Three Weekends in a Row

This was the first week Laurie has spent at the Payson house on her own in a very long time.  She is hoping to spend many more days up there and get some of the painting done.  We are trying a new schedule where she stays up in Payson most of the time, but comes down to the Valley for 4-5 days on Mike's two day weekend.  That, combined with Mike's schedule of coming up for his 3 day weekends every other week, gives us every weekend together either in the Valley or in Payson.

During Laurie's first week, she was able to paint the hallway and the closet and three of the walls in the guest bedroom.  The fourth wall in the guest bedroom will be getting an accent color and that will go on at a later date.  This was her first time painting on her own and she learned quite a few lessons during the week.  Just a few were: newspaper is not good as a floor protector (esp. with a dog), paint when it is cooler in the day, take a little more time and not do too much each day, those nifty trim brushes do not work as described (AT ALL). She also got a good tip from her sister who is an old pro at painting - rather than taping off the ceiling and ending up with ragged edges and peeling paint, use a good brush to do the cut-in (trim) work and just hold your breath.  Her work turned out very nice for all the effort and time she put into it.

The hallway from the master bedroom to the family room

The short hall to the guest bedroom

The south wall of the guest bedroom and the wall behind the bed will be an accent color

The closet and other two walls of the guest bedroom

Usually when we come up on a Friday night, we do not have any real plans except maybe dinner and a movie at home.  We have not made time for our Payson friends lately, so we decided to schedule an evening with Bob and Denise.  We have not seen them for quite some time due to our crazy schedule, plus Denise has been working out of town.  Mike grilled some steaks and we had a great time eating and catching up. They like to take their two dogs everywhere and brought them to the house that night.  The three dogs got along fairly well and Shaka (the younger, smaller one) had a great time running around our family room trying to get Zena to play.  At first Zena just nipped at her, but after Shaka kept at her, she actually got into it a little.  Luckily Shaka is very quick and Zena was not able to catch her. It is the first dog we have seen Zena interact in a playful way and she was very pooped the next day. We think we may borrow Shaka now and then to wear Zena out.

The plan for the weekend was to get the guest bath and laundry room painted.  As with the kitchen, these rooms required heavy items to be moved and plumbing connections to be undone.  But come Saturday morning, we did not get started as planned.  Instead we had a lazy morning and then hung our first set of window blinds.  We had been to Home Depot the previous weekend to scope out blinds for the house.  We settled on the 2 inch white plantation blinds, almost identical to what we have in our house in the Valley.  The blinds are cheaper to buy though Home Depot online, but we decided to buy two sets at the store as a test. These would be for the east kitchen window, as it lets in a lot of heat in the morning, and for the guest bedroom, since it faces the street (do not want people looking in while we are gone).

We did an inside the window sill installation (all the blinds will be this way) and the install was fairly easy. There are two end brackets that get screwed into the sill at the top and, depending on the length of the blind, there are extra brackets that connect to the top of the sill for support.  The first time through it took some extra time measuring and re-measuring for the brackets.  Home Depot cuts the blinds to the width needed for the window based on our measurements, but they are always a standard length - 64 or 72 inches.  All of our windows are 48 inches or less, so we had to remove a lot of extra slats from each blind.  When we order the rest online, they offer 48 inch lengths so there will be a lot less waste.  Shortening the blinds is not too difficult, just time consuming.  First you must cut the drawstring lines which allows you to remove the excess slats.  Then move the base slat (the larger bottom one) to the position that sits on the window sill. Next cut off the excess string ladders and run the drawstrings through the re-positioned base.  The next part was the toughest and that was re-securing the drawstrings so the blind was level when drawn all the way to the top.  We had to re-do the knots a few times on the first blind to get it right.  On the 2nd blind, Mike realized we had to pull the drawstrings taught and then mark the spot for the knot.  This worked well and we were able to finish the job much quicker.

The first set of blinds are hung and extra slats removed

The finished product on the east wall of the kitchen

The south guest bedroom wall blinds - it went up in half the time of the kitchen blind

Laurie had re-arranged the kitchen during the week, putting all the appliances in place and filling the cabinets. The new setup works much better than before, but we still needed a better place for our microwave. Previously it was on top of our white shelf unit which was really too narrow for the microwave, but, in the new setup, it was on the counter next to the sink and was taking up a lot of counter real estate.  We thought a nice small table or cart on the west wall (currently where Zena's food dish sits) would be perfect.  So off we went to the thrift stores in search of such an item.  We found something at the senior center thrift store and, to make it even better, it was discount day.  The unit is a computer desk on casters with two sliding lower shelves and keyboard rest.  We removed the bottom sliding shelf to make room for Zena's food and water and then we used the shelf above that for microwave accessories. Laurie likes that setup because the keyboard rest covers that shelf and hides the clutter.  Mike took the shelf at the top of the unit off (it was heavily scratched) and cut it down for a shelf for our printer in the den.  He then cut down the sliding shelf we removed to be a replacement for the top shelf as it is in much better shape.  Laurie now has all sorts of places to put kitchen items.

New (at least to us) microwave cart and Zena's food/water station

Saturday night we joined Bob and Denise, and some friends of theirs, at a public concert in the park.  The group was called MC6 A Cappella and they did mostly Do Wop, with a couple of current songs.  They did a wonderful set of songs for the armed forces just before their break.  It was fun meeting new people and the singing group was great to hear.  We ended up leaving at their break as the temperature dropped more than normal and we did not have a jacket for Laurie to brave the coolness.

Just part of the crowd at the concert in the park

The group MC6 A Cappella

We got home early enough to start disassembling the bathroom so we could paint on Sunday.  The breakdown went easy except for the toilet.  The old wax ring was like nothing Mike had seen before.  The wax seemed more like tree sap and required a lot of scraping and a lot of "Goo Off" to break down what was on the toilet and floor. Mike remembered later that, when he bought the ring, it said it would never leak or need to be replaced.  Now he knows why and he made sure we bought a normal wax ring for the re-install as the other was a mess to clean up.  The next morning we were ready to paint and, apart from being in tight quarters, the painting went well and only took a few hours.  These rooms were painted with the same semi-gloss paint and color used in the kitchen, which is the same color that will be used as the main color in all the rooms in the house.  Except for the accent walls, only the master bath has a different wall color.

Laurie also took some time this weekend to touch-up the paint on the trim around the front door and then paint the trim around the back door.  Originally all the trim was white, but we decided to paint it all brown. The front door trim had been changed, but not the back door.  She will need to do some touch-up on the back door trim before Mike comes back up so he can install the security screens on those doors.

We had not ridden the quads in a few weeks, so we took them on a trip Monday morning for breakfast at the 260 Cafe and then to get a few items at Home Depot that were needed to re-assemble the bathroom and laundry room.  Mike used his new GoPro camera and head mount he got for his birthday/Father's Day to record part of the trip.  It was nothing exciting, but kind of fun to watch later on (esp. the part where Laurie got stuck because she forgot to release her brake).

Mike's GoPro camera on a helmet strap, but it would not fit so he put it on his head

We finished our time at the house reconstructing the bathroom, doing some work on the drip systems (found our back timer is leaking) and then loading up the washer/dryer on our trailer to take home.  We decided to replace these units that were given to us by Mike's sister and found she wanted them back for her son's family.  Laurie went back to the Valley with Mike this time since she had not driven herself to Payson a couple of weeks ago as she would normally do.  She will be back up in a week to work on more of the painting.

The completed guest bathroom

The finished laundry room - without a washer/dryer, we are putting the paint tools in here

Stats: 4 Home Depot trips; 3 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 6/02/14-6/09/14: $175
Remodeling expense to date: $40,404