Renovation Progress Report #3 --More Walls, Measuring the Sky, and Soup

Did I say at 8 PM last night that we would wind down in an hour or so? It was more like three hours or so.


It is almost 8 PM and Mary is putting the last few boards on the last wall. We had enough wood to finish and a few boards left over. Today we bought a new carpet for the office and I put scotch guard on it. I have done the beginning preparation for the unconventional ceiling we are planning to use. Photos of the ceiling will be in a later update. I cut 2x4s to hang the ceiling from until we ran out. Another trip to Lowes...




The wall is not as bowed as it looks on this photo. It must have been the angle I took it that made it look like that.



Also the 21 pints and 14 quarts of tomato soup are canned. I did some in pints and some in quarts because Jan has yet to decide if she likes our tomato soup. If we continue making it when she is not here, a pint is enough, but if she is going to eat some of it, we need a bit more than a pint.

Renovation Progress Report #2 -- Bare Walls to Non-bare Walls

It is after 8 PM and we will be winding down in another hour or so. Mary has been diligently working on the office. I picked two 5-gallon buckets of tomatoes and am making tomato soup.







The wall in the photo above now looks like the wall in the photo below. She has started on the second wall--a shorter one. There are two more walls for tomorrow.

There are electrical boxes and phone jacks to be covered and other little details to finish on that wall, but it is basically finished.

Renovation Progress Report #1 -- Beginnings

Mary took a day of PTO (paid time off) today and started the "project." When I got home from school at 1:30, this is how it looked at the moment.

I have been carrying wood from the print shop where we have been storing it for the last few months to the garage where she is cutting it the right length. She has boards of different lengths lying out on the floor so she can find the best one to make the most efficient use of the wood we have. We only hope we have enough for the project. I have about half of it carried to the garage, but it is raining quite a bit at the moment, and I decided to wait until after it slows down a bit to finish the job.

They are all t&g boards that we got from tearing down a shed for her cousin. We sanded them but decided to keep the white paint in the grooves. We had seen that done in another house and decided it added to the rustic look. Of course, it also saved us a lot of work.

I'll keep you posted as we progress over the weekend.

Office Renovation in Progress - Displaced Stuff

We spent about two years planning and dreaming of the office renovation. Over the last year we collected materials (thanks to the money gifts we received for birthdays and Christmas). Now, we have begun the renovation project that has been only a dream.



Last evening we moved most of the things out of the office. The three big pieces we moved into the center of the room.




Friday Mary is planning to take a vacation day and begin working on putting t&g boards on the walls. We have a ceiling to put in and new carpet for the floor. We hope to be moving back in on Monday, Labor Day. If we are not too worn out by then.

Fragments from the First Three Days Into the Year

2008-09 school year, that is
year number 24 for me on this side of the teacher's desk
drop/add period ends today
routine will develop quickly--I hope
learned the names of about half the freshmen, all the new sophomores, and one new senior
creative writing class is being creative -- makes for interesting reading
speech 2 class determined the "correct" order of importance of 15 items if they were lost on the moon
speech 1 class has to soon give speeches if they are to be called speech students
freshmen -- still lost and confused
sophomores -- scared by all the horror stories they heard about being sophomores
juniors -- exploring new elective classses available to them
seniors -- ready for the last year and more serious about life
haven't taken any photos this year

Burkholder Reunions

I grew up always having two Burkholder reunions every summer. One was always referred to as the "Little" Burkholder reunion, and the other was always the "BIG" Burkholder reunion. Those designations always made a lot of sense to me. The Little Burkholder reunion was never very many people since my Mom came from a family of 4 and we only had 10 cousins on that side--some of whom lived in Arizona and were seldom at the reunion anyway. In addition, they were smaller people. The BIG Burkholder reunion was lots of people since my Dad come from a family of 15 children and we had lots and lots of cousins on that side--most of them 10-30 years older than I am. Not only were there more people, but they were bigger people. My sister's dream was once to "be as fat as Aunt . . . . " (Should I add that it is no longer her dream?)

Yesterday was the Big Burkholder reunion. We have one remaining aunt, Aunt Nora, who is 94 and our aunt on both sides of the family.

Attendance is now more like 125 instead of the 400 as Aunt Nora reminded us yesterday. We had a candy drop from an airplane and neighbor boys brought their horses and were giving rides to the other children (not a planned activity).

There were many people at the reunion yesterday that I didn't even recognize as relatives (mostly cousins' grandchildren, I think). There were others there that I recognized as relatives (mostly cousins' children). There were others that I recognized as cousins and could generally place in the correct family, but being at the tail end of the cousins has kept me struggling to know my first cousins. My embarrassing moment yesterday was asking one of my cousins about her brother's daughter. I should have known, but I messed up again. She kindly got me straightened out.