Birthday Bash and New Projects

Last year when the covid pandemic was forcing our isolation and quarantine, a lot of our family gatherings crashed to a halt. Our youngest daughter Heather's birthday was the first family holiday in March 2020 to fall victim to the covid-19 pandemic. She really got ripped off last year for her birthday, and we could only order her presents and have them shipped to her house. 

I told her that this year we would do a super wonderful birthday for her to make up for it.

Now with our vaccines and having our family gatherings deemed safe, we were able to plan a special day for Heather on Monday.

Just look at that happy face! It sure was worth it!

Yummmm a cheesecake birthday cake!

With a little preparation, Steve set up the big steamer kettle on the propane burner for snow crab legs and he got out his new grill to whip up some New York strip steaks. Even though it wasn't a sunny day, the temperatures were pretty warm so he was able to grill out in the backyard near the pergola by the She Shed. 

Of course the two sons-in-laws had to help supervise and christen Steve's new grill by opening a beer on the built-in bottle opening device!  He is pleased to say it works very well, and we even invested in a couple new grilling utensils to enhance his grilling experience.

I bought the first watermelon of the season! They were rather pricey at $6.99 each but I felt it would be a good way to start off our outdoor family barbecuing fun by having a watermelon. It was a winner! Red and juicy and it had such a wonderful flavor---

We laid out an array of foods and had everybody's favorites. Even though we had back up of hot dogs and tater tots for the younger kids, they even tried things like crab legs, calico beans, and salads and other good stuff. Clayton and the two youngest girls sat at the Kids Table, but Clayton kept coming over to steal crab legs from Grandma's plate!  LOL

p.s. that is my wine glass, I set down to take the pic

The two oldest grandchildren now had the opportunity to sit at the Grown Up Table. I guess they graduated? Now that they eat grown up things like steak and crab legs, it's easier to have them sit close by with all of the adults. It was a wonderful meal with laughter and family fun and the joy of being together again.  It warmed my heart through and through. 

We had the kind of a celebration of being able to be a family again and not be spread out and isolated. There's been some sadness in the family as one of the son-in-law's, Jesse, recently lost both his father and his grandmother to covid. So two of our grandchildren are mourning the loss of their grandfather and great grandmother.  Life has been hard and we wish his side of the family the best in dealing with such a horrible pandemic and what it has cost in lives along the way.

After dinner, we decided to go outside for a while as the temperatures were still up in the 50s. After all of that food (and beverages and birthday cheesecake) it felt good to get out and go for a walk. The kids were playing in the big backyard and running around.  I decided to take a little stroll around our rural block, with all five of the grandkids. The back road that runs along our property is gravel and the side road is gravel too. But the city still decided they needed a street sign there for two gravel roads! LOL. It seems to be a little crooked, so the kids decided they were going to try to boost it back up right. They tried.

Claire and Whitney, the two youngest granddaughter's, are best buddies and they call themselves "sisters"! Here they are holding hands as we go for our walk. Totally cute!~  Whitney is the Kitty Girl and Claire is clutching her Bunny Friend. 

We hung out in the backyard for a while, just enjoying the nice weather. Even though it was cloudy and getting late and getting dark, the temperatures were still warm enough to sit outside and have another beverage or two.

The grandkids always find something to play with---  they hauled out the little red Radio Flyer wagon. They decided to take the Birthday Girl for a ride!  Young Clayton tugged her along with a couple extra riders around the yard on the grass. He did pretty good for a young kid and he really pulled them hard. Later he showed us the red marks on his hands from pulling so hard. I'm so glad that they can have good clean outdoor fun and not just be indoors attached to electronics.

It was a wonderful day, but ended all too soon because kids had to get home to bed for school and the parents for work the next day.  I went to bed with a big smile on my face, for sure. 

~~~~~~~

On to a few house projects: 

For a while now, I have been thinking I would like to get a set of white cafe shutters or plantation shutters in the bathroom window. I had kind of been keeping an eye out for ordering two sets, one for the top and one for the bottom of the window so I could have the option of opening up one and not the other. 

Egads!!!  We looked online and even the plastic faux wood ones were $100 a set. And I wanted two sets, one each for the top and bottom? The real wood ones were $150 a set, so that would be $300 to do the window the way I wanted!  Ouch! 

But you know us, Steve was watching on Facebook Marketplace and found two sets the sizes we needed for a mere $25 total! They were already a creamy color and I had hoped they would match, but they did need a fresh coat of paint. Steve had to shave a mere quarter inch off each side to get them to fit perfectly.  After he did that, I started the first coat of paint today. I will give them a second coat tomorrow and we will get them mounted into place,

We got another cool toy in the mail today from Amazon. We've been talking for quite some time about this electronic device that operates by Wi-Fi and can turn your water main off in your house. Steve read about them, and researched until he found one we thought would work for our water main valve.

When we leave to go camping for a weekend or for a couple weeks at a time traveling, it's nice to turn the water off in case of any problems while we are gone.   We even turn off our ice maker on the fridge.  

One time our daughter Heather and son-in-law Jesse had left their house and they had a complete flood when a fitting near a dishwasher failed, and their hardwood floors were completely flooded. They had to stay in a hotel for two weeks while the insurance company pulled up all of their vintage schoolhouse hardwood flooring, kiln dried it out, and reinstalled it all and restained and revarnished it. Not to mention the hassle of needing to live in a hotel room with two kids and two dogs and handle school, work, meals etc.  What a dilemma.

So....  these things can happen when you least expect them. We had talked about getting this type of a shut off device, and Steve found an interesting one on Amazon. 

This may sound silly to most people with a regular basement and easy access to a water main valve. 

But for us, it means going outside to the bulk head doors, then go into the newer side basement, then crawl through the "secret tunnel" as the grandkids call it, that is between the new basement and old basement to get over to where the water main is.

Here is Steve on the other side of the "secret tunnel". It's actually where the new portion of basement was built up against the older existing rubblestone basement and they knocked out a part of the wall to crawl through. So we go up on the little step stool, put our butt on the yoga mat, and swing our legs through to the other side. That's where we would have to go to shut off the water valve each time we leave or come back home on vacation.  

It installed very easily and it manually turns the lever from open to closed. It set up and we tested it out. Now with a flick of a button on my phone, I can shut our water off. We tested it two or three times, works great.  Problem solved and it makes life easier. 

The other item Steve got today from Amazon is what I talked about in my last blog. It's called a mechanical plug. He was able to put it into that second mysterious opening in our basement floor that has been gushing water up into our basement and over to the sump pump hole.  It had an old rusty metal cap that let loose last week and the water kept flowing and flowing.  We're not sure if this was an old well or if there's an artesian spring underneath here, but it is now plugged off and it will dry up and be securely sealed again.

Those were the toys that Steve ordered from Amazon. I ordered something from eBay for myself. Remember that screen door we picked up last week? Well I ordered four more curlicue brackets to dress it up like the other screen doors on our house. Actually, I ordered a set of 8 brackets and split it with my neighbor across the street. She wanted four of them to dress up her screen door too.

I started giving them their first coat of primer / paint because it's warm enough in the garage to do a little painting today.  I love doing piddly little painting projects like this.  Must run in the family, my 82 year old mom in Florida has been painting her porch deck and railings bit by bit, a few each day. 

Once I get two coats on them, Steve will drill the tiny holes and we can secure them to this screen door to dress it up.  It is going on the side of the She Shed that leads to the pergola and garage and yard. 

Oh, the other day, we finished digging the rest of the paving stones and laying them flat.  After a few weeks, we will brush the polymeric sand in the cracks and lightly use a hose to activate the sand. Then hopefully no weeds will grow up between the blocks.  

The weather here has taken a turn and is now going to be rainy for the next 3 or 4 days.  I think I'm going to get more sewn on my quilt.

Day 41 - Some More of "Prettying Up The Place"

Well, it's Day 41 of our self-imposed quarantine. We are getting used to the routine of NOT being able to run out and grab supplies as we work on projects. We have to be a little more creative and figure out what supplies we have here on hand. We dig a bit deeper to find the right screws, or adapt a piece of wood by cutting a larger one into smaller pieces, etc.  We are doing that right now on the pergola grids that we are re-configuring.  So that is on hold for a little bit while we get more creative in using what we have on hand.

But sometimes you just HAVE to have new supplies.... like paint.

The local hardware store will allow us to do curbside pickup. We just call ahead with our order and our credit card, and they assemble our purchase and put it right into the trunk of our car when we pull up by the door. This is the very same hardware store that I used to work at years ago when we lived here in Oconto. It is so nice to be able to support a local business during these trying times. We needed more exterior white paint. I called in to Joey, a very dependable young man, who used to be a schoolmate of our daughter Heather. Joey takes care of the paint mixing and got our new can ready for us. All we had to do was drive up and he put it right in the trunk. Thanks Joey!

Last week, we did the curbside pickup at Home Depot of the wooden screen door. Remember that? My idea was to dress up our modern looking metal screen door with an overlay of an old-fashioned wooden screen door.

See, our house has a nice metal modern screen / storm combination door. During the winter months it's a full expanse of heavy glass and a nice tight fitting seal around all of the edges to create a nice extra insulated layer at the front door.

During the summer months, the glass piece comes out and a full-size expanse of mesh screen is inserted. Again, the tight seal around the edges prevents any mosquitoes or bugs from coming in.  So we really didn't want to change it. But it looks too "modern" for my taste.

The only problem with a full panel of screen is that the screen was always getting pushed against when trying to prop it open to get things through the doorway (like little kids).  It always seems to get bumped up against with elbows or packages --- or even the dogs as they are going in or out because the ram pulls the door shut, then anything in the way ends up pushing out the screen.

Here is the original screen door:

After seeing how much the screen is getting stretched out and sagging and bagging, that is when I got my idea.... so to resolve the sagging, and dress up the style ---- we bought a cheap $29.98 wooden door from Home Depot. We removed the screen that came with it.

We added four little $5 wooden brackets to dress it up.  I actually bought eight brackets in a set from a guy on eBay. The other four are for the wooden screen door down on the she shed. Link to: Ebay seller from Tennessee that I bought the brackets from

After I got more paint from Joey, I painted it all up before assembling it inside the garage yesterday. It was way too windy to work outside. 

Steve helped me attach the brackets,

 as it became a "2 person job" to 

make sure the frame stayed square.

We pre-drilled holes into the metal door after carefully measuring and holding the frame into place.  Had to make sure it wasn't impeding on the track for the original screen or storm door panel on the metal door frame.

This picture above shows Steve drilling the holes from the outside, but we attached the wooden frame through from the inside on the frame of the modern door outward with screws. Then you don't see the screws from the outside on the wood frame.

Here is the wooden frame ready to be screwed into place. We didn't have the right sized screws on hand, and had to look around and dig and finally found some in an old bucket of odds and ends that would work. See why it's good to save every little piece of hardware in a bucket someplace?  Creativity!

Here is a close-up shot of the cute little wooden brackets glued and screwed into place. After they were attached, I also put dabs of white paint over the heads of the screws so you don't see them as much.

Here is how it is attached to the outer surface of the original metal door. In the pic below the top screws are holding it up, and I pulled the wooden frame away a little bit to show where it lines up to attach to the metal frame.  We can still change out the screen or the winter glass storm door from the inside.  The wooden frame is narrower than the metal frame so we can still use the handle. There is just enough clearance for the handle.

Once it was into place, 

Steve tightened up each screw just enough

 to not split the wood.

We have secured the wooden frame to the metal one with three screws across the top, three screws across the bottom, and one on each side.

Now the wooden frame sticks out a little bit further then the original metal frame, but it really doesn't matter. What matters most is that the door still seals firmly for bugs in the summer or cold weather drafts in the winter.

Front porch relaxing in the afternoon.

The curli-ques of the screen door kinda coordinate with the same shapes on the retro old light fixtures we bought from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

I really think it dresses up 

the style of the house, 

and looks so cute 

"Country Farmhouse-ish".

In this pic above you can see the location of the pergola to the left between the wall of the she shed and the wall of Steve's garage.

It was pretty windy yesterday and not comfortable to work outside on the rest of the pergola side grids. Today is supposed to be windy and rainy later on, but we might get the grids assembled in the garage and ready to bring out to put on the pergola later today. Here is my idea sketch:

We will see... stay tuned for more projects for "Prettying Up The Place"!

Stay In.

Stay Safe. 

Stay Well.