After all it is the weekend! And the Monster Truck Mud Fest had something to do with it, too. Plus I finally got a reservation at a restaurant I’ve been wanting to try.

Once again, I need to diverge here. Some people seem to think that being up at the Red House is like BEING ON VACATION ALL THE TIME. That is absolutely not the case. While we’re up at the Red House, Lynn is constantly trying to finish some moulding or wainscoting or spackling or painting himself into a corner and I’m inevitably sitting in front of my laptop and working Job #2. (Job #2 pays a portion of the home renovation expenses.)

Day 8. Monday morning. 8 a.m. rolls around with no contractor in sight. By 8:30 a.m. I’m on the phone with the contractor who says we need to go to the Big Box Store with him because he doesn’t want to use most of the items the sales person included on the installation sheet (that would be cement board, mortar, grout, etc., etc.)  We meet at 2 p.m., get the new stuff plus insist on delivery of the tile for the floor, the washer, dryer and very important – the toilet that has no exterior curvy lines. (Remember this is the ONLY toilet Lynn says we are allowed to have in the Red House.)

Day 9. Subcontractor of contractor shows up to tape and spackle bathroom side of room. By noon, we have to suddenly leave to go to Albany to put a down payment on a car* we bought in Syracuse. I’m prepared to leave subcontractor a house key but he’s already finished!  Could I possibly still be in the running to have the bathroom finished by the end of the week? He tells us to leave the fans on in the room to “speed” up the drying process and we even open the skylight for the first time in 6 years.

*We had to go buy a used car ASAP because our VW TDI is part of the diesel emissions scandal and we don’t want to drive it anymore seeing how EVENTUALLY (think late fall) VW is going to buy back our vehicle.

Day 10. Subcontractor and sub-subcontractor both show up at 7:50 a.m. to tell us spackle is not dry and to get another fan in the room if possible. We keep both fans on high for the next 24 hours.

At 2:00 p.m. Big Box Store shows up with a delivery of the tile for the bathroom, a bag of grout and two bags of mortar.

Basically stuff we could have fit into the back of our new (used) car. I inquire about the “big” stuff – mainly the washer/dryer and toilet and they have no “record” of that having to be delivered. I convince delivery guys that they need to call whoever they need to call to have washer/dryer and toilet delivered by tomorrow (that would be Day 11). They tell me my wish is their command. No they don’t but they do manage to arrange for another delivery same time tomorrow and then they just get in their truck and drive away.

Before they left however, I did offer to make them cookies if they returned with the missing items in the morning. Luckily, they didn’t take me up on the offer since as you know I detest baking but before we get to Day 11, the delivery guys and I had to have a conversation about chocolate chip cookies with or without nuts. (They prefer without.)

Day 11. Subcontractor and sub-subcontractor have an early morning job and can’t get here until 3:00 p.m. I realize while we may have had an excellent start to this summer bathroom  project we will most definitely NOT have a completed bathroom by Day 12. That would be tomorrow. They did however install hot and cold water pipes for the washer/dryer that I’m still waiting to have delivered.

Finally, right before lunch, I also got the washer/dryer and toilet delivered. I really should go out and play the Lottery at this point.

Day 12. It’s Friday. We’ve been here exactly 2 weeks. We have to drive back to Long Island today. Contractor showed up to go over the “plan,” and to do some touch-up work. A wall he built is going to be torn down because he realized the Jacuzzi I want to put in wouldn’t fit. I kind of liked the wall, oh well.

They rip out the wall and we exchange phone numbers to  monitor the progress of the renovation. Lynn and I are in a rush to get back to Long Island because we need to grab a plane out of JFK in 2 days and need to do silly things like laundry (too bad I couldn’t do the laundry at the Red House, hint, hint) and repack. Thing is as mentioned in Day #6-7 when we drove up to Vermont, we were gone for a mere 24 hours. Since we haven’t been on a “real” vacation since our aforementioned luggage-rack barren trip to Europe in 2014, we decide to go to the Charleston, SC area for an entire week! (It’s also my birthday.)

Let me segue back shortly to the night of Day #11. The night before we left the Red House we saw a moth that landed right by our patio door. He or she had a yellow and brown coat with what looked like some sort of King Arthur sword tattoo.

Seeing how King Arthur’s very famous Excaliber sword was bequeathed upon him to give him an unbreakable blade as well as magical powers, I can only assume this was a sign that we, too, shall need some sort of magical intervention to finish this bathroom!

Stay Tuned.

PS. I had luggage racks in EVERY SINGLE HOTEL ROOM we stayed in in South Carolina!

I have quite a list of projects I would like to be completed by the end of the year. Not being a total pessimist, I’m hoping we get at least half of them accomplished.

This past spring we finally got a new roof for the main part of the house. The shingles on the house were so old that while I thought they would simply have flown off at the touch of the tool the roofing guys were using to remove them, instead they held on as tight as can be so stripping the roof down to the rafters was a struggle.

Here’s our shingle delivery as well as the start of the project.

There was a ton more debris than I anticipated but then again the main part of the house has a huge roof so what did I expect?

And then of course it started to rain.  It took about 1.5 weeks to finally finish the roof because of the rain delay but now that’s its done, the roof looks quite nice.

We also ordered a granite counter top to finish our kitchen island. I’m reluctant to admit that the one piece of granite cost more than it did to install all of our kitchen counter tops! Even before we got our kitchen counters installed last summer, we survived nearly 4 years with a handy metal cart we inherited from our son.  It served us well.

In the meantime, leftover backer board comes in very handy to cover up the kitchen island until the counter gets here.

We also covered some kid’s cushions we got at Ikea with some red fabric to make the benches and backs of the benches pop a little more in a kitchen that’s primarily black and white. While neither of us can sew, we figured out a way to wrap the fabric around the foam cushion with some heavy cardboard. For now the fabric is in place although Lynn swears whenever he sits on the bench a staple is pinching his ass! (I think he’s imagining being pinched but whatever.)

This is what the cushions looked like before and our finished dining nook. (We had originally wanted a German “Stube” and even bought some church pews to try and make benches but the pews were too long and curved and simply didn’t fit.)

I’m reluctant to admit that we are currently in the process of hiring contractor #3. I promised myself that he will be the last one we work with and since he’s affiliated with a big box store that will replace him if he fails or bows out of the project, I’m pretty confident that at least this way the house renovation will eventually be finished.

Ironically, the project he is working on first was at the bottom of the list. What happened is as follows. If you remember, last fall we were left with a master bathroom that wasn’t finished, ditto for some odds and ends in the kitchen and a room that is totally gutted that I want to turn into a closet. These were the three projects I wanted to be finished ASAP.

As a reminder here’s a shot of the bathroom that can’t seem to get done!

But, big box store management wasn’t keen on finishing a project that someone else had started citing liability issues. They did, however, offer to work on the downstairs bathroom/laundry room since nothing had been started there.  That is how the last Red House renovation project suddenly got bumped up to be the first Red House renovation project for the summer of 2016.

We start in less than 3 weeks.

Lynn has spent the past few days working on the main staircase into the house. The plaster was torn off (actually it looked like someone at one point simply put their fist through it – the previous owners perhaps knowing they were being foreclosed on?).  He thought about sheet-rocking the wall but the angle was so strange and the moulding a bit weird, too, that we decided to try and put up some wainscoting.

We bought some panels that have a “wainscot” look. Was it easier than putting up drywall? Probably not since each panel had to be cut to size and then each of the primed 1×4’s had to be cut, too.

In the end, I think it came out really nice – it just needs to be painted, and the other side of the stair done too!

In the meantime, I’ve had a family of rabbits on the property who have managed to get into my garden and have eaten all of my green beans, peas and even my broccoli! They were good natured enough to leave me the Romaine, beets, carrots, cauliflower as well as the tomatoes. They also apparently don’t like garlic since my scapes were quite pretty and artistically shaped.

Although the weather has been beautiful, both the field and the garden desperately need some rain. We have a timer set up in the house that waters the garden every two days for about 20 minutes and that seems to be enough to keep my flowers looking particularly colorful this year.

Food-wise – I will be grilling this summer and frequenting as many farmer’s markets as possible. I’ve already made some delicious salads from the lettuce in the garden and pick the asparagus to throw in a pasta dish whenever I see a stalk peeking out from the ground. When the tomatoes are ready, I know they will be perfect with some burrata or oven roasted with a piece of fish.

Oh yeah, just as I was finishing this story, our counter arrived. It’s absolutely gorgeous! And perfect to roll out dough if I want to make pizza or Christmas cookies or Hungarian Kolach! Hint: Kids time to come visit Mom and Dad! Even though I hate baking, I love that they eat everything I bake.

I wish I could report that we’ve made progress in renovating the Red House but unfortunately at this stage in the game (meaning the complicated stuff), we’re very dependent on our contractor to finish our upstairs bathroom. This means while most of the plumbing has been installed, the insulation needs to be put in the walls before the sheetrock and then tile are applied. As you can see not much has changed in this room since the last time I photographed it!

Apparently since our contractor has a lot of outdoor jobs that he’s scrambling to get finished before the weather takes a turn for the worse, I do have to give him some slack. He has assured me that I’m #1 on the top of his list when he finishes with everyone else. Being me (frighteningly straightforward and to the point), I also reminded him that last winter he complained that he couldn’t get into the house without shoveling a path to the door because of all the snow. (I don’t have anyone who plows for us and don’t intend to incur that expense either!)  I also suggested since he obviously didn’t want to spend half of his day shoveling when he could be inside working on a room, he may need to speed things up a bit.

I would also love to start working on the dining room. But since all the materials he needs to complete the bathroom are sitting in the dining room, this room, too, has to wait.

While the leaves are turning, the marigolds seems to be thriving in the garden, the weeds even more so and with all the asparagus ferns cropping up, I’m thinking I’ll have a very nice asparagus harvest in the spring indeed. I’ve decided however, after planting two seasons of garlic in the fall, I’m going to wait until the spring to do it this year and see how that turns out. Reason being: Lynn is busy trying to finish our master bedroom (that means even though he took off all the moulding around the room and put everything back up, there is still a lot of patching that needs to be done as well as taping, spackling and finally painting.

To pull him away from this to get out the tiller (I’m afraid of the tiller it kind of drags me across the field) to plant some garlic seemed dumb. So the garlic will wait until the spring to be planted along with whatever else we can manage to grow in hopes that the deer, rabbits, squirrels and even a local cat or two won’t devour everything we’ve planted.

What is particularly nice about living up here especially in the fall are all the farmer’s markets as well as field after field filled with pumpkins in lovely shades of orange.

Last year I was lucky enough to grow a couple of pumpkins. This year I had to buy one.

Since the weather is turning colder (it was barely 55 degrees when we arrived this Columbus Day weekend), I’m also thinking of food that will warm us. That would be soups (pea and lentil), stews (goulash and chicken paprikash in particular) and lots of carbs like mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese! And while I do try to stay away from sweets as much as possible – I have been thinking of making cinnamon rolls (no, not the kind you bang out from those icky cardboard containers in the refrigerated section of the supermarket) but cinnamon rolls made from scratch.

For those readers who have children or other instances where your household size shrinks from 4 to 1 or 2, I can say that I’ve finally mastered cooking for just the two of us without a huge amount of leftovers. And if we do have have leftovers, it’s because I’m usually trying to make sure at least one of us has something to take to work for lunch the next day.  The problem with this cooking for 2 instead of 4 (or more) thing though is that there are simply dishes (particularly desserts) that just don’t get made anymore. Why bake a batch of brownies or oatmeal raisin cookies if there aren’t any teenagers around to eat them all in a single sitting? Did I mention I’ve been craving cinnamon rolls?

In the meantime, I picked the last of the tomatoes (still green) from the Red House garden.

And admired not only the meadow but how pretty the marigolds still looked in the garden.

And since it was rather chilly, I also decided to make some Braciole stuffing the meat with slices of mozzarella and some smokey ham.

I managed to find a few (albeit slightly bruised) leaves of basil still growing in the garden and found a bag of potato gnocchi we buy at a little Italian deli near the Red House for under $3 a bag that was still in the freezer from the summer.

Did I mention even as I was cooking the gnocchi and Braciole I was craving cinnamon rolls?

On a completely different note. We have a neighborhood cat who shows up like clockwork between 5 and 5:30 on the weekends we are here. He or she slowly meanders to the back of the property seemingly looking around for maybe a tasty little mouse or some other morsel to eat. Now, this cat is really the slowest cat I’ve ever seen so it was particularly funny when I tried to take a picture of the cat and suddenly the cat took off at an amazingly fast pace.

I followed the cat as it walked the length of the property and found myself staring at the stainless steel rolling cart we’ve been using in the kitchen as a table/work counter since we still don’t have countertops for the kitchen cabinets. Wouldn’t that surface be just fine for rolling out dough?

Since I also don’t have any cookbooks up at the Red House (I know that’s old school but I still use them!), I dragged out my laptop and followed a recipe from the Pioneer Woman for Cinnamon Rolls 101 online.

And yes, I already did have all the ingredients on hand so this was a really easy recipe.  I mixed everything together and tried to follow the instructions but the dough just seemed a little bit too wet so I added more flour than called for. The dough rose, I rolled it out, layered it with melted butter, sprinkled on some sugar and lots of cinnamon just like the picture online.

Except I wanted to add some apples to my cinnamon rolls so I did just that.

Really, doesn’t this just look yummy?

I rolled the dough into a log shape, cut the log into slices, and arranged them in a pie pan. The dough seemed a bit wetter than it probably should have been but I figured it would “correct” itself when baking.

I’ve always had a problem with every oven I’ve ever owned and this one is no different. I read a recipe and it suggests a cooking time of say 15-18 minutes and when I peek at what I’m baking, 9 times out of 10 I need double the amount of baking time indicated. Since I was convinced that the thermostat in this new oven wasn’t working properly, I actually went out and bought an oven thermometer. I’d like to say the oven was off, but actually the temperature was exactly what it was supposed to be.

So back to the cinnamon rolls. The recipe called for adding “maple flavoring” to make the frosting. Ha Ha Ha. Living in Upstate New York, I don’t need “maple flavoring,” I can use the real stuff. So I did, mixing maple syrup together with some powdered sugar and milk.

The rolls came out of the oven, I frosted them, and here’s what they looked like.

Yes, they looked delicious but when we ate them in the morning for breakfast (after sticking them back in the oven to warm up a bit), they were a tad too gooey inside! So even after following the recipe and adjusting the baking time and having for the first time ever a second thermometer inside my oven to make sure the temperature was correct – these rolls needed to be baked a bit longer. (We ate most of them anyway, no worries!) So like the cat that prowls our property looking for tasty tidbits, I got mine too this weekend.

Finally, knowing that winter is literally around the corner up here, it’s awesome to drive a mere 5 minutes from the Red House and see the leaves changing, some late summer flowers still blooming and the water in the creek flowing so beautifully. What we’ve learned up here the last 4.5 years is to enjoy every minute of it.

And even though Lynn was really cursing the entire time he was putting everything together, in the end he said it was “easy.” Go figure.

I feel I have to share once again how the original kitchen looked in 2010 just to give this story some perspective.

We also have two amazing hardwood floors in Guest Bedroom #1 and Guest Bedroom #2.

Originally I was going to get a laminate floor to save some money but the guy installing the floor (who came to do the initial estimate, too) advised us against it. Also we have hardwood floors throughout our teeny, tiny Long Island house and even 12 years later the floors still look great and are really easy to clean.

So in case you don’t remember what the floors looked like, here’s a shot:

Unfortunately, our master bathroom and bedroom are nowhere near completion…

So right now we are bunking in Guest Bedroom #2 (the larger of the two).

We also finally got some of the electrical work done – so no more fixtures literally dangling over our heads.

Lynn and I always have a problem finding products that we like (ceiling lights and bathroom fixtures are our two biggest challenges) so we decided to try and salvage the existing light fixtures. A can of silver spray paint on one of the bedroom light fixtures and some rewiring on a decorative living room fixture therefore were a good compromise.

And yes, we cheated a bit, too and picked up a really inexpensive Ikea light that looks like a spaceship!

With my kitchen nearly done (I’m having an issue with ordering the countertop I want but more on that in a later blog post), and my parents coming up to visit, I also baked. I know I complain about baking over and over again but not only did I make zucchini bread but I made a cheesecake, too! Originally the plan had been to make zucchini bread using the zucchini that was growing in my garden. Obviously, that didn’t happen but I can say I did get two huge zucchini from the farmer’s market – one went into the cake, the other went into some homemade ratatouille.

Originally I thought when we came up to the Red House our garden would be brimming with vegetables. I had planted zucchini, beans, peas, carrots, tomatoes and tons of basil. Unfortunately, we now have a very large family of bunny rabbits living on the property.

While they did leave me with some basil and a few tomatoes, they ate nearly all the peas and all the zucchini! (The carrots are still in the ground so I’m not sure of their status yet.)

I did start to harvest some of the garlic since this time last summer I had dug it up. I was particularly happy that I managed to grow a crop from some of the cloves I harvested last year. After digging up about 30 garlic heads though, I decided to let them be for another week since some of the heads were rather small.

One interesting side note to our time up at the Red House this summer has to do with a reunion we attended. Most people know I lived in Munich, Germany, for 10 years but some may not realize I graduated from high school there, too.

Since this was my 35th (gulp!) high school reunion and Lynn and I hadn’t been to  Munich since 2007, I decided it was definitely time to go back (especially since I had also somehow missed every single reunion prior to this one as well). Dare I mention that Lynn and I will be celebrating 35 years together, too, this October?

Consequently, while most summers are spent exclusively up at the Red House, this year we spent 10 days in Germany and 5 days in Italy. As usual we did a lot of driving and eating and gushing at all the beautiful architecture, vistas and of course food.  And while I love the Red House even in it’s unfinished state, I do want to share some pictures of the trip.

There were farmer’s markets brimming with fresh radishes, artichokes, beans, tomatoes and lettuce, as well as flowers in nearly every hue imaginable.

There were shots of castles on the Rhine as well as picturesque vineyards (even on a gray day), and too many pictures of Italian art and architecture to share but a handful.

And then there was the food. Bread and cheese, homemade pasta, beer and pretzels the size of basketballs, Apfelstrudel and pizza!

Of course after the Europe trip (particularly with nearly a week in Italy) and with a “real” kitchen, I had no excuse but to make my first Red House pizza in my new oven, too!

Truthfully, the oven could have been hotter since the crust came out soggy. (The leftover pizza that we warmed up and kind of burnt the next day actually tasted better.)

What I realized after this trip however, was how very similar the area around Munich (particularly Garmisch-Partenkirchen) was to upstate New York. Undoubtedly, it’s why I always liked being up here. Granted, the mountains are not as high, but we have very pretty lakes and streams, rolling hills, and gorgeous forests a mere hour’s drive from the Red House.

On a different and not so bucolic note, we came home from our journey to find bats in the Red House. Our contractor has been working diligently to replace all of the plumbing in the house primarily to put a bathroom in the master bedroom and in doing so has unfortunately created a few “holes” in the walls.

This has resulted in at least two bats trying to take up residence inside the house! We noticed this one night when we were watching a DVD. Suddenly one of us saw something fly by out of the corner of one eye with what looked like very dark wings. Lynn and I are not good with bats or any other type of scary monster-like animal for that matter. Consequently, we quickly exited the room, shut the door and ran upstairs.

The next morning, our contractor showed up and found the bat sleeping by the basement door. He put on a pair of gloves and simply picked up the bat and put him inside a plastic supermarket bag. Once in the bag, he took him outside and released him back into the wild! Since the bat slept through the entire experience, I can only conclude it was a “teenage” bat.

We thought the bat episode was over, until the next night we were watching another DVD and sure enough once again there was something dark flying around in the next room. So, we repeated our previous night’s performance by quickly exiting the room, closing the door and going upstairs. This night however, Lynn also decided he was going to “seal” us in the room – so underneath the doors he wadded up some placemats and a kitchen towel.

This didn’t bring me any great amount of comfort and truthfully, I woke up at 4 a.m. thinking I heard and saw something flying around the bedroom. Plus, I was really really hot since the room was probably around 300 degrees since we had put in new windows, insulation and now a new floor! (Okay, it wasn’t really that warm but it felt like it.) Plus, now that I was hot and annoyed, I really had to pee but was afraid to go into the bathroom. Note to self: this is why you’ve never been camping – you hate bugs, creepy crawlies, bats and other things that are generally scary.

Finally it was morning. Our contractor showed up again (in itself always a good thing) and he found the hole in the wall that he thinks the bats were flying through. He grabbed some insulation and filled up the hole. We have not had any bat sightings for about 24 hours now so I’m hoping this method worked.

I was also hoping that similar to Shakespeare’s play, “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” our very own “Puck” would emerge from the forest behind the Red House and tell us that the bats were only just a dream! Unfortunately, he did not, they were in fact very, very real!

I will leave you with this thought and image. We started our trip this year in Frankfurt, Germany, a city Lynn and I had never visited. We walked through the old town and came upon a pedestrian bridge called the “Eiserner Steg.” There on the bridge, similar to many bridges we’ve seen in Paris and Florence, were locks that had been affixed not only to the structure but to other locks, too.  As romantic history buffs will know, the padlocks when locked with a key, symbolize a love that can’t be broken especially since the key to that lock is thrown away.

Since I, too, am a hopeless romantic, I spent a lot of time looking at the engravings thinking I would find a couple who had the same initials as we do. Perhaps, instead, I should have been looking for a lock with the initials “RH.” After all, I think our relationship is pretty darn good after 35 years (especially since this is our THIRD house renovation). The Red House still needs a lot of work and love put into it – somehow I know we can do it.

In the winter months whenever we’re driving up to the house after work, I usually leave all my electronics (camera, laptop) and booze in the car. In the summer however, I’m afraid things will “melt” and thus, drag everything into the office with me. This past Friday, therefore, I carried into my office and back out – a laptop, a camera, two bottles of wine, my briefcase and a purse. I piled everything into the car (or so I thought) and started the long drive. Five hours later as we’re unpacking the car, I realized somewhere along the way I lost the cooler! Which meant we had no dinner, which meant we had this:

Somehow I had left a pound of very expensive Florida shrimp (jumbo-size), hand-sliced smoked salmon, a variety of cheeses, and sausages sitting somewhere in my office. Oh and the pork cutlets Lynn had so lovingly made the night before were in the cooler, too.

Luckily I had packed the brioche rolls and some salads in a separate insulated bag so with the tuna we did have some salad and of course wine.

What annoyed me the most (besides the expense) is that knowing I have no food up at the Red House, the cooler should have been the first bag on my shoulder, but it wasn’t. As I was dwelling on this Friday night (and trying to slice a brioche roll with a very sharp steak knife at the same time), I also managed to cut a very deep gash in my thumb which then bled all over my new tile floor which resulted in this:

At this point there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to forget that what should have been a pleasant start to summer was turning uglier by the minute. So, I just went to bed.

In the morning I remembered what Lynn had started last weekend. He decided after four years of not being able to find any tool he needed quickly, to simply organize everything on a shelving unit. So now all his stuff looks like this:

I then opened the door to what will eventually be the master bedroom and remembered he had started taking off all the moulding so the room now looks like this:

While we had really wanted to expedite renovating the bedroom, what became a bigger project was assembling the kitchen cabinets and putting them in place. We ran into a problem with one of the corner cabinets however, in that while it should have technically just slid into place, the corner it was supposed to fit into still had one of the original beams of the house. So, after much planning on how to make this work, Lynn simple cut the cabinet so it would fit around the beam making the cabinet look like this:

I went outside. There I found the beginnings of my tomatoes growing as well as the asparagus I had tried to chop down last weekend.

There were also some really pretty flowers that looked like this:

And the first crop of snow peas when picked looked like this:

(PS I love this shot, it came out really neat!)

Anyway, we’re actually going to be away from the Red House for a couple of weeks but know what we have to deal with when we come back. Electrical issues that look like this:

Radiators that need to be painted since we’re having two new wood floors installed in both guest bedrooms.

And a real good cleaning and organization of all the stuff we’ve had to push from room to room to hallway back to room!

On a final note, we have finally brought up every single kitchen cabinet that we need to finish the kitchen. (Yeah!) So hopefully the car will never look like this again!

And eventually the kitchen will resemble something like this:

Just kidding! But it was the only picture I could find in this mess of a Red House.

Happy Summer!