For the Journey


Any day spent with you is my favorite day. So today is my new favorite day. ~A.A. Milne

"You crown the year with Your goodness, and Your paths drip with abundance." ~Psalm 65:11
Well, my life can be summed up in one word. Painting. I've decided that should be a dirty little four-letter word. It's a really good thing that I love the paint colors we chose because I'm fairly certain the walls in our house will NEVER see fresh paint again! It's one thing to paint the walls. But then you have to paint the trim, not to mention caulk and fill all of the nail holes. And then the doors have to be painted . . . and the cabinets . . . I'm just over the whole thing. We've done a tremendous amount of painting. But there's still A LOT left to do. So that's where I've been spending my time.

The concrete trucks will arrive tomorrow to pour the sidewalk and parking pad into the garage. I still have to stain the front door (I've been putting that off on purpose . . .), and we have to build and install the shutters. But other than that, the exterior of the house is finished! The iron rails on the second floor balcony were installed a couple of weeks ago. The garage door was installed last week.
I finally began to see a light at the end of the tunnel last week. It's still a rather dim light, but it's a light none-the-less. The bathrooms are nearly finished. The tile guy finished the floors and the shower last week. I'm very pleased with the outcome. We liked the ceramic tile that we found so much that we decided to let him finish the tub deck in it as well. Hopefully we'll have the master bath tub set by the end of the week. And we still have to paint the cabinets . . .We took the doors off the hinges and lined them up in the garage so we could spray them. So those are done now.I've spent hours painting the trim, and I'm still not finished. I've decided that perhaps all of those windows and cased openings weren't such a good idea after all. I'm really not sure what I'm going to do with myself after I finish painting. I don't even remember what I did with myself BEFORE I started painting! Although we're going to paint the bathroom and mudroom cabinets, we decided to stain the kitchen cabinets. Now, I must admit . . . I'm afraid of staining. I've always thought that to be a rather tedious venture and one to be tackled by only the most professional of painters. But with the help of the paint store and the advice from a professional painter friend of ours, we decided to go for it. Actually, my father-in-law decided to go for it. Let's just say that after we got started, it seemed inevitable that we'd end up painting the kitchen cabinets after all! Somehow, near disaster was averted. With a lot of patience and phone calls and work, the kitchen cabinets are absolutely gorgeous! They turned out exactly like I wanted them to. But, again, that's only thanks to my father-in-law. I don't know what we'd have done without him.

I was hoping we'd be in our new house by the end of this month, but that isn't going to happen. Besides painting, our biggest task yet to come is laying the hardwood floors. We also have to install the stair treads. The fireplace rock hasn't been done yet, but that's something that can wait for now. The countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms are scheduled to be installed next Wednesday. We started installing switches and receptacles this week so we can get electricity within the next week or so.

For now, I feel like the Little Engine That Could . . . I think I can . . . I think I can . . . I think I can . . .