Almost done!

Still some painting left to do, but for all intents and purposes we are DONE!! The floors got finished in the closet room, so that was the last thing. Oh, well, we still need to put on the drawer pulls and door pulls and put up a towel ring. Minor details! And, of course, some art work. Then a rug and maybe a storage ottoman? Something for shoes?

 Rich's dad made the mirrors!

Everyone freaks out about the open shower, but really it isn't THAT scary!!! It fogs up quickly and you are then "hidden" inside.

Over three months to get this re-model done!!! Should have taken three weeks. I wish I had taken before photos. I'll just tell you it wasn't pretty. We built the house when we had no money to spare and it was done CHEAP. That meant that things start to fall apart after 20 years. The old shower was FALLING APART. It was LONG over due to be fixed. And the bedroom that was where the closet room is was never used. It had started to become the junk room. That's no good!!! And, if needed, I think we could put a blow up bed in the closet room for company. We probably would never need it, we have another full spare bedroom, plus the office pull out couch. And a futon in Renae's office. We have enough space, I think. It is VERY nice to now have decent closet space!!

More birds!!!

The sparrows and blue birds were fighting about the boxes. I guess I should put up more boxes. We have FOUR, but these two are the most popular.

 This pretty lady wasn't interested in the boxes. I don't know where the cardinals nest?

 The titmouse just happened in this photo. I tried to get him alone, but he was elusive.

 These would be in better focus, but I am SO far away and have to zoom in so much and free hold the camera. I don't have my patio furniture to rest on. I may try to find my old tripod.

It was a busy morning for the birds, yesterday!!!

Well, we managed a short snow shoe!

Little Miss Leta, she is SO pretty!!

 She talks to me constantly!

 Colby actually did VERY well, even running along the snow shoe path!! The snow is DEEP, but it was "warm" yesterday.

 "Four wheeling"!!!

 He just HAD to go pee on that tree branch!

 We never made it down this path. I was worn out!

 This one was interesting tree base.

 Look MA, I am running!!!

I was surprised they were all pretty happy out there. I had to make the path first, so I was pretty tired by the time we got home! Perhaps Spur could have helped me on the first trip out, but I went myself. That "blazed" the trail for the wee pups. Oi!! MORE snow coming tomorrow??? Damn it!!

Very, VERY unhappy with the latest 12" of snowfall.

But, it does make for pretty pictures!!

 He was happy until the snow balls piled up SO bad on his fur he could hardly move. He is now melting on the couch. This is very sticky and thick snow. Not much fun to shovel or for a furry dog to play for long in. I HATE snow! I am DONE WITH SNOW!!!

 Our "finished" bathroom. We need to hang some art and the door and some curtains and paint the sashes on the windows, but basically.......DONE!!! Rich's dad made those mirrors. The stain was the SAME stain as the vanity, but the wood just didn't absorb it the same. I'm OK with the color, I think they look nice!

 Not sure how Roscoe got between the bathroom photos, but whatever. Rotten Roscoe's idea of a snow day. He is even MORE unhappy than I am about it! He recharges easily, so this angelic scene doesn't last long. Soon he is driving us all crazy!!!

Gift to my dad

So, I often give Dad a book. Something to do with animals or especially horses. But, for Christmas he gave me a book on dog tricks. Well, my dogs know most of the tricks! LOL!! There are some advanced tricks that they don't know, like naming objects. I decided to make him a little video of as many tricks as I could think of in a short time. After making this I remember a bunch more, but five minutes is a pretty long video!

Poor Colby has not done her scent discrimination in a long time and because she is nearly blind she stumbled on the dumb bells. That bummed her out, but she still did it for me, good girlie! I think if I revisit that I need to do it on a plain floor, not that brightly colored rug!!! It also made it hard for Spur to see his toys to put away. I should have spread them out more.

Enjoy!!!

A couple of photos

I have been trying to get the blue birds who have been hanging around. I guess they stay all winter. Someone told me they even stay in the houses, but I haven't seen any coming and going, but we sure have plenty around. We no longer feed the birds because of Leta, our barn kitty. She is a MAJOR hunter. We do have a bird bath in the dog yard/perenial garden, but it isn't the same attraction as a feeder. She does kill some birds, but mostly she is a mousing machine. We have so many mice in the fields around us, that keeps her pretty busy. The occasional bird might be one that just happens in her way. I have seen it happy. 

Anyway, this pretty fellow arrived in the tree as I was waiting for the blue birds. We have a bunch of these around, too!!

 Here is Killer. I call her my Pit Bull kitty. She is VERY strong!! She has her winter supply of fat right now, but honestly she isn't really THAT fat. She is simply a BEAST. This is one rugged kitty. Very squarely built with a short and THICK tail, that she can puff out like I have never seen. She came from a feral colony The Friends of Feral Felines trapped. She is now quite friendly and even affectionate. She does NOT want to come inside, though. Which kind of bums me out. I always invite the barn kitties in, if they want. I have had some who ended up living inside, but most come in and then panic. They want to live outside and we have been very lucky to have them live good long and full lives here, regardless of the coyotes and foxes. :D

Snow sucks!

It gets in the way of our dog shows, damn it! Last weekend cancelled due to the blizzard. This weekend I didn't go because it was enough snow to make driving miserable. CRAP!!!! NOW is the time of  year I MOST want to be indoors doing agility. Instead I was stuck home. The only thing good about the weather was we did get a really good jump on our painting project.

The new bathroom and walk in closet area is getting SO close to being done!! In fact, today the glass people come and that is the LAST intruders!!! They put the door and enclosure on the shower. We can then wash the tile and even USE THE SHOWER!!! OMG!!! This has been a THREE MONTH "NIGHTMARE"!!! It was supposed to take three WEEKS!!! But, our idiot choice of a contractor ended us in a pile of disorder and chaos. A mini-show worthy of Holmes on Homes. Seriously, we had to take apart some of what he did, the whole shower floor/pan and re-do some of the plumbing. Hiring new guys to come, which meant waiting on their schedules. It TOTALLY SUCKED!!! And cost us about $2000 more than we planned. Damn IT!!

But, the end is in sight!! YAY!!! Some pretty big painting jobs left, like windows and doors and some more trim, but really all the major painting is DONE!!!!! Oh, and this weekend I had to spot paint some water stains from the blizzard. Snow blew into the attic and melted and stained the freshly painted ceiling. Sweet!!! >:/ 

Actually, good that it was the freshly painted ceiling because touch up isn't noticed. This happened one time before during a blizzard, so we need to be mindful of that and check the attic for blown in snow. A rare event, but that was a rare storm.

This photo looks from the bathroom into the big closet room. Who has a "closet room". I can call it a walk-in closet, but really it isn't a closet. It is a room. With windows! However, it is definitely a closet room. It will have all our clothes, shoes, ironing board, mirror, changing area. It was a useless room before. A spare room we used once in the past two years for guests. Before that it was used maybe once/year for guests. We have a full spare bedroom and a pull out couch in Rich's office. We have enough room for guests. So, we didn't have enough closet space in our bedroom, so this room is now a big master walk in "closet room". :D

 Same view, to show how the lemon grass green looks with the brevity brown. I call it chocolate.

View from our bedroom closet door. LOT of light and that area to the right will be for hanging clothes. We will then hand a curtain/drape to keep sun out. This was previously our closet space and that window simply had a shade on it all the time. There is another closed in close just to the right of where Spur is. It is a very pretty space now!!!

 Oh, I have gotten SO good at cut out!!! One of my best EVER!!!! :D

Looking from the closet room into the bathroom. There are French doors there, in case someone wanted privacy? Seriously, um, I think those doors will be unused. No one can see if you pull shades down! But, Rich insisted on making the bathroom totally separate if needed. Well, heck, then if we absolutely needed to we could put a blow up bed in the closet room for company?

All ready for the hand made mirror's Rich's dad has made for us!! He made two square, framed mirrors for above each sink. They are stained the same color as the vanity - cabernet. What you are not seeing is the glass, which arrives today! There will be glass from that half wall of tile to the ceiling and then a door to get in.


 I am having no color choice regrets!! I LOVE the chocolate walls!! The contrast to the white marble (OK, it's just plastic) vanity top and the white trim is really pretty!!!

 Spur is SO tired of this project. Two days of painting! Yesterday he didn't even get a walk! It was THAT nasty out. We didn't get that much snow, but the winds were blowing 45 MPH and temp never got above 22. It was NASTY out. We did some training and played inside, but it was a very boring day to be a dog. He does like to help and never left our sides all day. The MinPins stayed by the woodstove.

Now for all the essentials. What do we do for shades? A rug? Door nobs? I thought we ordered draw pulls for the vanity, but Rich says no. Huh, I totally remember picking them out, but he says we never ordered any. 

And how does one clean tile? I have never had a tiled shower. Do you use bleach? Or not?