Hectic week before Gulf Coast vacation:

We're home from our vacation, driving the last 30 miles through a terrible cluster of thunder and lighting and white-out rain, with the occasional tornado.  We had a little impromptu stop just north of Coffeeville to climb into a culvert running under Route 7 to wait out the sirens and the worst of the warnings on the radar.

However, to keep the timeline here in a somewhat reasonable structure, this entry will cover the week before we headed south for the three day weekend.

Floors in the sunroom:  As I spent another day pulling nails and scraping tiles and glue off a floor that some short-sighted )(*^$% from a previous generation selfishly slapped down with no regard for those who would come after, I had a number of thoughts on these folks.

At some point our ancestors stopped working to make the world a better place for us, i.e. building for quality and duration, guarding and care-taking wealth, investing in our educations and health rather than looking to these as easy places to make a profit. 

Fine.  Fair enough that everyone makes their own way in the world, and while a leg up would be nice, it's no one's due.

The next phase of this selfishness, actively creating a negative starting point for your decendants, has pissed me off since I was six and learned about the national debt.  (Ask my father, one of his favorite stories to tell about me.)

I have spent hundreds of hours, literally, removing layers of particle board, linoleum, glue, and pulling nails out of wood floors to get back to what was a solid wood floor ready to be refinished and serve as the beautiful surface the original builders intended.  

Most of those hours were between 11 pm and 2 am, after working a day in the office and squeezing in some family time in the evening.

It's not hard to think of those who will follow you in 10, 20, or 100 years, and do them a kindness by considering your impact on them.  Yes, floors may be a small thing, but apparently the environment and national spending habits are too big.

At the point of this picture, all the toxic crap has been removed from the sunroom floor, because I can't stand to leave it there for someone else to have to deal with.

The fashionista was not allowed to help with this step, but she came to visit.

This is the floor covering I picked for now.  It is a new linoleum product, 3/16" thick, and heavy enough to hold itself flat.  It does not get glued down, and if we change our mind in the future, we can just roll it up.

Three reasons for this floor choice: first the radiant heat has been installed under the floor, so nailing something new down would risk puncturing one of those water lines, 2) the laundry will be in this room, and having a water proof floor here makes sense, and 3) half of this room was at one point a porch, and the floors are not made of a material that can be refinished to a desirable floor.

This is how it looks cut in and with the base boards installed.  The room has turned into a nice space.

There will be wall mounted shelving around the laundry area, and we're still discussing what uses the rest of the space will have.   Windowsills are made out of cedar I stole from the siding project.

While the excavator was here working on the pond, I had them come up to the hillside behind the workshop and dig a hole for the storm shelter.  Nights like tonight make it clear that we need a comfortable, but subterranean and strong, place to sit these nights out.  

Still pondering the design, but it will be six feet underground, with the last foot or two covered in a mound.  This alleyway will lead to an inward-opening door, (so fallen debris can;t trap you behind a stuck door, not sure why many of the prefab units don't take that into consideration,) and being right behind the shop we'll have power, and when that fails, a small battery bank, enough to keep the kids in movies and reading light.  Alexe though bunk beds might be a good idea.  As long as the drainage system is done right, it should be dry enough to allow for a more comfortable approach.

There was an evening of dinner and conversation with friends, and at some point after eating the feast we were treated to, we managed to get these same friends to watch over the animals while we were away.  That favor included an afternoon of chasing pigs.  They're really excellent friends.

Salad by Alexe, corn and bread by the BTC, the grilled chicken, tenderloin, and bacon wrapped asparagus and scallions by Jackie and Casey. 

Annaliese helping with the final skim coating of the upstairs bedroom and bathroom.  A lot happens in the mornings, and with Caspian still in school, Annaliese is getting lots of solo lessons.

Interspersed with various games and play time.  She is a master at pulling the cat's in the cradle heart strings.  I've recommended this board game before, Mysterytown, in our collection thanks to a.Caitlin, it's fun and engaging for the 3/5/32 crowd.

At some point there will be pictures of the refinished floors and painted upstairs.  Suffice to say that we wrapped up the pre-vacation list, and hit the road.