Life Just Never Slows Down!

We got back home Friday, July 22nd, about a week early having had to eliminate Mount Rushmore from our plans, driving straight through for three days of hot worried travel. By the time we got home not only were we exhausted but I was sick and needed to get well quick to prepare for my hip replacement surgery a month away.

In the meantime, Timmber Wolf spent several weeks in our driveway waiting on the insurance adjuster and then went to Camping World for another outfit to do the windshield and Camping World to do the body work from the rock damage. It is a very good thing we did not wait on a windshield in Wyoming or Colorado as the first one that was ordered arrived broken in transit.

Once the damage was repaired, Timmber Wolf had to go to the Ford commercial dealership up in Jacksonville for repair/replacement of the A/C unit that had failed us. Wolf was delivered there the end of September and spent Hurricane Matthew in their parking area.

On October 3rd, Hurricane Matthew arrived in the vicinity. We live enough inland that we did not have many concerns about damage for us personally but we have many friends who were in the evacuation  area. Fortunately, no one we knew suffered any significant damage. We were without power for a couple of days and the whole house power generator we had decided to fail us in our hour of need. Seems a power board in the model we have failed and there were a lot of unhappy people in the area, not just us.

Between rehab and recovery from the hip replacement and the start of Income Tax course of training that I lead every year where I work, we definitely stayed busy.  Wolf finally left the Ford dealer and went over to General RV for additional warranty repairs. Good Thing we weren't planning any trips! Wolf finally got back to storage sometime in late November or early December.

In November we finally got the fence for the side and backyard put in and made arrangements and decisions about house painting for December. We settled on having the popcorn ceilings removed. They are impossible to clean or paint and after ten years were starting to show where the heat ducts and kitchen added to the atmosphere. In addition we had most of the interior walls painted as well as the exterior stucco finish.

The colors are from Sherwin-Williams. The Trusty Tan was used on the exterior with white trim. The lightest color, Champagne was used on most of the interior walls and the Interactive Cream was used in the master bedroom and bath and white ceilings and trim. We used Straight Edge Painting of Jacksonville to do the job.

Now popcorn ceiling removal is a nasty messy event. First we moved what we could out of the house getting rid of our old bookcases which lined the living room. Of course this necessitated buying new bookcases and dumping the old tv stand for a nice credenza, bought from Sauder. While they did the popcorn removal we had to vacate the house for a motel for a few days which coincided with Geoffrey having the first of two cataract surgeries. We stopped by the house midweek to see how they were doing and the boss painter told us he managed to break the bookcase I used for a nightstand by my side of the bed so guess what??? a great excuse for new bedroom furniture! We got more of the Salt Oak finish line from Sauder, a couple of wardrobes, a dresser and a chest of drawers! So nice to replace all that 20 year old stuff.

Just in time for New Year's we were back in the house with fresh paint and new furniture, the latter being delivered on the 31st!!! And Wolf was safe and sound back in his storage space.