Moving On

The McKinnons are gone. Their time was up so they have gone home. Randall and I are sad because we both really liked them. They will be missed. They have been replaced by the Gardner's. Super nice people. Both are hard workers, I can't keep up. They will only be here for about a month until the Dustin's get here. Elder Gardner (Bob) is 70 and is a retired army helicopter pilot/engineer. Sister Gardner (Leslie) is 69 and is a retired lawyer. Short story about Sister Gardner and me, when I found out she was a lawyer (me being so smart) said, “Cool I don't know any lawyers”. Well later I was telling Randall what I had said and he looked at me like I was out of my mind. Then he said, “What do you think Karl is (My Bother In-Law)? “Oh”, I said (how smart can I get, right) then he said, “What about Elder Walker (The senior couple from Gymon branch)? OK, proven, once again, I am not the sharpest tool in the shed.

We are done with the Lodge!

New Kitchen with Island and stove. Beautiful! Don't you agree?

New bathroom and laundry room and the Island with it's new stove. Nice!

New finished bathroom. We got to order the cool
shower curtain because it is a hunting lodge!

Now on to house #3. We have torn out the walls upstairs and the ceilings upstairs and down stairs.The bathroom and kitchen have also been striped. So we are down to the studs again except for the downstairs. We don't need to tear out the sheet rock in the basement, it's in good shape. The basement bathroom will need to be totally gutted though and we have only started that. Randall is going to have to do some fancy foot work with the roof because of sagging and moving. I'll let him explain in his Tidbit section. We tore all the stucco off the outside of the house. Randall was so proud of us, we did it in 1 and 1/2 days. Really hard work, especially carrying the pieces to the dumpster, they were supper heavy. Going to show you lots of pictures of what's been going on so far.

Ann carrying out insulation. See only studs.

Elder Gardner ripping out the ceiling. You don't even want to
know what was up there.

Front of house before.

Randall cutting the stucco.

Front of house after. Messy!

Back of house before.

Back of house after.

Elder and Sister Gardner, Randall, and James one of the ranch hands.
Having a well deserved break.

We have also gotten the house wrapped. Windows ordered, cabinet layout and mowed/watered the lawns all in one week. We are AWESOME old people!

Elder Gardner and Randall wrapping the house.

Elder and Sister Gardner and Randall wrapping the house.

Randall and Armondo (Head Manager of the whole thing, feed yard and ranch).
We love Armondo!

We've been busy and it feels good. Love you! Happy Birthday Abby Abby!

Good Day!

Still on the Lodge

Sorry for the huge gaps from one post to the next. Our internet hasn't been the same since we had our computer go down. There is still another blog post after this one that I've written ready to post. Aghhhh! I will survive and conqueror!

We are still working on the Office/Lodge. I'm painting, staining and varnishing. The boys are tearing things out and building them back. They decided to put in an island for the stove and it looks great! Biggest problem we are having is everything was tiled before so we've had a hard time matching the tiles the original builders used. I think what Randall has found will work in just fine.

Ann painting laundry room at the lodge.

Randall is letting me take the plastic off of the windows. Yahooo! I guess this means he feels spring is officially here. I need to start mowing the lawns/weeds and the weeds need to be sprayed. Randall is going to see if we can get a weed sprayer to pull behind the lawn mower, won't that be fun? Along with all the fun stuff, we'll have the hot humid weather to deal with, that's not fun. We will live.

Plastic on.

Plastic off.

We had General Conference and watched it on the big screen in the lodge. It was very uplifting. I realize I need to look at people in the way Jesus did. He looked past what showed on the outside into their souls. When you can do that you can see not only who a person is but what they can be if given the chance. He hated the sin, not the sinner. It's going to be a hard thing for me to do, if I ever can.

Love you,

Good day!

They Have One of My Favorite Things

I can't believe it! They have a quilt club in Ulysses! Yes, I know who knew! I made arrangements to have lunch with the two friends I made in Ulysses, Carol Egley and Carolyn Crone. Carol said she had quilt club that morning but could make lunch. I said, “YOU HAVE A QUILT CLUB HERE!” So guess who went to quilt club that morning? I had such a great time, quilters are the same everywhere, so nice! Anyway I'm going to join even though I'll only be here a short time longer. After that we had lunch together it was one of those perfect days.

We have been progressing on the Office/Lodge. Randall needs to finish with the drywall (we didn't hire out this time since it was a small job). After that we install the vanity and hang the doors to both the utility room and new bathroom (I have been doing the finishing, stain and polyurethane on them). Our biggest dilemma here is try to find tile to match the existing tile. No-one is around who knows were the tile even came from or who did the work. I think we will end up going with something similar and call it good.

It's started to get green, the winter wheat has come up so most of the pivots are green. The trees are budding, the trees we planted last year have flowered and I have started watering the grass. I won't need to take care of the whole place this time since we have two family's living in the houses.

Love you all lots,

Good Day.

Making the Office into a Lodge

Randall and Elder McKinnon started work on the Office/Lodge this week. It's kinda crowded so I have just been taking it easy. Reminds me of home. We are supposed to install another bathroom (the existing one is a ½ bath). We also need to figure out how to put in a range. It was built for an office building not a lodge. So a ½ bath, sink, fridge, and microwave were all it needed. Since they want it to be a lodge it will need a range and full bath.  We are trying to decide how it should be remolded. Randall and Elder McKinnon want to make a peninsula for the new range and existing fridge cutting the area in half. Sister McKinnon and I want them to put the new range in an island straight across from the sink keeping the area open. Hummm.

View of  Lodge Kitchen, just getting started. Sister McKinnon's
back and Randall playing with electricity. If you look carefully
you can see Elder McKinnons head down by the ladder.

Kitchen from the other end, where the fridge is, is where the guys want to
put a peninsula which would hold the fridge and range.

Now there are two doors! Randall installing fan/light for the new bathroom.

One door for the utility room and one for the bathroom.

We had Seth Anderson over for dinner the other night (his family was out of town for Spring break). Our table is pretty small for two people, it's pretty crowded once you get everything on it. Randall and I always sit on opposite sides of the table. When we went to sit down I made Seth and Randall site on the same side. Seth looked at me strange and I said “well you can't sit next to me”, he said,” I thought you might want to sit next to your husband s'all. But I can sit next to him, I don't mind”. Then it hit me, I'm such a dork! We always sit across from each other I never thought Randall and I could actually sit by each other. I switched places with Seth and we had a nice dinner.

At the end of the week we drove Seth to the Denver airport so he could fly to Florida and spend the end of spring break with his family. They had driven down there at the beginning of the week. Well, Desiree and Allison had given us a weekend getaway for our Christmas present. We used it to stay a few days in Denver. We were able to go to the Denver Temple. We bought Randall a new suit for his birthday (the one he has is getting dingle balls, gross!). We visited the Denver Botanical Gardens. It was fun and relaxing. Thanks, Allison and Desiree!

Love Ya-all! (Can ya hear my Kansas drawl)?

Good Day!

Randall's Tidbits

It’s been awhile since I have written something and Ann has been on my case to write something. We have been working hard on getting the first house finished. There have been many chances excel, that is to do things two and three time to get them right. Since it has been a long time since I have done this kind of work I have not always been able to remember or think of all that needs to be done in time to incorporate them in( like not putting a soap dish in the tile for the master bath shower).

We pressure checked the plumbing before Elder Shaw left but when we turned the water on, there were two leaks above the water heater in the copper tubing. I ended up having to cut one of them clear out to fix it. This was a real challenge since they were up in the over head against a heating ducting. Two days and a trip to town for supplies latter they were fixed. I guess I should be happy that they were at least exposed. The upstairs tub drain also leaked so I had to cut a hole in the downstairs bathroom ceiling to fix it.

We are fixing a crack in the ceiling that occurred in the ceiling between the living room and the kitchen where the old center bearing wall was. Ann has been working her butt off fixing the paint job as best as it can be. She has been doing a real good job, especially with what she has to work on.

The weather has been up and down. We had a few nights where it was -17. Yesterday the high was 30 and today it is supposed to get on the mid 60s. All in all it is warmer here than in Mackay and if the wind didn’t blow all the time it would be a very pleasant winter.

Till next time Ann gets after me.  

House#1 is DONE!

Yippy, Yahoo! We are done with house #1. Finally!Here are the pictures I promised. They would look more impressive if they were bigger but oh well.

First is the living room, we removed the wall between the living room, dinning room and kitchen making a great room.

Old Living Room 

New Living Room (excuse the carpet runner, Tiffany wants to keep the carpet clean, can't blame her).

The old dinning room and kitchen. 

Old Dinning Room.

Old Kitchen.

New Dinning Room and Kitchen.

New Kitchen (oven isn't installed yet, not our job).

Next I will show you the bathrooms for the whole house. The Master Bathroom and linen closet in the hall didn't exist before. We had to take closet space and a few feet of living room to make the room for them. Well worth it I think.

Old upstairs Bathroom (the only upstairs bathroom)

New upstairs Bathroom (we call it Lilly's bathroom). Randal did the floor tile on
this one.

New Master Bathroom (mirrors on the medicine cabinet
 need to be installed, they sent the wrong ones)

New Master Bathroom, Randall did the shower tile, Elder McKinnon
did the floor.

Old basement bathroom. So gross. Mold behind all the walls. The shower sink and
toilet were really old and disgusting.

New basement Bathroom, clean and shinny.

 Let's look at the upstairs bedrooms.

Old master bedroom.

New Master Bedroom (imagine without the floor coverings)

Second bedroom.

Second Bedroom, Lilly's Room. Yes it's pink! Her signature color.

Here is the pantry.

Old washer and dryer room.

Made into the new pantry

Now let's go down stairs. You've already seen the bathroom. The basement has 3 bedrooms, family room, and bathroom. It has some of the most amazing transformations. Goodbye paneling and ceiling tile!

Old Stairwell, Creepy! The doorway you see
is no longer there. It was the entrance to the
boys room. The doorway was moved to the hallway
were the bathroom and Maleha's room entrances are.

New Stairwell courtesy Elder McKinnon. You can see the
pantry from here.

Old family room. Are you dig'n the paneling? How 'bout the carpet. I really
got tired of this carpet, I was very happy when it was finally torn out.

New Family Room!

Tana's old room dark and nasty.

Tana's new Room the window makes all the difference!

Maleha's old room, you can hardly see in it with just the window lighting.

Maleha's New Room! Look how bright it is now, and it's not
just because it's bright green. I love this room.

The Boys room, it was just an unfinished space
in the basement.

New Boys room. The closet is under the stairs so it goes way
back, great storage.

All of the closets have built-ins like this. Nice!

Tiffany wanted a mud room and more storage. We took the end of the garage and built in a mud room for the washer and dryer and a storage room.

End of garage.

New mud room minus washer and dyer for the moment. Randall
did the floor tile and I helped.

Storage room.

Last but not least the outside of the house. New windows, siding, garage doors, and decking. We did it! It's finally done! From August, 2016 till March, 2017. Yahoooooo!

I'll try to send anther front and back picture when everything is cleaned up.  Now we go on to our next project. The Office/New lodge.

Take care, love you!

Good day!