Amid the Uncertainty, Spring Has Sprung

Now that we are in the midst of this incredibly unsettling pandemic, I am SO grateful to have this little blog and all the past posts to review, laugh about, and to be able to look back and see how far we have come. Having the opportunity to document both our setbacks and successes has been cathartic in the moment, and smile-inducing in retrospect. If not for all of you I wouldn’t have taken the time to do this, so THANK YOU for your interest, your guidance, and most of all your encouragement throughout the evolution of this quirky home. I’m certainly glad that the bulk of it is behind us, now that we are all holed up alone and the economy is in the dumpster. We still have quite a ways to go before we can tie a bow on the place, but we made more headway this past month, so let’s get to gettin’, shall we?

I wish I’d had the foresight to snap a picture of our flatbed trailer a few weeks ago when it was loaded up with over 100 boxes of kitchen cabinets from IKEA, AND 55 boxes of cork flooring. Greg pulled that heavy trailer with our handy-dandy pick-up truck a couple of weeks ago and backed it into our oversized garage, load and all. Whew! With plenty of other projects to fill our plates, we were happy to walk away from the trailer and push the “close” button. Last weekend we were lucky enough to have our son, Mitch, come down with us. Though he was fighting off a cold, he was quickly put to work.

The first order of business was to get the washer/dryer out of the garage and give the washer a “go” before stacking. The units were purchased through Facebook Marketplace waaaaaay last April, and I remember feeling as though I’d scored a fantastic deal. Lucky for me, I wasn’t the one who had to haul the things from the original owner’s 2nd story laundry closet down to the truck. That task fell to Greg and Mitch, with me ably directing as needed(!) These things are HEAVY. With the units secured in the bed of the pick-up truck, we happily bouncy-bouncied down to the round house and unloaded them into the garage where they sat for nearly a year. Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago when I decided to double-check the requirements necessary to stack these appliances, now that the interior spaces are ready to accommodate them. As I read through the washing machine manual I noticed a dire warning in a highlighted box in big, bold lettering that said, in a nutshell:

Before ever moving this washing machine, be sure to screw the enclosed big, special lug nuts into the back of the unit to secure the washer drum in place. If you don’t, the drum is going to rattlety-bangity-bang-bang inside the washer as you bounce down the road and potentially cause irreparable damage to the machine. Also, once you’ve reached your destination remember to remove said lug bolts, or you’ll create an entirely different problem.

Ummm…OOOPS! What lug nuts?? You mean THESE lug nuts?! The ones neatly packaged in the manufacturer’s plastic bag, and placed INSIDE the drum of the washing machine for easy discovery? GAH! I was sure we’d permanently mangled the machine beyond repair before we’d ever plugged the thing in! So we hauled it into the house and temporarily set it up to run a load through a wash cycle. We didn’t want to discover any problems AFTER we stacked the dryer on top, and certainly didn’t want a big water mess all over the cork flooring that is yet to be laid down. Luckily all went well. The washer seemed to run just fine, and there were no resulting water leaks – thank goodness. Time to stack ‘em up!

Following our success in that project, Mitch and Greg set their sights on unloading that trailer in the garage. The cork was easiest to unload from the trailer, so all 55 of the 50-pound boxes were quickly stacked inside.

After that, over 100 boxes of do-it-yourself Ikea kitchen cabinets were disgorged into the house.With all the stuff inside, Mitch and I quickly set to work putting the cabinet boxes together.

After that, over 100 boxes of do-it-yourself Ikea kitchen cabinets were disgorged into the house.With all the stuff inside, Mitch and I quickly set to work putting the cabinet boxes together.

Despite the wacky instructions, it was easy, fun work, the result being that we could finally visualize the complete layout – and discover gaps that needed to be filled. So yes, I need to order one more small cabinet to complete the run. If these were normal times this would mean a quick dash to the Ikea kitchen department for a quick consultation and order, a swing through their pickup window, and off we go. But these are not normal times. The Ikea store is now closed, with online ordering as the only option. I don’t trust myself quite enough to ensure that the order would be correctly placed, so I think I’ll wait. For now.

So, the walls, paint, ceiling, lighting are mostly in place now. Our new couch arrived (far too early, but that couldn’t be helped), and we’ve stored a few more furniture and decorative items at home until they’re needed down here.

I haven’t done this in a while, so it’s time to brainstorm home décor ideas to help me set my sights on the final direction.

Recently, a friend and I went on our monthly foray to downtown KC to take part in First Fridays vintage shopping. This is always a blast (we’ll see if it can happen in April. Sad times…), and you never know what you might find.

One item that gave me pause was this velvet painting of Senator Bob Dole of Kansas. I choked on my own spittle when I first caught a glimpse of it, then guffawed out loud as I pointed it out to my friend. Following the shock and hilarity, I actually examined it with a different lens. Hmmmm…honestly – COULD this go somewhere in my house? NO. No, it cannot. But the lingering question remained: Why? Why does this exist?

But then, what about this:

What is this hideous, misshapen brown object with a lid, you ask! Why it’s an $11 Potato Dish, of course. We set the odd thing back on the shelf and walked away, but not 10 seconds went by before we found ourselves giggling away at all the fun we could have with that thing. Think about it: your neighbors are planning a pot-luck, your family is convening for Easter, friends are planning a brunch...all you have to say is, “I’ll bring a potato dish”, and your contribution is DONE! Just grab this dish – no need to fill it with anything - and dash to the get-together (once it’s safe to socialize again!). I should have snatched that little item up, actually.

So, most of the lighting is up, flooring is now going down, kitchen cabinets are being set in place. Now that we have found ourselves in lock-down down at the lake, we are knocking the items off the list in pretty short order. I’ll be sending another update out soon, but here’s a teaser to tide you over:

In the meantime, everyone stay healthy and well, and be sure to wear those gloves and masks!

'Round and Around and Around We Go!

Well, between the holidays, our sweet niece’s wedding in Hawaii, and the KC Chiefs, our productivity has really fallen by the wayside these past few months. We’ve had a wonderful break, but now Greg is cracking the whip to get this place finished, so we are “back to the salt mines,” as my mom used to say.

We’ve still got a long way to go, but now are to the point that we can visually measure our progress after each weekend pulls to a close. For so long we worked on internal elements - plumbing, insulation, electrical wiring – each of which was obviously critical, but none of which was particularly exciting. Now we’re painting walls, installing wood ceilings, finishing tile work, installing lighting, etc. It’s the fun stuff, and we’re motivated.

During the week when we’re back in KC, I like to peruse local estate sales, antique shops and flea markets to check for bargains. One of my best “catches” recently was this awesome boomerang coffee table for the living room. It should work great with the mid-century recliner chair and two side chairs that were nabbed at previous estate sales, so I’m psyched. The place is starting to take shape.

I also check the local online auction sites, and that’s where I spotted this little gem. Can you believe that NO ONE bid against me on this? Wait – you’re saying that you CAN believe that?! That’s how Greg felt about it, too. There’s just no accounting for taste, I guess.

Well, so I got this sweet thing for $14 all-in, and was thrilled. This auction company has its warehouse just 10 minutes from our “real” house, so this was going to be the best deal ever - or so I thought. It wasn’t until I received confirmation that this swing was mine that I finally realized my folly. THIS item had been left at its original site on a farm out in the country, waaaaaaaay north of downtown Kansas City. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??!! My cheap-o bargain quickly threatened to become an overpriced piece of junk! It needed to be picked up within a 4-hour window on one specific day. Time to re-jigger my schedule and make the best of it, I guess. A quick call to an adventuresome friend with an afternoon to spare (thanks, Ellen!) resulted in a fun day of lunch in Liberty, MO, followed by an incredibly circuitous tour of the nether-reaches of northern Missouri, and great conversations with two locals at least a mile apart from one another, neither of whom had any idea what their OWN house numbers were, let alone the house number we were trying to find on their country lane. They could have easily helped us if we’d simply known the swing-owner’s NAME because that’s how they identify all the homes and farms up there, but all that we had was a house and street number. Meh – we kept driving and miles down the road we finally spotted the swing set up as a helpful sign, we disassembled it with help from the owner’s son-in-law, and now it’s all set up where it should be. I think I’ll boost its colors with some spray paint, but otherwise it’s perfect.

Greg is making hay with the ceiling project. Each individual board has to be measured, cut at the proper angles, nailed, then re-measured for the next board – and on and on it goes. Greg has logged miles and miles of steps in a single day – all within a radius of about 50 feet! He’s got it down to a system and is actually going up faster than we had anticipated.

The miles walked don’t seem so bad when you have an amazing weekend like we had a few days ago. Our temps perked up to the mid-70’s, so Greg was truly enjoying his outdoor workshop.

One family member who struggles mightily with his days with us is our sweet 14-year old rescue greyhound, Bo. He has always been a sensitive soul who becomes skittish being in the same room during a football game, so you can imagine his fear of our air compressor and nail gun. We tried putting Greg’s ear protection on him, but that didn’t work too well. He is good at finding a quiet spot in the house each day or if he gets too ruffled he simply goes outside for a walk, so he has learned to cope. But Bo is always exhausted by the time we return to our real lake house for the evenings.

You may be interested in knowing the ingenious method Greg devised to line up the initial curved board to start the series of wood for each section, as each initial curve is slightly different. There would be 16 sections of pie-shaped ceiling in the house if we chose to use this ceiling treatment throughout the home. Though most of the house will have pine ceilings, a few areas – specifically the small entry, the utility closet, all storage closets and both bathrooms have drywall ceilings, so that cut about 4 sections or so from the total. For all others, here is Greg’s handy-dandy method for creating the arc cut that begins each section from the outside to the center. He simply taped a Sharpie to the corner of a box we had on hand, and he uses this “tool” to trace a mirrored line onto the board. Cut along the line and VOILA! We have our outer board for the new section.

Innovative, right?!

Meanwhile, I’ve been plugging away on the paint-by-number mural in the living room. This view out the adjacent sliding glass door served as its inspiration. Watch this short video. See the cedar trees, the hills and the lake below? That’s what I hope is evoked with this mural as well, so we can bring a bit of the outdoors into the room.

My tools are more mundane than Greg’s - just an array of paints and my “cheat sheet” for second coats and touch-ups. Once that number on the wall has been painted over there’s no looking back, so my cheat sheet allows me to color-match the section in question and select the corresponding paint for another coat.

It’s been a fun and relatively fast project – especially with help. Steve, one of our neighbors along the street, was sweet enough to join in and grab some paint and a brush. It was great to have his company for the afternoon, along with his kind assistance.

This week, a wonderful college friend came down from Nebraska to help me put the finishing touches on the mural and provide helpful direction and advice for the overall décor.

Karen, known by all of us “sisters in the bond” as KB, drove down from Unadilla, NE to Kansas City and hopped into my car for the rest of the journey down to Shell Knob. Myopic me was so intent on completing our projects that I didn’t stop to take a picture of KB in action while there. Or maybe the photos didn’t happen because I simply could not keep up with her. (The photo above was taken previously, on yet another paint by number mural.) So, together we were able to finish the round house mural in record time. Following that, our attention turned to the overall look of the room.

Months ago Greg and I hung white-washed, highly textured paneling around the perimeter walls around the house, while smooth sheetrock walls comprise all interior dividing walls With the advent of the new wood ceilings, the mural in the living room and the soon-to-be cork flooring, it was easy to see that the décor was going to clash because there was so much happening, visually. Our eyes need to have a place to “rest,” as they say in the interior design world. (I know this because I am an HGTV-aholic!) But can you see how the washed treatment on the paneling gave the walls a striped effect? Ugh. Not a good look next to the knotty pine ceilings.

So KB and I quickly settled on the idea of painting the paneling white, and she was game enough to shift gears and help tape and paint both the living room and one bedroom. Given that we were only painting the exterior curved wall in each room it went pretty fast, though the living room required two coats. Here is a Before/After view. It feels much fresher and brighter now - even with all the trash and junk in the way.

That’s the latest, for now. Next steps include tiling the smaller bathroom, followed by cork flooring and kitchen cabinet installation. More excitement to come!

Happy Thanksgiving, Everyone!

My, how time flies! We enjoyed hosting the Titus family PRE-Thanksgiving down at the lake this past weekend. Eighteen people, including four dogs and our cute little grand-nephew, a toddler, joined in for a weekend of food and fun. After waving everyone off on Sunday afternoon, Greg took a quick nap and I started some laundry. An hour later he emerged rested and refreshed, asking, “Wanna head over to the round house?!” My hopes of curling up in a blanket in front of the TV with a bowl of cheese puffs and a can of Fresca, watching Hallmark movies were suddenly dashed to smithereens. Fine. OK – let’s do this.

Earlier in the day I'd completed what I thought was a thorough turkey assessment before all of our weekend guests returned to parts unknown. We seemingly had SO much turkey that I had generously handed baggies full of turkey to family members as a little good-bye token. YOU get some turkey! YOU get some turkey! EVERYBODY GETS SOME LEFTOVER TURKEY!!! I mean, after our guests leave it’ll just be the two of us. Great as the smoked turkey was (and it WAS), how much could just the two of us eat?

We returned from the round house around 6:30 PM in pitch darkness, worn out and hungry. No worries – I'd already confirmed the generous glut of Thanksgiving leftovers that awaited us. Dinner would be on in a snap! Greg quickly nabbed the pan of turkey leftovers, but after peeling back the covering he discovered that only a few meager pieces were left. No worries - I’ll just dash out to the garage and grab our back up stash. Triumphantly carrying the large pan into the kitchen, I peeled back the foil covering to reveal NOT turkey, but an entire pan of dressing instead. Oops. I’d accidentally given ALL of our turkey away.

Greg was a bit miffed at me, and I was miffed at me as well. He stomped off to the bedroom to put on his “comfy clothes,” and after entering the room he immediately backed out and closed the door, looking ghostly white with shock. He then uttered one of only a few statements that can galvanize and repair a relationship faster than counseling or death, “Honey – there is a wild bird in our bedroom.”

And there it was - a Carolina Wren – flitting about from the ceiling fan to the wall to the floor to the dresser. Clearly the poor thing was in a panic, and so were we. How it got in there – who knows?

This was an all-hands-on-deck situation requiring total focus and teamwork. Greg got a big towel with the intent to wrap the bird up and release it outside. I joined him in the room, closed the doors to the closet and bathroom, opened a window and pulled the screen off to allow the bird an escape route. With that we steered and chased the bird – Greg with his towel, and me with the window screen - all around the room over and over and over before the THREE of us – Greg, me, and the bird – succeeded in getting it out the window and back into the wild. Comical and crazy as this was, the more ironic piece to this story is the fact that our 14-year old greyhound, Bo, simply laid on his dog bed in the same room while this mayhem played out and did not move a single muscle. Yawn…

After the “great escape” we enjoyed generous mounds of dressing, along with mashed potatoes with a bit of gravy, homemade cranberry sauce, and HUGE wonks of pie with whipped cream. No further mention of the lack of smoked turkey. We were happy with what we had, and all was good.

Now, back to the round house:

It is a recurring theme I know, but honestly the view out the patio doors of this house just never grows old. I love the seasonal changes, and the light and color patterns reflected on the water below. Despite the hammering, sawing, pounding, and painting happening inside, the scene outside is always a balm to the senses.

It’s hard to believe that work on this house began more than a year ago – specifically, on September 8, 2018. We thought we’d have this place snapped back into shape within six months, surely. I mean, HGTV gets those places torn apart and back together in a mere half hour. How hard could THIS be? Well, we’ve had a cold, hard reality check since then. At this point we are looking toward late spring before all fixtures and furnishings might be installed and in place, and even with that we are giving ourselves some grace. We are hosting the Bowen Family Reunion sometime this summer though, and it would be nice to have some overflow space, so we definitely need to have it ready for prime time by then.

We are nearly finished with Bathroom #1 – the main hallway bath. Pretty tile work now surrounds the tub, and more importantly the toilet has been installed and is FUNCTIONING! I have not made a big deal out of this, but let’s be real. We have not had a working toilet for well over a year, and even when we HAD working toilets we never used them. OK – I relented just once. Quick reminder:

Capiche? ANYTHING would be an improvement over that, so the bar for this and all other improvements to the place is set dramatically low. That said, I am loving what we’ve done with the new bathroom and cannot wait to have it all finished up.

The black octopus tentacles that poked out from the house for months on end were the outside connections for our mini-split system. The bulk of the lines were later housed in a channel specifically intended for that purpose, but the tail ends of these lines remained, pending connection to the outdoor unit.

A couple of weeks ago Greg and I finally unboxed that unit, which had sat in our garage for months and months and months. Having seen a number of sleek mini split systems over the past few years I felt sure that, though the packaging for the unit was quite large and substantially heavy, surely it was mostly packing material. Surely the actual unit would be small, understated and efficient, as I had seen over and over. Surely. SURELY! So imagine my shock and dismay when the box was finally cut away to reveal this: A nearly 4’ tall, 4’ wide, 15” deep white monstrosity, to be plunked prominently between our driveway and front door.

I was crestfallen. After all the work we’d done to the exterior of the house, and it was looking so stinkin’ cute…and now THIS. GAH!

Yes I know that I can plant grasses, or create some sort of natural or man-made screen, and yes we are working on it. And yes, I am grateful to live in a world with air conditioning and heating, so I in no way intend to besmirch the fact that we have it and cannot wait to reap the benefits of it. I just wish it didn’t have to be right THERE. THERE, by the front door. I’ll get used to it. I may eventually get over it. I’ll suppress my inner cries and screams until they are mere whimpers, leading ultimately to a need for intense counseling. But for now here it is. Laid bare. The outdoor unit – sitting there, prominently, proud, proud, proud. Our ultra-efficient, ultra sleek Mitsubishi mini split heating and air conditioning system.

And that’s just the outside. Inside are three “cassettes.” That’s what they’re called: cassettes. What do you think of when you hear that word – these? Yeah, me too.

Instead they are the units that exist in each room to heat and cool the space. I don’t find them offensive, generally. But they are NOT little cassettes. Why they chose that word I will never know! So, these cassettes exist in three rooms: The kitchen/living room, and in each bedroom. Coupled with the foam insulation, they promise to evenly and efficiently heat and cool the entire home, and I trust that they will. The entire system is quiet as a mouse – both the outdoor unit and all indoor units, so that is pretty great. It’s amazing to have heat again. This is the cassette in the kitchen/living room. Note the sneak peek of the ceiling that is beginning to be installed. We are pretty psyched!

Recently we were visited by two sweet college friends. Susie and Judy had planned a trip to the Eureka Springs - Branson area, and decided to wedge in a quick visit with us to check on the progress.

Last summer, we took a longer break with a larger group of friends who decided to make the trek to southern Missouri. I am ALWAYS up for a break, and love nothing more than catching up with friends. So (hint, hint!) if anyone wants to come on down, please know you're always welcomed!

In my last installment, I noted that we would soon be painting the front door. We are excited to reveal the funky color that we chose to highlight the entry: Orange! We thought it was a fun, unexpected pop of color – how about you? Now no one can say that our home looks like a Unitarian Church.

As you can now see, we have begun work on the wood ceiling as well as the aforementioned paneling, so look for another update in the coming days or weeks. Meanwhile, have a Happy Thanksgiving, and be sure to keep good tabs on all your leftovers!!