Another Year Passes

This has been a full year.  People say you slow down when you hit 50 .... I did not see that.  Work has been busy, the kids have been active with their lives, and then Laura and I decide to move to the mountains of western North Carolina.

And it has been an adventure. First finding the house for us in a snowstorm in February, taking possession of the house in April and then beginning the work of making some changes we wanted, like gutting the basement and putting in hardwood floors.  This of course while working full time, plus some.

The move was an adventure. Arranging the move and then finding out it would take two days to pack the house and get it in a truck and then take a week to get here ... the same day I had to leave on a business trip. I got back to a house full of boxes, a pool pump I needed to replace and then having to leave again a day later.

Well finally I was able to be home for a couple of weeks. We unpacked,  most things, got the pool up and running and started to get used to WNC.

And as soon as we started to settle down we found Nala. But that is another story.

Our New Adventure

We are beginning another chapter in our book ... a chapter that will start in a new location in Western North Carolina. Laura and I are VERY excited about it, especially since it means we have bought our first house together. It does come with some work though .... some planned and some unplanned.

On the planned side I gutted the room in the basement so we could make it "ours". It was a comfortable room but the color and the carpet were not ideal and there was a "bar" that was more like a kitchenette that was on a raised platform.

I spent a couple of evenings tearing that down a few weeks ago. It was motivating as the "bar" area was so well built that it gave me a good feeling about how well the rest of the house is built. I tore up the carpet and underlayment and then dismantled the "bar" area, saving the cabinets and the fridge for a local friend who updates places so he can rent them. He even was able to find a use for the sink.

Starting

What I took out 

And what I was left with was a big empty room that needed some new paint and a new floor. Byron, who built the house, lived there for 7 years and who we bought to from knew someone who could paint it for us at a great price which meant one less trip for me so when I went down last week I was able to spend my days working from home and spend my evenings working on our home. 

Over the week I was able to replace the valves on the pool system, two of which were past due to replace, build a small screen for the pool equipment, then put in the new underlayment and the new floors, and of course do some general cleaning etc. 

In the end I think it was a great week. I found that working from home is very productive and I was able to get a lot of things done in the evening. I also found time to go out and enjoy a great dinner with Byron, his wife Iris and his daughter Hope. 

For those that want to see the new place you can check out a couple of you tube videos. This first one is one of a wild turkey that was in our backyard and the second is a walking tour of the house.

We hope to have lots of people visiting us ... and I will be doing a better job of keeping the blog up to date.