This is the travel blog for Mary & Steve Beckelhimer as we visit locations that we enjoy. We will include information on what we see and do including photos as possible.
Family & friends are encouraged to comment on the postings for our travels.
Mary and I got up early to do our last language lesson of 2024 then watched a little WSAZ local news from Huntington on Zeam. We went downstairs for a breakfast of Great Grains cereal and a banana then took the dogs for a walk around Standish and Battle Creek then across Mason Creek Road to Eldrid Lane then Bassett Drive and Cedar Gate Lane then back to the house.
Mary continued painting panels and trim moulding as well as interior doors in the garage. Mark and I used Cindy’s pattern to cut the panel on the right side of the fireplace and under the wall mounted television to meet the wood plank wall on the front of the house. The pattern fit perfectly and looks great. When we tried the same process on the left side of the fireplace we were unable to get the panel to fit. When we were finally able to get the panel to accurately match the stones of the fireplace, the panel wouldn’t align with the adjacent panel. After dealing with the issue for most of the morning, we realized that the panel was incorrectly manufactured and wasn’t a rectangle but more of a slight parallelogram. We were frustrated that we had wasted much of the day on the defective panel but when we used the pattern on a panel that we verified to be square the wainscoting went up quickly. We put the chair rail up making sure that we had a good fit.
We stopped for a lunch of cheese sandwiches then continued to install panels down the hall toward the back of the house. By the time we finished we only had the panels behind the spiral staircase and along the kitchen wall to do.
Mark’s sister, Jodie, and her husband, Grant, had planned on coming down for New Year’s Eve. However, Jodie was still recovering from the flu and thought that she should wait another day before getting around people.
We picked up a couple of Papa John’s pizzas for dinner then Cindy made chocolate cupcakes from a recipe that Sarah gave her. We had some without icing after dinner and found them to be moist and flavorful.
We watched the Christmas special of Chelsea Detective on Acorn TV and turned in before 10 pm. We decided that there was no need to stay up until midnight. We went to sleep after doing our evening language lessons.
I woke up before 4 am and went to the office area to read and do my morning language lessons until 5:30. Mark and I went out early to get 64 more feet of baseboard and some painting items from Home Depot. When Mark was cleaning up after the three feet of saltwater had left the house, a little of the grout for the tile in the living room was lost. This left a gap in the floor between the tile and the baseboard, so Mark got a tube of grout caulk in a dark color to match the grout.
We had oatmeal with craisins for breakfast which was filling and tasted good. We listened to a little of the Lexington classic country station streaming through my telephone. We enjoyed the daily Florida Man story on Broadway and Friends as we discussed how we were going to get started on the day’s work.
Mary and Cindy continued painting moulding and wainscoting panels in the garage. They had bought a 5-gallon pail of white satin paint from Home Depot and were covering the preprimed panels. They put two coats of paint on the chair rails over the primer that we applied on Sunday.
Mark and I replaced several sections of door and window moulding then started repairing a windowsill in the living room. The original sill had a large chunk missing on the right side and an extension was broken off on the other side. We used an oscillating saw to cut a rectangular opening in the damaged area the shaped a block of wood to fit the repair. Long screws held the replacement block in place and wood putty filled and gaps and voids. After a couple of coats of paint, the windowsill looked as good as new.
Lunch was some of the smoked turkey that we brought from Kentucky with us. We used our sourdough bread and some horseradish.
After lunch we started putting wainscoting panels up in the dining area. It took a while for us to get the hang of what we were doing. The panels were glued with tubes of construction adhesive then we nailed them with 18-gauge brad nails with my smaller nail gun. We were pleased that the gaps between the panels were very small and that the chair rail covered the nails at the top of the panels. We touched up any marks in the paint and made sure that everything looked as it should. Cindy and Mary approved the job, so everyone was happy. Cindy used brown paper to make patterns of the stones along the fireplace so we could cut the wainscoting panels to fit correctly. We felt confident that we would make more progress tomorrow although two tough walls were next on our plans.
Dinner was baked penne pasta with chicken and apple sausages. The vegetable was steamed broccoli. Everything was delicious.
We took the dogs on an after dinner walk around nearby streets then back to the house. We watched a little television and snacked on some buckeyes that we brought with us then turned in after doing our evening language lessons.
I woke a little before 5 am and went downstairs to heat water for tea. We watched local Lexington news through Zeam on the Roku television in our room.
After a breakfast of cold cereal, Mark and I went out to get materials and supplies for the repair jobs at the house this week. Mary and Cindy went to a reformed Presbyterian Church a short distance away.
Mark and I went to Home Depot and bought 64 feet of baseboard which we thought would be about half of what expected to need replacing the baseboard on the first floor.
Mark and Cindy had picked out some simulated batten board paneling in sheets that are 48 inches wide and 32 inches tall. We bought 17 panels of the product. We bought 64 lineal feet of chair rail and 12 feet of corner moulding. All the material we bought except the chair was pre-primed. We bought paintbrushes, rollers and pans for painting. We bought several tubes of construction adhesive and other small items we thought we might need.
At Harbor Freight we bought a 10 inch miter saw by Chicago Electric which was the lowest priced miter saw offered at Harbor Freight in this size. We also got some low priced sawhorses for painting the interior doors as well as the mouldings.
We called Cindy and asked that she and Mary stop at Home Depot to pick out the shade of white satin paint they wanted to paint the woodwork. They also got some paint containers to help them with painting the doors and trim.
Mark and I primed the chair rail with Kilz 2 primer before Mary and Cindy returned from church. After they got in, we had a lunch of the leftover meatloaf and potatoes. The ladies changed clothes, and we helped them move items to be painted as we did repairs around the house. As baseboards dried, we cut them to fit around the dining room, living room, hall and closets. We used one of the nail guns that I brought from home to fasten the baseboards after we cut them with the new miter saw. We got a few sections of baseboard down in the dining room and living room before dinner. Since the wainscoting panels weren't dry yet, we put the baseboard in the areas where the tongue and groove planks were on the walls.
Dinner was provided by one of the neighbors, a man from Minnesota who winters here in Homosassa. He caught more redfish that he could use so he shared some with us. We had fish tacos from the poached fish along with chips and salsa. Mark’s boat was in the shop to be coated with an anti-fouling paint. We were hopeful that the boat would be finished and the weather would hold while we were here.
After dinner we watched some television and relaxed before turning in a little before 10 pm.
We woke up early as usual. I went downstairs and made tea for Mary. I used Earl Grey since I didn’t want to dig for regular tea and wake Mark and Cindy. We read for a while then went downstairs after we heard that Mark was up.
Mark made a very good breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon and toast before we took the dogs on a walk. Because Sage has been limping on her left rear foot, Mark and I took a shorter walk than Mary and Cindy.
After we got back from the walk, Mark and I started replacing interior doors that were ruined during flooding in the house from Hurricane Helene. We put prehung doors on the broom closet off the kitchen then the closet door in the first-floor bathroom where the HVAC is located. Mark had a lot of shims which were helpful, and I brought two pneumatic finish nail guns to Florida with us.
We had a lunch of some turkey that I had smoked on sourdough bread that we brought from Kentucky. I had made quite a few loaves before we left so we could stock the family with bread while we were gone as well as giving us two loaves to bring to Florida.
Grant and Jodie had planned to come for dinner in the evening, but Jodie had the flu and decided that they would stay home. We always enjoy visiting with them and were sorry that they had to cancel.
After lunch we replaced the bifold doors over the laundry area. When three feet of saltwater was in their house during the Hurricane, the washer, dryer, range, and refrigerator were all ruined. A stacked washer-dryer combo replaced the previous washer and dryer. The whole time we were outside preparing materials we were fighting the no see ums so we kept ourselves covered in Skin So Soft which seemed to help.
Mary and Cindy took the Christmas tree down and worked outside in the gardens and lawn. Mary was pleased to find lots of monarch caterpillars on one of Cindy’s milkweed plants. There was poison ivy in several places that they pulled and removed.
We were all tired by dinner time. Mary had made a Schmidt’s style meatloaf before we left home and brought it for meals. A mix of white and gold potatoes were on the side.
We needed a few things from the grocery store and wanted to explore options for the replaced walls in the living room, kitchen and hall of the first floor.
At Home Depot in Crystal River, Mark and Cindy found some batten style panels that they liked as well as a chair rail for the top. We brought a short section of the chair rail and one section of panel back with us to see how it would look. Cindy and Mary got a lantana to replace one that was killed in the flood.
We didn’t get much at Publix since we didn’t really know our plans yet.
We made a quick stop at the Twistee Treat drive through for cones then came back to the house. Mark and I measured to get an estimate of the panels, chair rail and baseboard that we would need and took a few photos to help us when we go to Home Depot in the morning.
We were awake around 2 am so we got up and did last minute packing that included mostly cold food items that we were bringing to Florida. We were on the road before 4:30 with an estimated arrival in Homosassa of 4 pm according to the car GPS. Since this estimate doesn’t allow for stops of heavy traffic, we knew that it would be more like 6 pm when we arrived at Whittington’s house.
The drive was very easy most of the way. We ate breakfast of deli turkey sandwiches and bananas that Mary had packed. Once we got to Atlanta the drive slowed to a crawl. It took us over 90 minutes just to get through the city. Then, once south of Atlanta we had another small construction taking one lane of the interstate but still slowed traffic for over 30 minutes.
After crossing into Florida, we took Rt. 47 to Rt. 129 past Chiefland and Cedar Key. Since we were low on fuel, we stopped in Ingles, Florida for gas, which was $3.29 per gallon, which was higher than we had seen on the trip. By the time we were in Crystal River there was gas as low as 2.99.
We were at Whittington’s at exactly 6 pm. We unloaded the few things that we would need for the night as well as the food items then took Sage and Jade on a short walk around the neighborhood. We got back and ate the meatloaf that Mary had prepared on Wednesday. She found some potatoes in the pantry that needed to be used, and we had a good dinner.
Mark had removed the bottom 3 feet of drywall and insulation from the walls and had replaced it by the time we arrived. Some of the kitchen cabinets were badly damaged and all interior doors needed to be replaced. Mark had already replaced the drywall and we planned to cover that drywall with a set of panels and a thin chair rail. In the first-floor bedroom Mark was able to match the brushed texture on the walls when he replaced the bottom three feet of drywall. However, the skip trowel texture in much of the rest of the house would have difficult for us to replicate to match the remaining walls.
Mark and Cindy had been in Oregon visiting Robert and Michael for Christmas. They arrived in Tampa and were picked up by Airport Dan, a local retiree who transports people from the Homosassa area to the Tampa airport. They were home by 8:30 and ate dinner while we caught up.
We look forward to spending a few weeks with them. We stayed up until about 11 pm then went up to bed.
