Reading...Martha Grimes

"The Black Cat"

This is the latest in the Richard Jury series. I love this series, the characters are so entertaining, Melrose Plant is by far my favorite!  Martha Grimes does a great job of combining the mystery and horror of murder with the amusing events and characters of everyday life. You feel as though you get to know the characters in the books and would like to spend an afternoon in the pub with them!

I have noticed that the last couple of books seem more like a series than the previous books. The earlier books in the Richard Jury series were chronological but you didn't have to read them in order, that seems to have changed now but I still love the series and look forward to many more!

'til next time...

Addition update...trimming the tree...er...rooms

We are now working on trim.  We want to get as much of the trim installed and painted prior to having the floors sanded and stained. We will still have more work after that, the bathroom still needs a lot of work, but the trim is one of the very time consuming projects. Partly, because we both hate painting, so we find lots of reasons to procrastinate.

The piano room has the most trim in it because it is our "formal" room and will have chair rail molding as well as crown molding. Peter got the baseboard installed and is working on the chair rail molding. The crown molding will come next.

Since the chair rail molding is two part we wanted the top piece to be offset off of the trim. We looked online trying to find instructions on how to cut it so that you don't have the wood grain exposed. We couldn't find any directions online but fortunately Peter figured it out!  We are trying to finish that room completely before we move on to the bedroom area.

'til next time...

Computer woes...

Once again my computer crashed....and once again I got a new computer. This is starting to seem like a regular occurrence. My first laptop cost an obscene amount, almost $2500, now you can get a decent laptop for $400. But I have to say my first one lasted for years, lately I seem to be getting a new one every 1-2 years. Fortunately since this has been happening I have my info backed up pretty well however it is still a pain to load everything onto the new computer. I haven't even done that yet with this computer, I was so glad to be "connected" again with the world wide web that I just jumped online. But in the next few days I will start loading all my info on this computer and will try to upload some of the blogs that are sitting in my draft folder. I'm still having a problem uploading pictures but that is not a computer problem but rather the sad reality of having satellite internet.

'til next time...

Addition update....doors

Once the flooring was installed we could install the doors in the addition. We had gotten pre-hung solid wood doors so theoretically they were going to be easy to install. Notice I said theoretically.  Peter had a neighbor come over to help move the doors into position, they were trying to get one door into place when they noticed that there was a problem...the door frame was too short.  It would seem that someone, we won't name names, had measured off the sub floor and didn't calculate in the wood flooring when framing in the door opening. The good thing is this person, who shall remain unnamed, is consistent, so all the openings were too short. All five doorways were too short and would have to be cut larger. Now, we had already finished the drywall and had at least one coat of paint up, so we would need to cut through the wood frame and the drywall to fix the opening. Peter brought out the trusty saw and went to work. Can you say dust?  There was dust everywhere, even with hanging blankets over the doorways the dust was everywhere! At one point I walked into the addition while Peter was cutting the dust was so thick I couldn't see to the other side of the room! As you can imagine, the entire house was coated in a layer of drywall dust. I'm not a fan of drywall dust.  But the good news is that the doors did get installed so we are one step closer to getting this addition finished!

looking from kitchen: bedroom door ahead, laundry door on right 

in bedroom, bathroom door on left, closet on right

'til next time...