House and the Furry Herd - and a visitor...

As of this morning I have all of my refinished furniture and the painting is done. The floor is installed, carpet installed and all the small things fixed.

They did never manage to paint the wood under the counter black to match the other pieces (or even completely peel off the black plastic that was on the piece they put under there) but I'm ready for them to be done and I got half of my kitchen painted in the process so I figure I can manage to paint the piece black. (the wall under the cabinets you see here is the last of the purple).

I still need to replace the stuff that keeps the front door from leaking. I can't remember what it's called but it seems that it's keeping the front door from closing well. The lock box on the doorknob doesn't help. That scraped off some of the paint on the front door, but I'm just going to deal with that as well. I don't think it's that noticeable. Certainly there is plenty of cleaning that could be done prior to worrying about a paint chip.

Overall, it looks pretty nice. I just need to finish unpacking things. My plan is to get everything unpacked so I can get the space in the garage to move my current kitchen table in there - so that I can purchase the new kitchen table. State Farm got me a check to cover the table in about 3 days. That was nice at least.

I've been changing out the outlet and switch covers in parts of the house to kind of 'dress' things up.

My sister was out of town this weekend and Dan spent most of the weekend in Raleigh with me. He also brought Squiggy to Raleigh to hang out with all my kitties. She did surprisingly well. She was cautious and there were a few 'Mexican Stand-off's' with Squiggy and Peepin, but there was no hiding and no mega fights.

It has been determined that Widget (aka, 'Giant Cat') is a bit of a bully as he seems to like to chase other cats around the house to the point where they are made uncomfortable. My sister's dog, Ash, also has this bad habit of staring down cats and getting too close and following too much...but he was kicked in the head by a horse so I am pretty sure it isn't malicious. Just stupidity.

Squiggy took to the stairs for a little while. It seemed her goal was to prevent travel up or down the stairs. Dexter just jumped over her. Peepin eventually made a run for it and Squiggy moved back to her perch on the living room chair.

With the house being re-done and Cosmo still having those bad habits, his new home is the garage when he's not being supervised in the house. Tsu and Cosmo are close and she likes to spend time in the garage with him. I think she is also still a little cautious around the dogs. Although Tucker does behave herself fairly well.

The pictures I have of the house don't have the dining room table and the chairs that were returned on Friday, but they do look very nice. In the dining room picture you can see a blue pot up on the top shelf on the wall - fairly close to the ceiling.

Dexter and Lli were behaving like a herd of elephants on Tuesday and somehow managed to knock down that pot and break it. Sadly that is/was my favorite piece of pottery (I collect pottery) and the most expensive piece I've ever purchased. The four pieces around it were all of $15 - $35 each and none of those were broken.

The pot was up there because for whatever reason I thought a wall shelf that high was probably the safest place in the house. Appears I was wrong. After I stopped crying I glued it back together. Dan and I are going to Sedona in April and I think that's were I found that pot there. I have found lots of nice pottery there in the past, but this time I'll see if they have anything I can afford by the same artist. I used to have a business card with the name but I can't seem to find it now. Hopefully there will be something there in a gallery and I will at least have a choice.

Early the next morning they knocked over the fire grate during one of their chase scenes. I am glad they are playing and being kittens and having fun - but I do wish they could keep it on the floor.
Last night Dan and I went to see Wendy and Lucy at the Chelsea Theatre in Chapel Hill so I stayed with Dan. I didn't get any frantic calls or emails but basically I don't know what (if anything) they broke yesterday. Lli is really quite the little jumper. I'm going to have to hobble her if she doesn't watch it. That's why they make kittens so cute - so when they do bad things and destroy your home you can't stay angry very long.

Anyway, it appears that things are coming together at home. Now it's up to me to get things unpacked and organized. At least that's something I can do on my own time frame. One thing the restoration company and their contractors never seemed to get down was letting me know when they would be coming to the house to do work. At least no one will be showing up as I am walking out the door in the morning with questions and such so that I'm late to work. They seemed to time that pretty well and I suspect my boss is just about sick of it.



Well, that's about it. As Dan likes to say on his blog:

'more later'....