Monday, June 30, 2014

Together All Day

It is funny how quickly plans changed yesterday morning. It was way too beautiful for Michael to do any work over the hill. The coast was clear, sunny and fog-free!

I have been on a mission to fix things around the house. I have made a written list. A long list. On the list was to replace the inlaid LED lights embedded in the pavers along the driveway and the side of the house. Six of the dozen were no longer working. Last Friday, I ran into the contractor who did the driveway years ago as he was installing a driveway around the corner, asked about the lights, mentioned the conversation to Michael and on Saturday, he arrived home with six lights. Yesterday, Michael figured out how to remove the pavers, broken lights, install the new lights and this morning, I was delighted to see everything lit once again. While he was doing this, there were two pavers that had been pushed up because of a birch tree root and he fixed them, too! It took just an hour.

The plumber was here on Friday to replace the water pressure valve and we now have pressure! The water sprinklers have never worked so well! The toilet is flushing so much better! Filling the washing machine is so much faster. Joyous!

At least a decade ago, we had new carpeting installed in the bedrooms and ripped the closet floors down to the sub floor with anticipation of wood flooring. I spoke with Wayne to get on his calendar to finally take care of this. We are book for mid-August.

The paint on our house still looks great except for on the west and south sides where areas are in need of a touch up. We also need the arbor painted. We will be having these areas done after Wayne is here (he needs to remove two posts from the arbor and add support to the other posts).

Yesterday, I emailed an electrician we have used in the past to see if he could help us remove the recessed fluorescent lights in the master bathroom and replace them with LED lights. I hope to hear from him today.

Also on the list was to buy a TV table for the living room. I have been fighting against having a TV in there since we moved here in 1982. I finally have given in. We have a 52" plasma TV in the garage just waiting for us to set it up. Yesterday, we went to IKEA to buy the TV table as he feels it is too heavy to hang on the wall. So, we now have to move a large round leather-topped table to William's room, move the 1920s English bar to the front entry, get rid of the couch in William's room and call DirecTV to help get it all set up. I have a headache thinking about it! Anyway, we went over the hill where it was about 95 degrees and fought our way through the maze of IKEA. We found a perfect TV table, paid the extra bucks to have it delivered (it is an order only item) and it will be here in a week.

From IKEA in hot Palo Alto to our little home on the coast, we took our most favorite ride through horse country, up the very rural mountain to the top then down the western slope, through the huge redwoods, past the ranches to the coastal hills to the ocean and watched the temperatures drop with each mile. It was 73 when we got home. During the drive, the windows were down, a CD of early Elvis was playing while we sang along and we really didn't hit a lot of tourist traffic. A small miracle. After we got home, we sat in the garden and just enjoyed the beautiful weather. It was a nice day of just the two of us hanging out together. And doing chores!

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