Adventures, ponderings and day-to-day of Cheryl!
My Uncle Mike (Mom’s brother) passed away a year ago and it was a very tough time as my mom and Aunt Kathy and Uncle Skip sifted through his belongings and tried to make sense of it all. They decided then to have a memorial for him and scheduled it to be the day before our 36th annual family reunion. It was a great day for all and a bunch of family came together who we hadn’t seen in years.
For a couple of days after arriving in Chicago, we simply ate, drank, relaxed, and prepared for my Uncle Mike’s memorial service.
It was definitely a nice change from the hard core constant go, go, go that I had been used to recently.
Mom and I headed out at 9pm on Monday night for our road trip to Chicago. We had two days to get there, and time to do a little bit of sight-seeing along the way. We stopped at a dinosaur museum, and several route 66 spots along the way. We also had a great Italian meal in Clinton, Oklahoma and saw a cool collection of Route 66 memorabilia which we had never seen before in Fanning Missouri.
It took us a total of 46 hours from Chandler, AZ to Carol Stream, IL including a couple quick naps in truck stops.
We started off early Saturday morning getting started on our tasks that we wanted to accomplish. The list included sprinklers, deck wash, landscaping and moving the furniture for laying down the carpet remnant that we just bought.
For the sprinklers, I didn’t know too much about the status of the system since it has never worked since we bought this house a year ago. All I knew was that there are sprinkler heads around the front and back and side yards and that the water had been disconnected at the water source due to issues and leaking. My first task was to get the water source reconnected and that required digging a bit to find out where the original pipes were near the water source.
Mom wanted to use the new pressure washer she just bought last week and finally get that nasty dirty wood deck cleaned. It probably hasn’t been cleaned for many years before we bought this house last year. As she started pressure washing the boards, I was absolutely amazed at how clean it was looking and the grains and colors of the wood were starting to appear.
Lucas was determined to finish the last portion of landscaping rocks that go all the way around the pool. The only part that was left was a small section between the pool and the wood deck. He cleared the area, laid down some landscaping plastic to prevent weeds and then started laying the rest of the new rocks in place.
We purchased two remnants of new carpet off of craigslist for $40 and $30 to put in the living room and Mom’s room. We managed to fit in time to move all of the living room furniture and get the carpet laid down on top of the crappy pergo floor. It looks so nice.
I then did some more testing of the sprinklers, turned the water source on and found a couple places gushing up that I capped off and a couple places that just needed new sprinkler heads. Quite an accomplishment! I should be able to get us to the point of growing grass in a couple weeks.
At the end of Sunday, we ordered pizza and salad from Nello’s and then put our feet in the pool with a glass of wine while gloating about all of our amazing accomplishments over the two day weekend.
At 7am this morning, our favorite contractors came over to rip apart the back of our house and put in the new 9 foot sliding door and two windows. We have been working toward this for a full year now as we so hated the crappy doors and windows that were there. Check out the photos. It isn’t quite done yet, but it looks SO amazing!!
This morning, our Plumber From Down Under came by and helped us get our old ghetto water valves fixed up and also install a pressure vacuum breaker assembly for me to start tackling the sprinklers. I have 19,000 square feet of yard to figure out sprinklers for. I think there will be a lot of trenching and PVC assembly in my future for sure.
The pressure vacuum breaker assembly in the final photos below brings us to code and is where I am going to tie into for the water to the sprinklers. He also set it up so that we can turn off the main to our house without turning off the sprinklers and vice versa. Pretty neato!
Just replaced my fan on another Thinkpad. This time in under 30 minutes. I am getting good at it, but am hoping I won’t have to do it again for a LONG time.
I definitely am grateful for the instructions I used each time from InsideMyLaptop.com
Lucas spotted this duck in our yard this morning when he was having breakfast. Mom took the photo. Cool, huh?
Now that the electric is run in the slab and the island cabinet arrived and the top to the island created by the counter top guy (Valley Renovations), we finally were able to get it put all together and have a nice island in our kitchen with an electric outlet. Woo Hoo!! It is another one of those pivotal moments for sure!
My electrician arrived today to cut a valley in the concrete slab in the kitchen for the electric to the island that we will be installing next week. It was quite loud and quite dusty!!
