New Years Eve

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.

Hanging wainscoting panels

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.