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We have gutted our kitchen for a remodel. During the process we are staying in the little apartment I built in my workshop. This morning I decided that the kitchen in the apartment could use a little upgrade as well. Luckily I’m in the construction business and have things laying around mostly things people didn’t like that I’ve had to take out and leftovers. So today I cut down a piece of granite for the little kitchen added an under mount sink with new faucet and a little tile backsplash. When I finished that I put a coat of stove polish on the little wood stove.

Before
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After
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The little Federal with a new coat of polish.

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I am getting this sorted slowly. We put down the rug in the den this morning after breakfast. The girls and I moved the school/art boxes from the den where we were sorting them to the school room. K swept the floor and I steam mopped it. The rug was put down and vacuumed. It is mostly flat from being rolled but it could take another day to go completely flat.

This evening I will be taking Alice for her vaccines. I fitted the harness to her and clipped her claws. She will be riding in her carrier but I wanted to make sure she does not escape so I have the harness and a leash. I haven't seen any weight lose on the scale since we started the diet but she seems satisfied with her meals. She looks a tad less fat but she still feels like she has a lot of fluffy fat on her.

I did some grocery shopping yesterday and loaded up on meat and basics. Meat prices are up a bit and I had to get some lesser cuts to stretch our food budget. Added gallon jugs of water to our preps. I might go back out to the market this week and spend what I can on more meat and water. I know I have to go out for more frozen veggies. I want to be uber prepared for the weeks coming after the election.

I am a tad concerned about what is to come after the election so I plan to drive to my folks to vote (still registered there). Then on the way home pick up some extra groceries and gas. I want to make sure we don't have to leave the house if it comes down to it.
 
Got all the water out of the chest freezer (2 gallons give or take). Wiped down everything to clean it up and tried to dry it out. Gonna leave it open tonight and dry it more tomorrow. Until we buy a bunch of meat I'm not going to plug it back in. We've mostly filled the upright and I've got it sorted pretty good.

I want to get some kind of large totes of some kind to further seperate everything and be able to lay hands on what you need quickly. Probly need to start a thread about that sometime.

This afternoon we rode up to Norris Lake. Wife's family and my step dad family grew up across the river from each other and had to move when the area was flooded after the dam was built. We found an old cemetary the wife has 3 relatives in.
 
We have gutted our kitchen for a remodel. During the process we are staying in the little apartment I built in my workshop. This morning I decided that the kitchen in the apartment could use a little upgrade as well. Luckily I’m in the construction business and have things laying around mostly things people didn’t like that I’ve had to take out and leftovers. So today I cut down a piece of granite for the little kitchen added an under mount sink with new faucet and a little tile backsplash. When I finished that I put a coat of stove polish on the little wood stove.

Before
View attachment 52388
After
View attachment 52389

The little Federal with a new coat of polish.

View attachment 52390

Looks great HashB.
 
Got all the water out of the chest freezer (2 gallons give or take). Wiped down everything to clean it up and tried to dry it out. Gonna leave it open tonight and dry it more tomorrow. Until we buy a bunch of meat I'm not going to plug it back in. We've mostly filled the upright and I've got it sorted pretty good.

I want to get some kind of large totes of some kind to further seperate everything and be able to lay hands on what you need quickly. Probly need to start a thread about that sometime.

This afternoon we rode up to Norris Lake. Wife's family and my step dad family grew up across the river from each other and had to move when the area was flooded after the dam was built. We found an old cemetary the wife has 3 relatives in.
I remember studying about the Tennessee Valley Authority in school, and have been in Tennessee once. I had kind of forgotten that Tennessee had dams built for flood control and power supply, similar to South Dakota. S.D. was not so much about flood control, but more about power supply.
 
There was lots of opposition to the dams when TVA came in. Both our families were ran off their property back then. But they also provided many thousnads of jobs to folks in the area, many of which had never done anything other than farm. It also brought power, and much industry with it. Flood control was highly important as was river navigation.
 
@hashbrown , I think your workshop/apartment kitchen is nicer than my best friend's kitchen now. Really nice countertop & sink. I also like the style of the upper cabinets. One minor nitpick (for safety reasons) electrical code & building code dictate you need GFCI outlets that close to the sink. Something like this Leviton 15 Amp SmartlockPro Combination GFCI Outlet and Switch, Ivory-C91-GFSW1-00I - The Home Depot would work for the one with the switch (although I hope you can find something less expensive).

Slept in til afternoon. Heard noise in the kitchen. My brother was taking out trash & picking up some stuff that spilled on the floor. I want to encourage this behavior so I offered to help. While he took some trash out to the burn pile, I bagged up more stuff & swept the floor. Then we went to the store. Plan was to get ice to stuff in the freezer & some dried goods to eat in case power goes out again from the hurricane that was headed our way. Mom called while we were out to say the storm turned & is no longer coming our way & wanted us to get frozen food & some Ding Dongs. I grabbed a bag of Halloween candy bc I was shopping while hungry. Had a coupon for a free shake from McDonalds but they were cleaning the ice cream/shake machine so I was out of luck. Mom separated out the various candies into separate bags so all of one type are together. There were a lot of Snickers minis-- which suits me fine bc I love Snickers. I will have to make sure I don't let myself eat them unless I accomplish something productive so it will be a reward for myself.

It's a bit chilly so I'm snuggled up with Predicate. Cats make good hand warmers.
 
@hashbrown , I think your workshop/apartment kitchen is nicer than my best friend's kitchen now. Really nice countertop & sink. I also like the style of the upper cabinets. One minor nitpick (for safety reasons) electrical code & building code dictate you need GFCI outlets that close to the sink. Something like this Leviton 15 Amp SmartlockPro Combination GFCI Outlet and Switch, Ivory-C91-GFSW1-00I - The Home Depot would work for the one with the switch (although I hope you can find something less expensive).

Slept in til afternoon. Heard noise in the kitchen. My brother was taking out trash & picking up some stuff that spilled on the floor. I want to encourage this behavior so I offered to help. While he took some trash out to the burn pile, I bagged up more stuff & swept the floor. Then we went to the store. Plan was to get ice to stuff in the freezer & some dried goods to eat in case power goes out again from the hurricane that was headed our way. Mom called while we were out to say the storm turned & is no longer coming our way & wanted us to get frozen food & some Ding Dongs. I grabbed a bag of Halloween candy bc I was shopping while hungry. Had a coupon for a free shake from McDonalds but they were cleaning the ice cream/shake machine so I was out of luck. Mom separated out the various candies into separate bags so all of one type are together. There were a lot of Snickers minis-- which suits me fine bc I love Snickers. I will have to make sure I don't let myself eat them unless I accomplish something productive so it will be a reward for myself.

It's a bit chilly so I'm snuggled up with Predicate. Cats make good hand warmers.

Zanne now you've made me want a Snicker Bar .
 
There was lots of opposition to the dams when TVA came in. Both our families were ran off their property back then. But they also provided many thousnads of jobs to folks in the area, many of which had never done anything other than farm. It also brought power, and much industry with it. Flood control was highly important as was river navigation.
I know people who lost their ranches in South Dakota, but they were compensated and purchased other ranch land. There was a man in my home town who was a very busy man moving homes and other buildings from the area to be flooded to the new ranches.
 
@Peanut Believe it or not, I'm pretty decent when it comes to machinery. Glad the helpful bucket incident wasn't any worse😯
@hashbrown have any more of that laying around? We are only renting in this house, but it has tile counter tops 😝 Up at the river house we have similar to yours and I sure miss them. Yours look great and I'm sure you'll love them.
We made between 3 1/2-4 gallons of salsa this morning. While it was in the canner, I made Hubby a loaf of banana nut bread. Then we headed up the mountain to fill water jugs and winterize. Built a fire while we were there. We both miss wood heat. Stopped on the way back and saw the folks. Pa got his teeth Friday so is getting used to them. It's been 11 weeks since he had them removed and 3 days later heart surgery. He's becoming himself again and is almost back up to the weight he was when graduating HS. Very grateful 🙏🏻
 
The last few weeks have been "home automation installation" times for me.

Today I was fine tuning a new Ring camera/floodlight that I installed yesterday. Re-aiming it for best video coverage, trimming evergreen bushes that were blocking some of the view, working with the app to set up motion detection zones, alert settings, recording settings, etc. Today was the easy part - except going up and down that metal ladder with bare hands (16 degrees out there in the middle of the day). You had to grab and move quick so your hands wouldn't freeze to the metal. Yesterday was a lot warmer luckily, because I had to be up on that ladder a lot longer installing an outlet box and doing all the electrical wiring. Tomorrow I'll re-purpose another one of my old unused WiFi routers as an additional access point since this new camera is on the edge of WiFi signal strength. We have a separate Ring doorbell too with a camera in it. That's nice, but I like this new floodlight/camera combo better.

The new sprinkler controller I installed three weeks ago is alerting me that it's not going to water due to the low temperatures (I haven't told it that I already drained the system last week). It's one of those smart controllers that adjusts watering times based on weather sensors and also on online forecasts - it looks at heat, humidity, wind, type of grass, type of soil, slope, elevation, full sun or shade, rain accumulation ... all kinds of things to determine watering times. If it rains enough (you set how much) it is smart enough to turn itself off for a while. If it decides it's going to water a zone for, say, 30 minutes then it will break that up into two 15 minutes cycles and do a different zone in between to help prevent saturating the soil and thus having water run off. You control it from your smartphone or computer. Everything is done on the controller so you don't need internet to access it (you can get to it from your local network, and it even has its own internal network with WiFi access point). Of course you can use the internet it you want to access the thing from across the country, but you don't have to. I can even talk to one of my Echo devices and say things like, "Alexa, turn on front yard sprinklers for 15 minutes" and that interfaces into the controller. Many cities, mine included, have substantial rebates on these smart controllers because of the water savings. By the time you include the rebate, a smart controller ends up costing less than a standard controller (no rebates for the simple controllers here). I got my controller on sale for $165, and the city rebate was an additional $100, so quite a good deal.

I've been getting more and more into home automation these last few weeks, with the sprinkler controller, the cameras and automated floodlights, inside the house voice controlled lights, upgrading the alarm system with motion sensors. Even the bed is hooked into the network - it's one of those things that pumps air into and out of itself to adjust for your movements and motions in bed. Hot and cold air to maintain the temperature you like (it also has a separate electric foot heater). Get out of bed and it turns on night lights for you. Get back in bed and it turns them off. Motion and sound sensors (to detect snoring) so it can give you a "quality of sleep" report in the morning. It can raise you up to a sitting position, elevate your feet. It's king size, but each side is independent of the other for controls. A few years ago I swore I'd never put up with stuff like this. Yet, here I am...

Also shoveled a lot of snow on several different occasions today. It was snowing quite hard, and it kept building up fast. Went to the grocery store and stocked up on staples. Cooked dinner. Well, it wasn't much cooking - grilled cheese and cream of mushroom soup - I think that's a great combo on cold snowy days. Supposed to get down to 8 degrees tonight.
 
Made it safely to our accommodation and DH went in for his operation today and spent 7.5 hours on the table. The operation was a success and the two brain aneurysms are now securely clipped but the surgeon said it was more complicated than they first had thought. The aneurysms were on a branch of a main artery of the front right of his brain.

By the time he came out of surgery it would have been too late to visit him as he was still coming out of anesthetic so I will visit before lunch tomorrow.

Spent the time tidying up the apartment we are in so it sparkles while I waited. Feeling so much more relieved now that I know he is okay :) .
 
Made it safely to our accommodation and DH went in for his operation today and spent 7.5 hours on the table. The operation was a success and the two brain aneurysms are now securely clipped but the surgeon said it was more complicated than they first had thought. The aneurysms were on a branch of a main artery of the front right of his brain.

By the time he came out of surgery it would have been too late to visit him as he was still coming out of anesthetic so I will visit before lunch tomorrow.

Spent the time tidying up the apartment we are in so it sparkles while I waited. Feeling so much more relieved now that I know he is okay :) .

Hope he recovers quickly, we will keep you in our prayers.
 
It is a strange morning...foggy at first, the tree limbs kept bending down so low, I could not figure it out, so got out of bed, I was sure it was a big, fat squirrel or racoon out in the tree, but no, it was the wind...temp started at 51 about 5 AM, several hours later it is now 37 on the temp....all the critters are out of site, huddled in out of the weather, breakfast is over, crispy bacon, french toast with maple syrup, and hot coffee...I will survive the day...LOL..so glad they found those killer hornets in Washington...said they wrapped the tree and sucked them out...LOL...Good Grief, Charlie Brown...they got them .
 
Made it safely to our accommodation and DH went in for his operation today and spent 7.5 hours on the table. The operation was a success and the two brain aneurysms are now securely clipped but the surgeon said it was more complicated than they first had thought. The aneurysms were on a branch of a main artery of the front right of his brain.

By the time he came out of surgery it would have been too late to visit him as he was still coming out of anesthetic so I will visit before lunch tomorrow.

Spent the time tidying up the apartment we are in so it sparkles while I waited. Feeling so much more relieved now that I know he is okay :) .


🙏's for you and your husband, speedy recovery. 🙂
 
@Haertig,
Now you need that Alexa controlled automated snow shovel.
That would be great! I had to shovel more this morning. Our thermometer read six degrees. When I came in my fingers were so frozen. Hurt so bad. I tried warming them under (cold) running water in the sink and almost fainted as they started to warm. Had to sit down. Now, hours later, the tips of my fingers still have a weird sensation feeling. Not pain, just different. Almost like they're still a little numb and bruised feeling. Purchase of a better pair of gloves has now become a priority.

How much easier it would have been to just say, "Alexa, get out there and shovel the snow." I'll have to work on implementing that.
 
@Sewingcreations15 That must have been a difficult wait but I'm relieved to hear it went through okay, even if it wasn't what the surgeons had expected. Prayers for you both and that his recovery is quick and painless and that he is feeling better than he has in a long time. I hope I haven't said anything stupid or offensive.
:huggs:

@Haertig no frostbite or near frostbite for you, please. Take more breaks inside maybe? It is probably in the 40s here and I am thinking I'm not acclimated to 80 one week, 40 the next.
 
We went from 70's to 20's in a week. Two inches of snow this morning, and it's in the 20's. Kids covered the hen house windows that are chicken wired with plastic. Dogs are in their "caves" in the garage, and barncats have a barn cat cave that they are all in. Husband has a doc appt, so we are going out. Kids shoveled the ramp and walkway to the truck and salted it so it'll be safe to get him in the truck. Other than that, piddling around the house today.
 
Sewing glad your hubby is on the mend.
Prayers going out for you all.
Hashbrown nice kitchen update.
Haertig, be careful with frost bite.
It's snowing here and I'm counting it as a tracking snow.
Because every time Strawberry has to go outside to take care of her business.
She tracks snow back into the house.
25 or 26 snows is a lot of snow for the season.
Got a roast on in the crock pot.
Strawberry and I slept in till 0830 this morning.
Dog walker thought it was going to be icy with the snow.
No rain yet, but it's supposed to be here tonight with snow.
Supposed to get 1-2 inches of snow here we'll see.
Doesn't matter to me, I don't have to get out till Wednesday.
Crocheting on youngest grand daughter's Christmas blanket.
Almost ready to start the repeat.
Everybody have nice day.
Stay dry,warm.
 
I'm glad your DH is in recovery @Sewingcreations15 ! That has to be a relief!
As always, I love your remodeling @hashbrown !

Every day, I walked. Let's just get that out of the way. LOL

Friday ran around town and did some eBay shopping at thrift shops.
Saturday, I helped a friend most of the day.
Yesterday was Church, wash dogs, wash dog blankets, wash rugs and swept the house. Then a new women's group at Church.
Today have already PC'd 7 quarts of free chicken (the best kind)! Walked the dogs. Getting ready to inventory the inside pantry. That will be fun---not!
 
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