January 3 marked the one year anniversary of our home purchase. To celebrate and to show off our completed projects, we had an Open House. The first couple showed up an hour early and the last couple left an hour after it was over, so we had a full afternoon and LOTS of fun. It was great to see friends we have not seen since we got back from NEOS, family we haven’t seen in almost 10 years, and neighbors who have been supervising our many projects and putting up with the noise and dust.
But the Open House did not put an end to projects. We made a list of all of the little odds and ends that would finish off the jobs we have been working on and then ticked them off, one by one. We finished up the kitchen vent and trim, made drawers for the office desk, and put up a padded valance in the bathroom. We finished the window trim and the shades for all of the new windows. By the end of the month, we had actually started some new projects; the bed frame and closet doors. The bed frame will be a floating platform of stained wood with an Asian look to the corner joints. The closet doors will be bifold shoji screens and we need 4 sets of them; two in the bedroom and 2 for the hall closets.
My favorite project of the month was the installation of our hot water recirculating system. Up until now, it took almost 10 minutes to get the shower water hot enough for a comfortable shower since the bathroom is at the opposite end of the house from the water heater. In the morning, I wash my face at the garage sink since it is only 3 feet away from the water heater, but that doesn’t work for the shower. Between the guilt of wasting water in the middle of the CA drought and the experience of living on a boat and treating fresh water like gold, I just couldn’t bear to leave the water running for 10 minutes. Now we have a pump on the water heater and a pipe connecting the hot and cold water in the bathroom. 30 minutes before I take a shower, I turn on the pump and it runs water from the heater to the bathroom in the hot water pipe and then back to the water heater through the cold water pipe, heating up the pipes. So when I get in the shower, the water is hot and I have not wasted one drop of water! I am in heaven taking hot showers again.
In California, winter is pretty much 2 months long. December and January are the only months that we get down in to the 30’s and 40’s at night, 50’s and 60’s during the day. This January was completely dry…not one drop of rain, although we had plenty of fog. Rog and I remember laughing at the valley folk as we basked in sunshine up in Meadow Vista. Now we are valley folk. But with the dry weather, we got a lot of pruning and clean-up done in the yard. I filled up two trash barrels every week with the final leaf raking (I hope!) and the pruned tree limbs. We started hitting local nurseries and bought a peach tree, an apple espalier tree, 4 grapes and a trumpet vine for the back fence. I ordered a Japanese Black Pine online, as well as a green panda bamboo and some Java Black bamboo seeds. I also got the waterfall back in shape, using mortar on the rocks to hold them in place. It is now ready for Rog to help with the final section that will really show….and takes the largest boulders.
Our Monday projects continued with shaving cream snowmen, vanilla wafer snowmen, stuffed sock snowmen, and snowflakes. We even got to babysit on a Saturday when we took the kids to the park on their bikes.
We joined the Honeycutts for their 30th anniversary party. They reminded us that 30 years ago, they had spent their honeymoon with us (and about 5 other couples) at a house up at Tahoe for a ski weekend. It was fun to see what they have done to their place, enjoy some friends we have not seen in ages, and eat some delicious food!
Michelle started back at Sierra College so we are helping take care of Karissa on Mondays and Wednesdays until she gets home. The kids waited until their mom was back on her new schedule and then they got sick …one after the other until the entire family had one heck of a cold. Luckily Rog and I have not come down with it, but we will see…. It was nice to be able to help Michelle out as she struggled to get everyone healthy again.
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