Odds, ends & change

Over the last few weeks or so much has changed. Some was before and some after the trip to the west coast of Florida and some has been briefly referenced in past posts so please forgive any repetition. We are happy and pleased with these changes and want to share them.

The major item of course was the floor. A few years ago tile was put down in the master bathroom but otherwise nothing had been done to the vinyl and carpet that came with the house. I did write about this some in Salt Oak and more but left out images of the new floor and skimped on some of the details.

To the right is a picture of the kitchen ceramic tile although I think it is just a tad lighter and beige-er than it looks in the photo. This same tile is now also in the small bathroom and is similar to what we had put in the master bathroom in 2015. Below is a picture of the hardwood laminate that is now everywhere in the house except the kitchen and bathrooms. It matches the furniture.

In the earlier post I talked briefly about the disruption putting new flooring down created, especially when you add in the dust from the new floor outlet! As is standard, we had to empty all the shelves and cabinets and put all the loose stuff out in the garage. We kept a box ready for stuff to take to Goodwill and filled it several times as well as giving some stuff away. The floor installers wanted one of us to be there in the daytime so since we had an RV handy, we just took Timmber Wolf and stayed three days and two nights at a local RV park. The Stagecoach RV Park is only a few miles from us and quite close to I-95 and we highly recommend it to anyone staying in this area with an RV.

As part of these changes we did some rearranging and tweaking of things in the kitchen. To the left of the refrigerator is a counter area with cabinets above and below which held our toaster and bread and such and also our countertop microwave. One day Geoff suddenly out of the blue said why don't we get an over the stove microwave which my first instinct was no but I thought about it a little and realized that getting the microwave off that counter would make room for our coffee set up which was taking up room on the counter between the sink and the stove. With our switch to Keurig that was taking more room than ever.

We found a microwave at Lowe's that passed the Consumer Reports reviews and had it installed above the stove. It replaced the fan and light that we had there but contains a fan and light in its base. We chose one with the controls at the bottom so there is no problem reaching or reading them but have found that although Geoff is tall enough to see the food inside the microwave, I am not!

The picture above shows the new arrangement on the countertop with the breadbox, water and toaster being pretty much what was there before but the Keurig K-cup coffee maker and drawers of K-cups, and other coffee paraphernalia are additions making for a lovely breakfast bar especially when we added some lighting under the cabinets which make a nice light to start the day with. ... hmmm, be right back, I need some nice hot tea!

One of the things I finally got insistent about with Geoffrey was that he get a tool chest, a good sized roll around tool chest so he could consolidate the close to a dozen different toolboxes he had in various places in the garage and the corner junk room.

It was so bad that he sometimes had to hunt for a particular tool for hours before he could do something and I was tired of it! I also could never find a tool when I needed it.

It is still a work in progress and the drawer labels are just temporary masking tape and he is still in the process of sorting stuff out and getting it all set up but the consolidation has freed up a bunch of space in the garage for sure!