Another Quick Stay

After three weeks off, we returned to our home away from home for a quick overnight stay.  Before leaving after the Thanksgiving weekend, we thought we would be returning this weekend and set our new programmable thermostat to return to its normal heating schedule on Friday, 12/16.  If it was not for that, we probably would not have come up due to all the work we had to do in the valley to get ready for the holidays, but it gave us a chance to look at the new workshop which Craig and Bob started building this week.

The house was nice and toasty when we arrived since the heat kicked in at 4pm and we arrived around 6:30pm.  We saw a glimmer of the new building in the darkness, but not enough to get a real feeling for what had been accomplished.  We went to the newly opened 260 Cafe for dinner with a PaysonDealz.com coupon that we purchased last week.  We had heard the place had changed hands, which was the reason for the remodel, but did not know it now belonged to the woman who used to manage Payson's Restore (Habitat for Humanity store that we frequently shop at).  There was only one other couple in the place, but we had an excellent dinner of prime rib and walleye with strawberry-rhubarb pie and cheesecake for dessert.  The decor is no longer a 50's design, but has more of a warm homey feeling.  It was a great time and we will be definitely be back.

Saturday was a short stay as we had tickets in the valley to see a movie at 2:45pm.  With the light of day we were able to see the snow that remained in our backyard and the awesome structure that is our workshop.  It is much more impressive than any of the fabricated sheds we considered buying from Home Depot or the other "kit" place in Star Valley.  The walls are 8' and the attic has a 5' center.  We had called Craig the night before and he and Bob were planning on taking advantage of the nice weather to get more work done on the building today.  They arrived around 8:30am and started to work on finishing the siding and attic floor.

Leftover snow and the new shed

View from our bedroom (metal shed will be going away)

View from the patio

Laurie scoping out the new construction

Future window on west wall

Future door on south wall (on the left)

Future home of roll-up door

Lots of storage space with a five foot center

While they did their work, we made a trip to Neumann's Paints to get another gallon of primer which should allow us to finish the last two rooms during the holiday break.  Since I am off the week between Christmas and New Year's, I will stay up here that week to finish the primer and then do a top coat on the ceilings (poor Laurie has to work that week and will miss all the fun).  We also picked up the paint for the shed.  Originally Laurie wanted to paint the shed the same color as the house, but then decided she did not want to look out the back windows at a huge (the shed is about 14 feet tall) teal building.  So, with Neumann's help, we picked a gray-green color that should blend in with the trees in the backyard.  If we like the color on the shed, we will use it when we paint the exterior of the house.  We made one trip to Home Depot to pick up some more extra roofing shingles for the shed. While we were there, we looked at ceramic tile to find some possible choices for our flooring.

We were back by noon and started to work on winterizing the house.  I read more about this process from various sources which advised not turning off the thermostat as it could cause problems with electronic components and the refrigerator and cause mold/mildew issues.  So I set the thermostat on hold at 45 degrees for 104 days.  This will give us the flexibility to come up whenever we want and I do not have to reprogram the unit.  It will not be as warm in the house for our next arrival, but that will be better than running up a huge electric bill because we set the heat to 68 degrees and then ended up not making it up. I also found that it is not a good idea to leave the hot water heater full, even if the thermostat is set to a low temperature, so I drained the hot water heater and the water from the pipes.  After adding the RV coolant to the traps, we were ready to hit the road.  We left Craig and Bob working on the shed and cannot wait to see how it looks next time.

Stats: 2 Home Depot trips; 0 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 11/28-12/17: $3,414
Remodeling expense to date: $38,715

Thanksgiving 2011

Last year, I decided to use some vacation time and extend our Thanksgiving holiday to a full week in Payson.  This year we only had the Thursday and Friday off due to Laurie's new job.  The weather was not as cold as it had been just a few weeks before when we got snow; however, there was a threat of rain, but it luckily held off for the few days we were there.

We gave our thanks on Thursday for deciding not to work and met my Dad and his wife at the casino in town for their Thanksgiving buffet.  We had dinner there last year after a full day of work on the house and thought the spread was just fabulous.  My Dad and his wife live in Pinetop and they drove to Payson that morning to join us.  We had a great meal and came back to the house to talk and I worked on his computer.  After they left, the big meal kicked in and we spent a very lazy late afternoon and evening.

On Friday, we decided to tackle painting two rooms in one day and moved everything out of both the guest and master bedrooms.  We had just started the priming when Laurie got a call from her Dad and went to meet them in town as they drove through returning to Phoenix from their place on the rim.  He wanted to give us some fish they had just caught and then Laurie decided to stop by Walmart for a couple of items.  When she returned, I was almost finished with the rolling part of the job and she finished the trimming.  Laurie had to run out again to meet with Cindy at the Home Depot pro desk to put in a new bid for the materials we needed for the new workshop Craig and crew are going to build for us.  While she was gone, I cleaned up and put the rooms back together.

The master bedroom primed and. . .

. . .ready to be put back together

Have not shown anyone working in awhile - here is Laurie painting

The guest bedroom primed and. . .

. . .back together

Saturday was an easy morning as we did some reading, paperwork and other odds and ends.  We had plans to meet some friends in Prescott to see the electric light parade that night, so we did not get too involved at the house.  With the new programmable thermostat, we decided to set it to its minimum temp of 45 degrees and put it on hold until we come back up.  We will see how much heat we use in our absence.  We then winterized the place around noon and hit the road to travel up through Pine/Strawberry and Camp Verde, then over to Prescott.

We had reserved a room at the Best Western in town which is listed as pet friendly since we had Zena with us.  It was a decent hotel with a big room.  We got settled and cleaned up then met our friends to do some browsing and shopping before getting a sidewalk space for the parade.  The parade was good and the best part was three ATVs that had used recycled parts to build each cycle into a lighted object (sorry no pictures - forgot the camera).  One was a rocking horse, another was a sailing ship and the last was a teddy bear.  They were very creative and fun to watch as they went weaving down the road.  I am not sure if this parade was any better than the Payson one we went to last year, but the road was much bigger and open.  As soon as we saw Santa, we ran to a restaurant to grab seats before too many people got up and going.  We had a great dinner at the Prescott Brewery Company and then walked our friends back to their hotel and drove back to ours.

The next morning we wanted to hit the road early in order to miss most of the holiday traffic, but had time to stop for breakfast with our friends at the Waffle Iron in Prescott.  The breakfast was decent and the atmosphere very quaint.  After we were done, we said goodbye to our friends and made our way to Phoenix.  Traffic was not bad at all and we made good time back home.  It gave us plenty of time to get things settled at the house before the new work week began.

Stats: 1 Home Depot trips; 2 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 11/21-11/27: $1,136
Remodeling expense to date: $35,301

Never On Sunday

The Payson Roundup has started a new daily deals offer (think mini-Groupon) for the Payson area.  Their first offer was for Cardo's, an Italian restaurant we have been to before (and, more importantly, liked) so we bought one.  After arriving in town and unpacking, we decided to use our coupon; however, the place was packed.  We aren't sure if that was the normal Friday night crowd or if every person living in the town of Payson (and all surrounding areas) bought the same deal, but all the tables were full.  The waitress shooed us into the standing room only bar promising a table would be available soon so we settled in to wait.  We listened to the band, a group of three older guys with two guitars and an electric violin, play Devil Went Down to Georgia.  They did a fairly good job, but after the song was over it was still too crowded with no indication it would get better EVER so we decided to go to Pizza Hut instead - might not have the ambience, but lots and lots and lots of available tables and the pizza is actually pretty good.

Saturday started with a trip into town for returns to Home Depot and Walmart (seems to be something we do a lot of because someone, we won't name any names, can't seem to make up their mind) and a new 5 gallon can of primer from the paint store.  We returned the formerly live Christmas tree we got last year that died not too long after we planted it. If you didn't already know it, Home Depot has a wonderful return policy on plants.  You can return them up to one year, no questions asked.  The clerk was a bit hostile, demanding a receipt (which of course my packrat wife had), but we got a store credit which we plan to use for our live Christmas tree this year.  If it dies, we'll just return it and get a new one next year.  If our luck holds, we may never pay for a Christmas tree again.  While we were in town we stopped at the consignment craft store that just opened in the Swiss Village.  We had met the owner at the Pine/Strawberry craft fair back in September and she has a business where she makes pictures using people's names.  We decided to order one for our nephew for a Christmas gift and, when we contacted her, we learned that she was opening this new shop.  It is really small, but packs in some pretty cute goodies so check it out if you're ever up that way.

After spending all morning running around town, I did not feel like painting in the afternoon.  I did manage to be industrious enough to take a look at the back door because, whenever it rains, I've noticed  some water spots on the kitchen floor on both sides of the door frame.  When we replaced the back door, we put the old trim back up and did not secure it well or caulk it. Guessing that this was the source of the leak, I removed the old trim and filled the outside gaps with spray foam.  We let that sit overnight while we cut and painted the new trim.  The next morning I trimmed the excess foam expansion and nailed the new trim in place.  I then caulked all around the trim.  Hopefully all that effort will pay off and we won't see any more water spots in our kitchen.

New foam in door gaps

Trim cut and painted

Excess foam removed

Door trim nailed and sealed

We also purchased online a new thermostat for our A/C and heating.  The one provided to us was not programmable and we wanted some flexibility on configuring our temperatures to help reduce some costs, esp. with the heating.  The unit we bought was the same maker as the previous one and had all the same connections and configurations.  It was a very easy swap.  Now we can play with the programming to see what works best for us.

New thermostat will help costs and allow us to set heat in advance

I had some time leftover on Saturday night to caulk all the corners of the pantry.  When our taper guy finished his work, he realized he had forgotten this room and I told him I would do it for him.  Doing it tonight will give it time to dry before we paint tomorrow.

After finishing the door trim Sunday morning, we were able to prime the rest of the kitchen.  While we were painting, we had a visit from a guy who gave us a quote on installing our flooring. He came highly recommended by Gene Neumann (of Neumann's Paint) and he didn't mind stopping in to measure our house on the weekend.  Laurie spent quite awhile with him going over what we want done and getting ideas from him. We think he will do an awesome job, but the price is quite a lot more than we expected so we may be waiting a little while longer for our floor.  With that interruption, it took us longer to finish the priming work and we didn't get finished until about an hour before we had to leave for the valley.  In the past we've had a rule that we won't do any work on Sundays. After breaking our rule this time, we won't do that again.  It made for a long trip home and two very tired, grumpy people come Monday morning.

Finished priming dining room area . . .

and kitchen (pantry done too, but not shown)

Stats: 2 Home Depot trips; 1 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 11/13-11/20: -$162
Remodeling expense to date: $34,165

The Big Room Primed

Laurie was off work for Veteran's Day on Friday, but she had scheduled to spend some time in the morning with a company she does contract work for so I put in a few hours at my job.  Even so, we were able to get on the road by 1pm.

We spent some time once we got to town talking with two flooring companies.  One of the companies we had already talked to about what we could do.  A couple of weeks ago, the person who was supposed to come to the house and measure had called Laurie about other ideas and we needed to stop and look at the flooring he had suggested.  We want to stick to one type of flooring through the whole house, but it is hard to find something that is not tile (too cold) and will work in areas which could have water issues.  This guy suggested we go with a stock rolled vinyl for now (cheap) and then later we can put another flooring over it. The vinyl would act as a vapor barrier under the future flooring as well as provide a softer underlayment than the subfloor.  The only problem is that it will add to the total flooring cost, even though the other flooring wouldn't need to be paid for until the future, and that is always a problem for Miss Practical Laurie.  We also had a great discussion with another local flooring guy and now may be leaning towards an engineered wood.  I have no idea which direction we will go, at least we have a few months to work it out.

We almost did not keep to our plan of doing a room every weekend (the weekend with my Mom was not in the plan).  With the cold and rainy weather, motivating ourselves to paint was a struggle.  But by Saturday afternoon we got ourselves going and were able to complete the task.  Now we have the hallway, laundry room and great room completed.  We even extended to a wall in the dining room.  We had time to go farther, but the paint supply was running low and the paint store is only open until noon on Saturdays (ahh - small town living).

Priming is complete on this wall. . .

. . .wall and ceiling. . .

. . .this wall. . .

. . .and a little left for this wall

The weather was even worse on Sunday, but I took some time to work on the hall bathroom flooring.  After about another foot or two, the floor started coming up easier and the adhesive was not as strong. It took less time to finish removing the rest of the floor than it had to do the first few feet a couple of weeks ago.  It looks like one part of the floor had been replaced as the wood is different than the rest of the floor and seems flimsier.  I will need to spend time evaluating if this will need to be replaced before our flooring goes down.

Tile all removed

With the rain continuing, I thought we might as well hit the road early so we could take care of a few things in the valley.  After winterizing the place, we were on the road around 1pm.  Almost as soon as we left, the rain stopped.  Isn't that how it always is!

Stats: 0 Home Depot trips; 1 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 11/7-11/13: $0
Remodeling expense to date: $34,327

Snow before Thanksgiving!

This weekend was different as we had asked my Mom if she wanted to come up and stay with us for a weekend.  She was supposed to come on our last trip, but other plans happened and she couldn't make it until this weekend.  We had set up the guest room on our last weekend, knowing she would be with us.  What we had not planned on was the cold temperatures that the weekend had in store for us.

I had been checking out my sister's pickup truck to make sure it was in shape in case she decided to sell it and thought a trip to Payson would be a good test run for it.  So the three of us and the dog piled into her crew cab truck and went up north.  The truck rode very well and we had no issues with it.

That night we went out to our favorite Mexican food place, since my Mom really likes that type of food.  We had a great time and it was very cold getting back to the car.

The next morning we were greeted by snow on the ground and some rain/snow falling.  You could see the snow, but It was mostly slush. We decided to brave the weather and went up to Pine to have breakfast and take Mom to the thrift store we like up there.  As we started to climb in elevation, there was a lot more snow on the ground.  The snowplows had been through the area so we had clear sailing all the way to Pine.  Breakfast at the Early Bird is always good and Mom enjoyed her meal.  Now it was off to shopping.

A little bit of snow and a lot of wet

More snow could be seen on the back patio

We spent a few hours at the thrift store and each of us found things we could use.  Due to the unexpected cold weather, my Mom did not have a very good coat and we found a long heavy one for her for only $6.  She was quite happy.  She also found a number of shirts that she could use, most of which were $.33 each.  Not to be outdone, Laurie found her fair share of clothing items and shoes for her work wardrobe.  I too found a nice leather jacket to leave up in Payson since I never wear coats in the valley.

The rest of the weekend was spent relaxing with games, reading, movies and other individual items.  We thought we would paint another room, but decided against it.  Before leaving, we did winterize the house by draining the pipes and adding RV anti-freeze to the traps since the temperatures were now getting down to freezing during the nights.

We had a wonderful weekend with my Mom and she enjoyed our place, though we have decided that we will wait until the hall bathroom is completed before we ask anyone else to stay over.  If we all shared the hall bath, that would be easy, but it is more of a task when you are sharing a bath for which the only way in is through the master bedroom.

Stats: 1 Home Depot trip; 2 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 10/24-11/6: $15
Remodeling expense to date: $34,327

A Prime Schedule

We have made a schedule of what we need to accomplish prior to the permit expiration in February 2012.  Besides needing flooring in the bathrooms, laundry room and kitchen, we need to have the walls and ceilings primed and sealed to complete our permit requirements.  So our plan is to do a room every weekend we are up there between now and the end of the year.  That will leave us a couple of months to work on the flooring part.

We are also trying to work out the details to have a new workshop/shed built in the backyard to hold the new tools I got when my Mom moved to AZ.  This past week Laurie's brothers laid a 10'x24' concrete slab for the workshop floor.  The shop will only be 10'x14', but we wanted an extra 10'x10' section for outdoor work.  We are working on a couple of ideas for the actual shed.  We know the style we want and can get a Tuff Shed through Home Depot, but our contractor, Craig, says he can build it for us.  We gave him our plans and he is supposed to come up with a bid for us.

Future home of the workshop

Extra concrete made a nice slab for the hose

We got a late start on Saturday, but managed to get the hallway and laundry room primed and sealed.  It was tight quarters with both Laurie and I working in this area, but it went well as she did all the edging and I did all the rolling.  We finished almost at the same time.  The work went so well, we decided we had time to prime the walls outside the pantry and den as well.

Short hallway primed

One side of the main hallway. . .

and the other side

The laundry room

Front of the den

Front of the pantry

As usual, we try to make Sunday a rest day, but early in the morning I decided to see how hard it would be to take up the tile in the hall bathroom.  Laurie does not like the white tile squares and we hope to find a flooring we can use throughout the whole house.  After just a short time of chipping, I found that the backer board used to put the tiles on was not only screwed down, but cemented to the floor.  The removal process was very slow and I only got about a 1/3 of the way done.  I will continue to work on this over the coming weekends.

The hall bathroom floor tile partially removed

With Laurie working, we have found that it is better to get back to the valley a little earlier on Sunday so we have time to get prepared for the week.  This time we decided to leave an hour earlier, around 4pm.  We were not even a 1/2 hour on the road when we came to a dead stop with people standing around outside their cars.  Not too long after we stopped we started moving again very slowly.  Laurie was able to look up traffic information on her laptop and finally learned where the accident was and that we only had a couple of miles left to go.  A van had gone off the road and caught the landscape on fire and had happened at 2:30pm.  The fire was already out by the time we drove by and we never did find out if anyone was injured.  We did not get home as early as we'd planned, but we did get home safely and that is always good.

Stats: 0 Home Depot trips; 1 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 10/11-10/23: $1,012
Remodeling expense to date: $34,332

An Extra Three Day Weekend

Since Laurie's new job is with a government agency, she gets some of the uncommon holidays off from work.  This weekend was Columbus Day and I was able to take the same day off to give us both a long weekend.  Our original plan was to get some painting done around the house, but those plans changed as the weekend went on.

First, we have decided to move up our schedule to have a workshop built in the backyard to be able to move all the new tools we got from my mom out of the house.  We have decided on a 10x14 structure with an additional 10x10 concrete apron.  The best place to put this is where the current aluminum shed sits.  Laurie's brother does concrete work and will build the slab we need for the shed.  He was available to do the work next week, so we needed to move the current shed.  We moved all the stored items out of the shed and were going to disassemble it when I got the brilliant idea that we could just move it.  I knew it was too heavy to just pick up, but we had some leftover 10' black drainage PVC pipe that I thought we could use to roll the shed to the middle of the yard (approx 20').  We put four pipes under the shed and it rolled very easy, then we would move one pipe from the back to the front as they became free.  Once it was in the right spot, we put it back up on its blocks and put all the stuff back in it.

The old shed moved closer to the house

The stakes show the new concrete slab area

Laurie spent the afternoon at the hair salon.  She was able to find a hair stylist that periodically works weekends, the other stylist she has been using doesn't.  So while she was getting her hair done, I installed the medicine cabinet in the master bathroom.  The job went fairly well, but I found that my stud finder did not do very well on the older wall that we did not replace (we did not replace the drywall in the bathrooms and closets). So instead of screwing the cabinet into studs, I had to use wall anchors.  But it seems to be holding and looks good.

Now we can see ourselves again

Since we did not want to put up all our light/fan fixtures until the painting was done, I bought some inexpensive light bases at Home Depot and put one up in each room so we had more light at night.  I did not attach them to the brackets so we can leave them up while we paint.  It is so much better than carrying around a flashlight.

A very inexpensive way to have light - just over a buck

Sunday was going to be a paint day, but Laurie's brother was planning to stop by in the morning to scope out the concrete job and I did not want to start painting and have to stop (too much cleanup), so we spent some time in town shopping, and went to a craft fair, waiting until he got to town.  After meeting with him and going to lunch with he and his wife, I did a couple of more additions to the master bath and the kitchen sink.  I added a towel holder to both the bathroom and kitchen cabinets and put up Laurie's make-up mirror and a robe hook in the bathroom.  I cleaned out the hallway and laundry room and removed the hall bathroom door to give us room to paint.  We also had to clean out the guest room so we could put up the inflatable bed and make some room as my mother may be joining us on our next trip.  By the time all those tasks were done, it was getting late and I was no longer in the mood to paint.

The towel hook worked best here than on the wall

Reusing one of the old bathroom towel bars

Found a better spot to put this. . .

. . .but this site still worked for a hook

The room can now have a guest again

We had a small spot left in the great room for the TV

On one of the previous days I noticed that the laundry room faucet outlet was leaking.  Not a lot, but enough for there to be water in the wall box and a visible drop.  I decided to fix it on Monday morning and that project took most of my day.  I had to break the box out of the wall, then the water connections had to be cut off and I had to use multiple tools to remove the wall outlet drain opening from the drain pipe (it had been glued).  We were able to get all new parts at Home Depot and I planned to use the shark bite connectors our electrician/plumber had used for the plumbing connections.  The problem was getting the connections made while installing the new outlet box.  After many failed attempts, I finally broke down (this was Laurie's recommendation) and cut the drywall under the outlets to give us a new access panel to the plumbing (we will trim the piece for future access).  Since the current pipes were shorter than I had thought, I had to add extensions.  This was much easier with the new panel opening.  The replacement box went in easily after that and Laurie likes that it is so much cleaner than the old one.  No leak and cleaner box, a double bonus, though I really wish I would have thought about replacing the box and connectors while the drywall behind the laundry room was off.

The new faucet fixture with the extended access hole

Looks much better trimmed out (the cutout will have trim too)

We took it easy for the few hours we had left in the afternoon and left for home around 4pm.

Stats: 4 Home Depot trips; 1 Walmart trip
Remodeling expense 10/3-10/10: $1,227
Remodeling expense to date: $33,320

Another Step Up From Camping Out

This weekend was our first "normal" weekend trip since Labor Day.  There was only one oddity and that was that we had to drive two vehicles up since we had kept the Jeep in the Valley after using it to tow the trailer. It gave us the ability to bring up our bikes and a computer chair we got for free (found it on the side of the road - just needed a small fix and it works wonderfully).  Laurie did not like this trip as she had to drive and she has trouble driving in the dark. esp. on winding roads.

Brought our bikes hoping we will use them more here

After having breakfast at Tiny's (since the kitchen was still torn up and the 260 cafe is still closed), we went to Home Depot to pick up the rest of the stuff that was on our bid from June.  They have been calling us every few weeks about this, but we had no place to store it while the taping/texturing took place.  Now we have some room so we decided to get the remaining items.  The hardest part of the pick up was hauling the twenty 12' 2x6 boards that we will use for the front deck.  Using the bike rack that fits in the hitch, I was able to put down some boards that gave me a 10' bed in the Jeep and it worked very well.  Now we have even more stuff stored in our great room and den.

2x6 planks to replace the plywood on the front deck

The rest of our bid order, minus some things we returned

In the afternoon I started finishing up our master bathroom setup.  We had brought in the vanity and top, but did not have time to install the sink fixtures and I am glad I did not because, in the meantime, we decided to go with chrome fixtures instead of the brushed nickel we had previously purchased.  After two extra trips to Home Depot, I was able to complete the sink setup, install a new curved dual shower rod, install a toilet paper holder and put up the cabinet/towel holder we had in there before.  We no longer had to wash our hands in the tub and could take a shower again.  Just a couple of more items to install next weekend and it should be complete, though more painting is definitely in the bathroom's future as Laurie decided she wanted a darker color for the walls.

The completed vanity

A closer, brighter view

A better shot of the top, sink and new fixtures

A new curved dual shower rod - one for towels, the other for curtain

Cabinet/towel bar back in its original place

A new light fixture and it is not from Restore

While I worked on the bathroom, Laurie organized our kitchen.  We had taken all our dishes home the last time we were up so that we could wash them at home and get all the drywall dust off.  These had be put back in the cabinets and, of course, completely rearranged from the way it was before (I can't find anything now).  Now we had the ability to use the microwave and other appliances.

The new kitchen layout, similar to the old one

Shelving is rearranged, along with items on shelves and cabinet drawers

This is essentially the same except for inside cabinet and drawers

On Sunday we took the next step up in our kitchen facilities. When we first started our rebuild, we were doing dishes in the bathroom sink.  Then we brought up a camping sink table and could transfer hot water to the sink for washing.  Next I installed a faucet that used our kitchen plumbing so we could have water right at the camp sink, but we could not connect it to the drain, so all the water was emptied into a bucket and dumped into the bathtub.  On Sunday I installed a double sink with drain connections.  This will satisfy one of our permit final inspection requirements to have a kitchen sink.

We had found a cabinet and double sink basin at Restore in town about a month ago.  The cabinet was missing a door, but we liked the color and it was taller than the camp table or our bathroom cabinets.  I originally was going to cut a hole in some leftover plywood to use as a countertop, but we stopped at Restore on Saturday (looking for bathroom fixtures) and found a small piece of formica covered countertop that was the perfect size for our cabinet.  I cut a hole in the top to fit the sink and secured it to the cabinet.  I reused the old faucet and all the drain connections from the original kitchen setup that we had kept after the deconstruction (did not keep the sink as it was cast iron and very heavy).  It only took two more trips to Home Depot to get some fill-in pieces I needed and, just after lunchtime, we had a working kitchen sink with drain connections.  It is much easier to do dishes, but now I need to tell our son that he has been replaced.  When he stayed with us he was the designated bucket dumper and that is no longer necessary.  I guess we will have to find him a new job when he comes to visit.

All this from reused materials

It ain't pretty, but it works and much better than we had

The drain system we missed for so long

The afternoon was spent relaxing (trying not to work to the end of the day) and then we headed back to the Valley with just one vehicle.

Stats: 5 Home Depot trips; 1 Walmart trips
Remodeling expense 9/18-10/02: -$199
Remodeling expense to date: $32,093