Texas/Wyoming Vacation

We interrupt this renovation to take you on a vacation. I took two weeks off to attend a family reunion and make the annual pilgrimage to the Ranch.

First leg was to fly into Albuquerque and meet up with my brother. The next day we drove to Dallas, Texas to meet with my other brother and attend the family reunion/60th wedding anniversary on my biological father's side of the family.  It has been 45 years since we have seen them, needless to say I didn't remember any of them.  However I had a great time and want to attend another reunion in the future.

The weather was horrible!!! The temperature was in the upper 100sF with upper %90 humidity pushing the heat index to 105F, but the room was a cool 65.

This isn't the hotel we stayed at but I just had to snap a few pictures because those wolf statues were HUGE!

From there we visited Mom and Dad in Casper for a few days then headed north to the Ranch. However our stay was almost cut short. Five minutes after we arrived, my brother was walking back after parking his truck and was struck at by a rattlesnake. Fortunately he has quick reflexes and when he jumped the snake missed. Shortly thereafter there was one less snake around.

Snake no more

Mother or Father Robin feeding baby

Mother Sage Grouse and babies

After four days in the "wild" (not really, we had running water and electricity), we went back down to Casper for a few days. On the way back down to Albuquerque I jumped out at the airport in Denver and flew back to San Diego.

Renovations part 1

Wednesday the granite guy came and ripped out the kitchen and guest bath counter tops. If you remember in the kitchen we had we had a "bar" area in front of the sink. I guess the idea was that you could put stools and people could sit and watch you in the great expanse of the kitchen (just a little sarcasm). The problem, was that it cut off the kitchen and reduced the counter space. So "A" had a great ideal that we would cut down the raised bar and extend the counter top in front of the sink. Brilliant!!!

Friday our good friend Ron helped us sand and paint the cabinets. If you have ever tried to paint cabinets you know that it takes ridiculously long to do. It sounds really simple, just sand and paint, but not really. Especially these because there was so much grease and gunk caked on, yuk.

We were able to put a coat of paint on the kitchen and guest bath on Friday and today we did the master bath. Unfortunately I am sick and not able to put 100% into the project but overall I am pleased with our accomplishments this weekend.

We also had a floor guy give us an estimate for laminate floors and on Monday I have another floor guy coming in. I could do it myself but I really don't want to.

Renovations begin

Now that we have closed we have tops begin the renovations. The counter top guys should be out this week to demo the old counter tops and get the templates for the new granite tops. We are going for a lighter granite and will paint the bottoms cabinets black and the tops white, very European.

This weekend we will try and tile the bathrooms and hopefully get a coat of primer on the cabinets.

Still have not gotten the damn parking down. I am pretty sure I know where one of the spaces are but not the other. What a goat F#%$.

Stay tuned for photos and updates!!!!