In Hiding
I think I will go into hiding for the rest of the week. Yesterday, a simple fifteen mile trip from the closest town, took an extra 30 miles of getting lost.
For those of you who don't know, I live in the wilderness. Fifteen miles from anything in any direction. I like it. The noise is minimal. The traffic is virtually non existent. And the only neighbors you hear are the horses and cows. Oh, and the lions. I have lions that live in a sanctuary about a mile away. I've gotten used to them too.
But over the weekend we had the mother of all storms blow through. The artery leading to the main road was closed due to high water, but our little road, the only public road leading home, saw some serious washout. The water was so tremendous it destroyed one side of the road where a pond fed under it. We needed civil engineers and heavy equipment to repair the damage.
I should have known it was going to be a big deal.
Monday, I left early in the morning to run some errands and by the time I got back, a quarter mile of the road was blocked by trucks and heavy equipment. Go around, they said. The next road will circle back into this one.
30 miles later, I was back to the blocked road. By this time two other people were stranded there. Neither one had the sand to ask the head honcho how to get around. So I limped over there, past the humongous front-end loaders and the grading equipment and found someone who gave me better directions.
Evidently, there was a way to get through. It's a private road and the people in charge had gotten permission for the rest of us to use it. Too bad nobody passed that information on to the residents that lived there.
It was a rough rock road with no visible signs other than the "Keep Out or Else" sign. The road got thinner and thinner until it was little more than a foot path, but I kept going. My frozen shrimp was thawing! I had to get home.
Finally, I saw an exit to a blacktop road. Freedom! And better than that -- I recognized the road. It was MY road. I was going home. My shrimp would live to see pasta primavera.
Now that I'm home, I am staying put. I have food, wine, dog and movies. The husband is out of town, but I'll put his picture across the dining room table and pretend he's mocking my cooking.
I have plenty to keep me busy until he gets back.
We've been working all week on a couple of remodeling projects. I'd post pictures, but I'm saving them for the new blog coming soon.
The people who owned the house before us punched a hole in the wall on one side and through the built-in bookshelf on the other side so they could install an aquarium. I like aquariums, but we travel too much so I'm not ready to put another one in just yet. This left us with the problem of what to do about the hole. They really made a mess of things when they tore the aquarium out.
Greg, who could easily work as a professional remodeler rebuilt the built-in bookshelf even better than before. It's gorgeous. You can't even tell there was ever a hole.
The man never ceases to amaze me. (I did good choosing him. LOL.)
He sheetrocked the other side and plastered it to a smooth finish and it's now awaiting me to retexture and paint it to match the rest of the walls.
Our other project is the back porch. 52 feet (I measured) of screened back porch. Greg once again worked magic and took out the floor-to-ceiling screens and built a short wall so that no dog or human can walk through the screen by accident. Evidently, it happened a lot before. The screens were in a raggedy state.
The redo looks fantastic. We still need to install the new shorter screens and Greg has decided he wants to tile the floor too. I think it will be quite elegant when we finish. I am on the hunt for suitable outdoor furniture to balance the room out.
There's always something to do when you own property. Fortunately, both of us enjoy working with our hands. And at least one of us (not me) is good at it. *grin*
Have you remodeled recently? Anyone want to share their experience?
For those of you who don't know, I live in the wilderness. Fifteen miles from anything in any direction. I like it. The noise is minimal. The traffic is virtually non existent. And the only neighbors you hear are the horses and cows. Oh, and the lions. I have lions that live in a sanctuary about a mile away. I've gotten used to them too.
But over the weekend we had the mother of all storms blow through. The artery leading to the main road was closed due to high water, but our little road, the only public road leading home, saw some serious washout. The water was so tremendous it destroyed one side of the road where a pond fed under it. We needed civil engineers and heavy equipment to repair the damage.
I should have known it was going to be a big deal.
Monday, I left early in the morning to run some errands and by the time I got back, a quarter mile of the road was blocked by trucks and heavy equipment. Go around, they said. The next road will circle back into this one.
30 miles later, I was back to the blocked road. By this time two other people were stranded there. Neither one had the sand to ask the head honcho how to get around. So I limped over there, past the humongous front-end loaders and the grading equipment and found someone who gave me better directions.
Evidently, there was a way to get through. It's a private road and the people in charge had gotten permission for the rest of us to use it. Too bad nobody passed that information on to the residents that lived there.
It was a rough rock road with no visible signs other than the "Keep Out or Else" sign. The road got thinner and thinner until it was little more than a foot path, but I kept going. My frozen shrimp was thawing! I had to get home.
Finally, I saw an exit to a blacktop road. Freedom! And better than that -- I recognized the road. It was MY road. I was going home. My shrimp would live to see pasta primavera.
Now that I'm home, I am staying put. I have food, wine, dog and movies. The husband is out of town, but I'll put his picture across the dining room table and pretend he's mocking my cooking.
I have plenty to keep me busy until he gets back.
We've been working all week on a couple of remodeling projects. I'd post pictures, but I'm saving them for the new blog coming soon.
The people who owned the house before us punched a hole in the wall on one side and through the built-in bookshelf on the other side so they could install an aquarium. I like aquariums, but we travel too much so I'm not ready to put another one in just yet. This left us with the problem of what to do about the hole. They really made a mess of things when they tore the aquarium out.
Greg, who could easily work as a professional remodeler rebuilt the built-in bookshelf even better than before. It's gorgeous. You can't even tell there was ever a hole.
The man never ceases to amaze me. (I did good choosing him. LOL.)
He sheetrocked the other side and plastered it to a smooth finish and it's now awaiting me to retexture and paint it to match the rest of the walls.
Our other project is the back porch. 52 feet (I measured) of screened back porch. Greg once again worked magic and took out the floor-to-ceiling screens and built a short wall so that no dog or human can walk through the screen by accident. Evidently, it happened a lot before. The screens were in a raggedy state.
The redo looks fantastic. We still need to install the new shorter screens and Greg has decided he wants to tile the floor too. I think it will be quite elegant when we finish. I am on the hunt for suitable outdoor furniture to balance the room out.
There's always something to do when you own property. Fortunately, both of us enjoy working with our hands. And at least one of us (not me) is good at it. *grin*
Have you remodeled recently? Anyone want to share their experience?
Comments
There is a lot of book storage in this house, so I think I'm going to use this bookcase as a place to hold some of our curiosities. :o)
There's no place like home.
Otoh, I've already revised a number of things I've been thinking of doing, so maybe it's just as well we can't start on anything until early next year. I read somewhere that you should really live in a house for a year (all four seasons) before you decide on paint colours, space usage, etc. That was terrific advice and we used it in Melbourne, but here in Johor there's only hot-and-wet and hot-and-wetter so we're being a bit impatient. LOL
This is good advice, but I couldn't see living in a house with rooms that were painted mud brown. I did leave the plantings alone to see what would come up in the spring. I was very pleasantly surprised.