Its gloomy and rainy today, and I wish so much that I was home, sitting in our living room that is all windows and no television, sipping coffee and reading a book. But I’m not. One day I will be, but not yet.

We’ve been so busy lately, between travel and projects and work. Too busy, mentally busy, to even write about it. I detest that type of busy, the mental noise and non-stop-ness. When I do get 5 free minutes to write, all I hear is white noise. There is no spark left for detailing our adventure in removing the dirt pile, or our trip to Michigan, or how B repaired and cleaned the gutters with these insane 7″ gutter screws. We’ve been burning the candle at both ends lately I fear.

In light of that, we have recently instituted “Moratorium Mondays”, which means no house projects on Mondays. Sure, some laundry or sweeping, but no tearing out walls or sanding trim. Oh, that’s another thing we’ve been doing. Sanding trim. Its time to start painting inside.

Here are all of the things we’ve tackled that I’ve yet to write about:

• Gutters: B spent a 100+ degree day on a ladder reattaching our gutters to the house, sealing them, and cleaning them. Amazing. We had record-breaking rain recently, and they worked perfectly. Not a drop of water in the basement.
• We’ve insulated and drywalled the garage side of the new wall. Plus added a pegboard, rewired the garage lights and outlets, and painted. It looks amazing.
• The dirt pile is no more. There was a giant raised planting bed 12″ from the back of our garage. I’m not exaggerating, it was weirdly 12 inches from the back of the garage, and because you can’t get a mower in that narrow area, it was full of weeds and junk. Well as we did all this other landscaping work, the dirt pile kept getting bigger and bigger until it was about four feet tall. It was insane. We were hitting walls trying to get rid of it (can’t take it to the yard waste place, can’t take it to the landfill. Um…..), and didn’t want to have to pay an excavator. B was talking to our neighbor who suggested just spreading it over our yard. He laughed but kept thinking about it, and that is exactly what we did. The back of our yard was low anyway, so we took that dirt and spread it along our tree line at the back of the yard. Some Preen and some grass seed and soon we’ll have grass again plus no more dirt pile. It looks a little weird now, but soon we won’t even remember the giant dirt pile. Huzzah! Bonus: it was free.
• Road trip! We took a road trip to visit B’s family. Great trip, great food. And we came back with all kinds of goodies for the house – paint, workbenches, Christmas lights, etc. Triple win!!
• My aunt & uncle visited recently and brought me 2 pieces of furniture that my dad had made for them years ago. In fact, one was a wedding gift he made for them back in the 1970’s. I’m so happy to have them. My dad was a talented woodworker, but I didn’t have any furniture pieces that he had made. Now I do!

So, we’ve been busy!

Here’s our beautiful garage wall. It actually looks better than this now because we’ve swept, painted, and removed that 2×4 frame that is on the floor in this picture. We’re so proud.

Happy almost-fall!

Cheers,

S