Hello Mom! 7-31

Today is the 20th anniversary of Mom's passing. She died the day after her 53rd birthday of breast cancer. She found her peace that day and I know she is happy and dancing.

These pictures are of her early dancing years when she was a teenager and her later years.

Love you Mom............

Starting to see progress 7-30

We are starting to see some progress inside the house. Here is the shuttle mural that covered the entire wall of the bedroom that we have chosen to be the guest room. Today it was covered up with drywall....yay!

The weird textural art mural on the guest bathroom wall was sanded down yesterday and the first layer of mud to cover it forever more has been slathered on.

We didn't like these three glass panes in the wall, so Larry removed them and our contractor has opened it up and has finished the edges off really nice....really opens up that area!
A shelf will go on the bottom ledge. This wall is between the family room and dining area of the kitchen.

My washer and dryer have made it into the house...getting closer to being hooked up...the laundry basket is getting really full!

Today we started the process of choosing flooring and carpet...we have changed directions a few times, but we have finally decided what type of flooring is going to go where...now we just have to choose the shop and products. We consulted at two today in Auburn and go to the third in Placerville tomorrow.

I think people that build their own homes are gluttons for punishment...just remodeling/redecorating takes so much time to shop for materials, schedule and get the work done.....crazy! Deciding on a house design and building materials would take me forever...ha ha ha!!!!

I forgot to post pictures of the doggie door that they had cut into the outside wall of the house. We don't want or need it, so it got boarded up today...woo hoo. Oh and we decided on paint colors and bought paint today....we are hoping to have the bulk of it all done in a couple of weeks...by my birthday would be wonderful!!!!

ARGHHHHH 7-29

Today was just a frustrating slow day. Whom ever took my energy, GIVE it BACK. Neither one of us can believe how tired we are and how soon we are done for the day. We are both in agreement that we don't ever want a house that requires this much work EVER again. I may never move from here...OR at the very least someone remind me to look at the date of birth on my drivers license if we look at anything that requires a "little" TLC....ha ha ha!

This evening we got to see the deer parade. One doe with a yearling that had little nubs on his head and later another doe with a fawn in spots. They are so pretty that it is hard to believe that when I get my flowers and garden in I will be thinking of ways to kill them...:-).

Habitat for Humanity came and picked up all the floor tile, the kitchen cabinet doors and a bathroom sink/faucet combo. I'm glad we didn't have to just throw it all away when someone might be able to use it.

Another 340 miles 7-28

Here is a shot of where our home is right now...behind our future home. It is our house, but not our home...yet.


Today was long and on the road again. We left around 0800 and got back around 1830 hours (6:30). It was up to Fallon...170 miles one way to get the washer and dryer, tools, wheelbarrow and because we had room our little 3 piece patio set. It was 95 and HOT, I kept diving into the shade while Larry adjusted stuff, he is an excellent packer/rope tie-er. If it was metal and in the sun too long we had to use gloves to pick it up....I think it was around one or two when we were there. We had to dig around a bit to find what we were looking for, but it wasn't too bad, we labeled things pretty well.

We had stopped at the Walmart in Fernley on our way to Fallon to get paint supplies and a microwave. I also picked up two gigantic flower pots and potting soil...
I probably won't get around to doing anything with them for a few weeks, but I have learned from experience...if you wait too long into August for gardening stuff, it is being fazed out for the fall/holiday stuff. You can get great sales of course, but you also can't find what you want sometimes. It was a long day but had to be done. All this traveling, planning, shopping etc., takes a lot of time from the prepping and painting we want to get on with. We still have to make a decision on flooring so it can get ordered...laminate, vinyl, carpet...decisions, decisions! I think we've settled on a paint color for the main part of the house..finally.

A "Cool" Dragonfly 7-27

This guy sat on the fence as I came out of the trailer and let me know he was aware of me by moving a tetch away. I haven't really studied a dragonfly at eye level before, but he was enthralling. Isn't it the most beautiful goldy orange color? It kept moving its head like it was saying come on over...come closer and then its mouth was moving like it was talking away....but I don't seem to be able to speak dragonfly. Like the hummingbird last summer this little creature let me touch its wings with nary a flinch. As I moved away it lifted off and moved down the fence a few feet, facing me stll, doing its head in the come here movement again....maybe it has seen the old show Lassie, but I had work to do and couldn't follow a dragonfly today. It sat out there for quite a while. I love my little communes with nature! In the second picture it looks like it is smiling!

Today while I consulted with flooring people here at the house and the dragonfly Larry was off to the dump with the loaded up utility trailer with lots of misc. junk from around the property that needed to go. We managed to pry a large bathroom mirror off of the wall....they had used narrow double sided tape...boy that stuff is strong...we didn't damage the drywall, though the mirror did break...we had it all criss crossed with duct tape so we didn't make a huge mess.

A beautiful day in the country. In the last picture, on the fence wire you can see the shadow of the dragonfly's wings...I love that I was able to get such great pics!

A work day 7-26

Yesterday we went up to Greenville to pick up the Camper and Comm trailer and we are also borrowing a utility trailer so I towed that back. My tow subject was easier than Larry's! On our way I got a second chance to get a photo of the flower filled meadow. From this direction and time of day it didn't seem as diverse but it was still pretty.

I snapped this picture of Larry's rigs while moving on down the road.

So now our place looks like a trailer/truck lot.

We were up early, Larry got a head start and we got up all the lock and click tile flooring. I mostly carried all the piles out onto the deck, they were heavy. Then I got all the underlayment all folded up and piled on the deck. Quite a lot of it slipped apart with lots of effort and didn't break and there is a couple rooms worth of it so Habitat for Humanity is going to come pick it up and reuse it somewhere.

I swept up the piles of dirt from all the rooms and Larry went around and pulled out the multitudinous screws, hooks and nails all over the place. He also got the new door knobs and deadbolts in with quite a bit of work. It was a really long day, but it was cooler which made it a little easier. Oh I also gently got all the tile popped off around the bathroom sink and Larry got the ugly countertop off and out of there. Now we just have to get the huge mirror out of there.

The cabinet refacers came for their final measurements and happily they will be installing in two weeks. Everything else...flooring and appliances will have to wait until the cabinets are done. We'll get all the prep and painting done in the meantime. Larry is feeling a lot of pressure to get as much done as he can before he gets called out on a fire. It always works out fine...no worries.

A busy day

Today was a full day. Larry was up early and walking around trying to figure out the trailer placements, the cleaning crew was back to do the inside of the house after doing all the windows in and out and the spider web removal inside and out last evening. The contractor was back to work on the yard pipes and then we were off to town. It was time to start looking at different types of flooring, paint chips/choices, appliances and then to Home Depot for a bunch of misc. stuff. What a difference the cleaning and de-Munsterizing did for the place!

This last picture is of the new concrete they are repaving I-80 with west of Truckee....it is dang close to 12 inches thick and it seemed pretty amazing they way they were laying it.

The first two pictures are along highway 89 where we stopped to have our breakfast. The aspens were mesmerizing to watch dancing in the breeze.

Hot in Cool! 7-23

We had a nice drive to Cool today, we came via 89 and Truckee. There was a meadow that was chock full of wildflowers and I was so busy gazing at the beauty I forgot to take a picture. I also saw some cranes way out in the middle of a meadow.

We were making really good time until we hit the road construction just west of Truckee....took about 40 minutes out of our day, creeping along or stopped completely.

Cool was HOT today...we saw 103 and it made getting the trailer leveled up and settled behind the house tedious for Larry. I was in the drivers seat with the a/c blowing on me while I shifted between D and R a few dozen times.

The cleaners came this evening to do the windows while the sun wasn't on the house....just getting all the spiderwebs down and the windows shiny makes the outside of the house look sooo much better. They'll be back tomorrow to do the entire inside. It is a big job and we just didn't want to tackle it...we will be busy enough with patching, priming and painting...pulling up nasty flooring and shopping. I find it hard to believe we are doing this again so soon after the Fallon house and everything here is bigger.

It has been a long day...the first of many to come....wahoo!!!

Our New Home 7-22

As most of you know we have been on the hunt for a new home base for almost a year and have hunted in five different states and we settled on the Auburn area of California. Yes, shocking to those of you who know Larry's opinion of our home state, but there are more things to love about it than hate and so here we are.

A little over five months ago we put our offer in on a beautiful two acres with a home that needs some lovin'. Until this week we weren't ever sure if it would ever close....one of the many short sales that are anything BUT short. Tomorrow it will be officially ours and we will be pulling the trailer to our new home to pick up the keys.

You will have to drag out your maps, we are about 6 miles south of Auburn/I-80 off of highway 49 south. Down the hill, across the American River, and back up the other hill to Cool. We are looking forward to living with some space between neighbors, and will have to deal with the four legged neighbors too, deer, bear, raccoons and various cat types. Many of our neighbors have horses which I will enjoy seeing, but the wildlife will be a challenge when I start to grow flowers! We are below the snow line so no snow shovels for us!

We looked at a lot of properties from Auburn to Georgetown to Placerville, El Dorado to Shingle Springs. The property either had no trailer parking, was on a busy road, on a road in the back of beyond or the homes needed so very much work they were far beyond our budget…the other thing was that most were in communities that had Homeowners Associations or a new one on us…Mello Roos.

This one has a paved road, is close to town, not far from Auburn, the property is pretty and there are no HOA’s, plus we liked the layout of the house. It had the least amount of work needed, but the hurdle we needed to get over was that it is a manufactured home…a different animal for us…we figured if we could live in a trailer for over six years this new place will be a hybrid of our previous homes.

So a long day tomorrow, all this time we didn’t know until just a few days ago if it would even be ours, so we were constantly working on backup plans. We’ll drive down from here, Quincy, stop in Cool and pick up our new keys and then head for the house and get the trailer jockeyed into where we want it. Then the hard work begins. In about a month the inside should be looking pretty good, the outside will take a bit longer.

Lilies 7-20

Well you know me, if there are flowers nearby I have to get their pictures. These lilies were out of sight behind a trailer across the way and the trailer pulled out for a bit today and there they were! So pretty.

The last "flower" is our friends Chihuahua who posed so nicely for me. We had a great visit and lunch at Buffalo Chips with Mary and Ronnie...woo hoo!

Pictures of yesterday 7-19

These pictures are from our day yesterday in Plumas between Quincy and Genessee, which is in the back of beyond. We met our friend at the old store and had lunch out on the lawn in the shade. I had a massage today, I am relaxed and sore and just don't feel like using my words ;-)