Happy New Year!

New Year's flowers touched by sunlight

Hello, again. It's been awhile since I last posted here, but I am back. Time goes by so quickly and before you know it, the holidays have come and gone and we are feeling sad. Instead I wish we would think about the beginning of a new year and the fresh start it brings. Gyms fill up with those ready to get into shape, new ideas that were pushed aside "till after the holidays" may now see the light of day, which is sunny I hope, wherever you are.

January is a laid-back month, a time for reflection and focusing inward. A time to contemplate things, to see where we are going and why and if we still have interest in the journey.

As for me, our remodeling is done and we thoroughly enjoyed the results over the last few weeks. I am planning some changes to my little world designed to enrich the lives of Baby Boomers everywhere. I hope to keep two (count them, two!) blogs alive and well this year, and to change the way I send out my newsletter.

For Baby Boomers, there's always a lot to see and experience. All we have to do is look and enjoy! I hope you will join me this year.

Talk soon.

Under Construction Day: 48

We had carpeting installed yesterday, and it looks great. The windows have been trimmed out too -- now in white -- which has made them appear to be new instead of about 25 years old. There is still lots to do but we are nearing the end.

Chris is painting today, tricky because the carpet is laid, but we ran into another snag with paint. The clerk at the paint store sold us the wrong type of paint, even though he had the marked lid of the correct paint in front of him. Another set back. So the ceilings didn't get done on Saturday as planned.

Funny, with all the different people you have to deal with for a project like this, our worst problems came from the paint store. We are trying to buy local here, but it's not working out very well!

Patience.

Under Construction: Day 40

We had a paint crisis yesterday. Chris had put a sample of the wall paint up on the walls and it was way dark. Then we checked it against the "true" color we wanted and found that the paint we had bought was more greenish-yellow. Not what we wanted at all.

Our designer came to the rescue and agreed with me that the color was all wrong. Don't know if the store mixed it wrong or what, but it was wrong.

We chose another shade, a warm beige. Chris had a quart mixed, applied it in several spots and we came back home after the Pitt game yesterday to find the new color sampled on the walls. Much better. Hope you can see the differences in color from the photo below. The color we are going with is marked "E" for Everlasthing I think. The color on the corner is the original Hush color that turned out so green.

Also, Chris put in some work on our new mantle which also looks great.

Gearing up for a big week. Painting to be done and and carpet laid this week. Yippee!!

Under Construction: Days 35 - 38

The family room is shaping up nicely, but will not be done this week as we had hoped. Our contractor has brought in some reinforcements, though, so that will help hurry things along.

A lot has gotten done this week and that is good. The walls and ceiling have been primed and today, Friday, is clean up day so they can begin to paint soon. Maybe even tomorrow? The trim around the large windows in the room has been primed also, in preparation for being painted white, and that looks great. I was worried about painting over wood, but I am glad we did.

The family room looks amazingly large, which was the goal. Everything we have done in there has been geared towards making it appear visually bigger. And I think we have been succesful!

Carpet is set to be laid next Wednesday and that is a huge step. All the little details will not be done by then, but baby steps are OK at this point. Everyone is working so hard to get this done, I have no complaints. (Although it still would be nice to have my office finally completed. But it will be, I know, and soon. Patience is a virture, as my mom used to say.)
 

Under Construction: Day 29

As you can see, the marble surround on the fireplace in our family room has been installed. One "leg" (a vertical side piece) gave Chris, our contractor, some trouble, but he worked it out. The wall behind the fireplace has also been covered with mud to even it out. No more paneling!

This fireplace is a little sophisticated for what we are used to, but I am liking it more and more. Our house is contemporay, but not really. The house has never quite known what it wanted to be when it grew up and we haven't challenged that over the past 24 years. But we are now.

When they were building the homes on our street, the builders repeated our floor plan in several, but gave each of these homes a different facade. We got the most "contemporary" exterior look, but again, it's not a true contemporary with lots of landings and railings.

I can remember when we were still touring the house how one potential home buyer walked in the front door and turned right around to leave. "This will never do," her parting comment.

But we love this house and plan to stay in it a long time. The sophisticated fireplace will just make it that much nicer!

Under Construction: Day 21

(Expanded opening into living room)

We have made great progress since the last blog. The ceiling is now drywalled, the fireplace is permanently installed and the expanded opening between the "new" family room and the living room has been built. And it looks terrific.

All in all, things have gone smoothly I think. It pays to work with good people on a project of this size for sure!  We are now waiting, not inpatiently yet, for the marble to be sized and prepared for the fireplace, for the doors to come in, for the small lights over the fireplace to be installed, and for the paint color for the walls to be chosen.

Not too bad as far as I can tell.

As for the house residents, we are doing OK. It's amazing how you can get used to any routine after awhile. I still find myself wandering around the house without a place to perch, but doing that less and less. I have managed to pretty much ignore all of the boxes and baskets sitting around many of our rooms, not even seeing them anymore. (Ha! I am so busy catching stink bugs, who has time to fret over boxes?).

Looking forward to more progress this week and the general wind-down of the project.

Under Construction: Day 16

The new gas fireplace was installed this week. It looks like a big dark hole but will be brighter when the  gray herrinboned background is showing.

What I have learned throughout this project is that there are nmore details than I could have ever guessed at that have to be decided during a construction project. This only reinforced my notion that I would never want to build a house! No way I want to have to decide on the incredible number of items that would go into the making of a home.

I really enjoyed a little field trip we took this week to the marble and granite graveyard. We saw some gorgeous stone there, leaning up against each other in the yard, including some from Jerusalem with actual fossils in it. I was drawn to this because it was just so cool, but realized that I probably didn't even want to know the cost. So we chose an Italian marble instead which is also beautiful.

We then went to a hardware store to look at doors, something I have not done before. Again, lots of things go into the chocie of a door, but I have been trying to keep the shopping as simple as possible. I am sure you can spend days looking at marble and granite and doors, but I am just not that fussy. Love what I chose; don't need to see more.

Soon some drywall will be going back up on the ceiling and walls and that means real progress!