Catch-Up Blog

Last week was a busy one. Mom-Mom and Papa came down again, and a lot of little things got taken care of. Papa rebuilt the brick flowerbed that surrounds the mailbox (it had apparently been run over a couple of times), and it looks much better; it is now worthy of flowers. He also worked a lot on fixing holes, cracks and imperfections in the walls to prepare for painting, of which a lot was done. Jessica finished painting the hallway and the living room. Mom-Mom and [plain] Mom worked on painting baseboards, trim, window frames, and crown molding. I continued work on the shower tile.


Friday, Jessica and I went to a tile place in Hixson to try to select bathroom and kitchen floor tile. We spent two hours there and barely decided on tile for the bathroom, which we ordered, but we're now indecisive about kitchen tile. (I don't know why, but I forgot to write about our ordering the granite for our countertops. It was a couple of weeks ago. We thought we had decided on granite a long time ago, but when we went to order it, we got to looking around and changed our minds. The granite we ordered is pictured below with the tile.)

We're trying to decide between "River Gold" (the second one from the top) and a much lighter, brownish tile. Jessica says the darker one goes better with the granite, but is afraid it might make the kitchen seem a little dark.


I thought I would be able to spend Saturday working on shower tile, but, to make a fairly long story fairly short, I ended up working on my aging Jeep all day with Wayne and Sam, father-in-law and brother-in-law, respectively. We replaced the radiator, replaced the alternator, and changed the oil. I am extremely grateful to them for helping me out; if I'd been working alone, the Jeep would probably still be in the driveway, but now it's running beautifully.

Yesterday Jessica had schoolwork to do, so I was at the house by myself working on shower tile for a few hours. It was slow going, as I had to cut each end piece as I came to it in order to get them to fit exactly right between the back wall and the door facing (and it sure was a pain cutting around that light switch).


This week, we hope to do a lot in the kitchen. It would be great to be able to get the walls in good shape so we can paint, and maybe bring the island back in. If we do that, we can get the granite people in to measure for countertops. I also hope to get [at least a few layers of] the old flooring torn up in preparation for tile in a couple of weeks.

I'll try not to wait so long before the next update. :-) Jessica, do you have anything to add?