I went out to HomeDepot and Lowe’s first thing this morning to pick up more materials for the cabinets. On my way back the cornfield was glowing from the back lighting of the sun, and some friends were having their Sunday morning visit at the Corrales Frontier Mart.

I had a complete failure of finishing materials on my cabinets this afternoon. The laminate wasn’t particularly flexible, and the glue was not strong enough to hold the laminate in place on the curves. Actually, the contact cement failed completely. So I have to find a more flexible laminate and a much better quality contact cement.

Laurie’s making a big batch of vanilla gelato, and no sooner did she set the eggs on the counter than Stretch was in the top of the egg carton. Laurie used the eggs from the carton, added 8 more, then put the remaining eggs away, and Stretch is still lying in the top of the egg carton.  Stretch has also decided to take over the wire shelf where I keep my cameras. He was dozing, yet peeking at me through slit eyes when I photographed him. I had my cameras on the shelf this morning, and when I came in from working outside, Stretch was sitting on my keyboard, opening files and printing stuff to protest me leaving my cameras on the shelf. I removed the cameras and he immediately curled up on the shelf for a mid-morning nap.

I worked most of the day on building a new cabinet in the bathroom. Because the angles the shelves and countertop have to fit, and I’m making large round corners on the cabinet to match the countertop, I’m having to cut, check the fit, mark, cut some, check the fit, make more marks, more cutting and fitting, over and over and over again. It’s really time consuming and frustrating, but the cabinet will be really nice when I’m finished.

We stopped by Lowe’s on the way home this afternoon to look at bathroom fixtures, and ended up with a car full of bathroom sinks, fixtures and Formica. Can you guess what I’m doing tomorrow? We came out of the store into a hard rain (it’s still raining), so all the new stuff stays in the car tonight. I did grab a photo of raindrops on our hollyhock on my way into the house.

Late summer makes for colorful commutes. I could imagine the wreck on I-40 tonight was caused by drivers marveling at the wildly beautiful skies, but in reality someone was probably chatting on a cell phone or texting — too involved to notice the beauty or traffic around them.

The effect I used on the lead photo is called “Modern Antique” which seemed apropos for this stack of computers we are sending of to be recycled. One of the computers in the stack dates back to 1999 — that makes it at least 1024 years old in computer years. Truly the tech equivalent of a medieval device. I loaded up my car with old computers and monitors for recycling tonight, and I have as many dead flat screen monitors sitting on my desk as the are computers in the photo to be recycled.

There was an interesting mixture of overcast skies with the sun peaking through here and there this morning to give the sunflower and morning glory nice light with a gray sky background. The last photo is Puck and Rosencrantz lounging around in the sunroom after a hard day of lounging around outside.

I finally got the bathtub and surround installed. When I went out to look for a tool in the shed this morning, I saw the momma coon running away, and the all of a sudden, five little baby coons come running out of the bamboo, head straight for me and start climbing my pants legs. I shake them off, they scatter squealing at the top of their little lungs. One climbs up in the grill, two go to the shed, one went back into the bamboo while the last one climbed into a butterfly bush.  Eventually they all calmed down and left, except for the one in the last photo. It was so traumatized that it just stayed in a tight spot in the shed all day. I finally put on gloves and extracted the little critter, put it in the bamboo, but it ran straight back to me and started to climb my leg again. I finally convinced it to run into the elm grove across from the bamboo. I’m sure the momma coon was quoting a coon’s form of Beatrix Potter’s “What a thing it is to have an unruly family!”

 

Old toilet that served us well for the past 30 years — RIP. After having to make more modifications to the plumbing and running into more issues with the floor, I finally managed to get the floor covering down and the new toilet installed, but I didn’t get the new bathtub installed. After three days of prep-work, it only took me 30 minutes to replace the backboard behind the toilet and get the new toilet installed. The tub and surround should go in quickly once I have all the prep done. The last photo is Puck in a standoff with Osric.

 

 

 

There are art prints — there are cat prints — and then there are cat prints that are kind of artsy.  The kitties made the most noticeable changes in the remodel today by walking around in the spackling that took all night and most of the day to harden up enough for me to put a second coat on the areas where it had shrunk — so I worked on preparing the bathtub and reconfiguring the drain all afternoon. Once I got the bathtub in place, I discovered some of the plumbing I thought would clear didn’t. So I either had to do a major reworking of the drain and move the vent pipe, or do minor reworking of the drain and raise the bathtub six inches. I decided I would cause myself the least amount of pain by raising the tub, since I’m much better with wood than plumbing. The drain pipes are now reconfigured, so I should be able to put the floor down in the morning, install the new toilet and then the tub.  We also took a break this afternoon to go to the neighbor’s for a barbecue.

When I went out at 3:00 this morning to turn in the irrigation, the full moon was so bright, I could see color. The photo below captured the tree, sunflowers and stars pretty close to how I saw them. This is also a view that was not available before the demolition.

 

I have the bathroom stripped down to where only the toilet remains after day one of the bathroom remodel. I had to do a lot of figuring for the bathtub plumbing, replace sections of the  floor that had water damage from various leaks over the years and then spackle the repairs. I’m letting the spackling dry overnight, but Rosencrantz wasted no time walking in it. He was guilty by the white on his paws.  I only had to make two trips to Lowe’s today, and on my way home from the second trip, the low sun looked really great on a wall with a wheel in it.

We finally un-boxed our new mattress we ordered from Costco. A queen-sized mattress came in a 24X24X40 in box, which really surprised us. The mattress had been vacuum packed and shrink wrapped. When I unsealed the vacuum wrap the mattress inflated to a full-sized, beautiful 12″ thick queen mattress — simply amazing!

 

 

 

While there is a Wine Festival going on in Bernalillo this weekend, there will be a “Whine Fest”, with associated grumbling, cursing, cuts and bruises, happening at our house while I remodel the bathroom (if there’s a Hell plumbing is part of it).  We settled on a floor covering, after discovering the one we really liked was discontinued,  and I bought a new toilet, tub and surround — so first thing tomorrow morning the demolition of the bathroom begins.  As you can see from the photos, we had barely set the 66 inch tall box for the tub surround down before Stretch hopped up on it, taking ownership of the box. I’m sure he’ll still be there when I’m ready to install the surround.