Starting on repairs to the house

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.