As you know, we arrived home on the Saturday before Easter, and we’ve been busy ever since.  Mark’s business doesn’t begin until May 1st when all the campgrounds open, so he is taking advantage of this time to get some things done around the house.  So am I.

Monday morning, I called and made an appointment for a consultation with a furnace installer.  He came on Wednesday while I was trying to stoke our wood burning stove because it was so cold in the house.  He made measurements, talked with us about what kind of furnace we’d like to have, and said he’d tell the guy who does the pricing estimate to hurry because we have no heat.  We haven’t heard from anyone since.

I have also been trying to get to an electrician to come out and talk with us about upgrading our wiring.  We can only run one space heater at a time in the house without tripping a breaker.  I have left several messages but have had no response.  This is one of the few drawbacks of living in Door County.  There isn’t enough competition in any one field for contractors to have to do anything they don’t want to do.  Fortunately, Mark isn’t of that mindset with his own business!

Mark’s first order of business is to clean up the yard.

On our way back to Door County, we stopped and got Mark a gas powered chainsaw.  He has an electric chainsaw, but that doesn’t reach very far into what we call the “Back 40”.  We had the brilliant idea that if we cleared out some of the brush along the edges of the back yard, we could park the RV out there for the summer, so Mark has been going after it with the chainsaw and the bush whacker.

Several days in a row, Mark went and got a burn permit so that he could burn all the yard debris, but for some reason, it won’t stay alight. This is a first for us. It usually goes up in a glorious blaze!

In the meantime, I’ve been trying to start the bathroom remodel.

Last year, a bunch of tiles fell out of the shower wall, so I started there and began removing all the tiles in the shower.

When I got to the side walls, Mark had to remove the shower doors for me so I could get the tiles out from behind the rails.

Once I finished stripping the side walls and the ceiling over the tub, Mark stapled up some plastic to protect the walls. He was really getting into it!

Yes, that is a knife in Mark’s mouth. Fortunately, he didn’t widen his grin with it.

The project so far…

Behind the shower wall, there is a large closet with shelves.  Last year, we bought a 20-gallon water heater because it takes forever for us to get hot water in the bathroom.  We plan to shorten the closet to about the size of that water heater and put in a longer bathtub, maybe a free standing one.  We bought some thin cedar planks to put up around the tub instead of the tiles.  We can start putting those on the ceiling and the top half of the walls, but until we pull this tub out and put in new flooring, we won’t be able to finish it.  It’s kind of a tricky balancing act of planning what the sequence should be for the remodel.  I am enjoying the challenge!

By the way, when Mark gave me one of his computers to replace mine that died, I tried to get Picasa again so that I could continue to import and edit my photos for this blog.  I discovered that Picasa had gotten rid of the photo editing portion of what they did, and I could not find another photo importer and editor that worked for me.  Today, Mark was cleaning out his desk and he came across a USB stick that was labeled as Picasa Startup.  I was able to download it and I’m back to being able to do what I love doing…sharing my photos!