It’s nice to see some progress on our home.

All the ceilings upstairs have been painted now. The walls should be ready to paint by tomorrow. We’ve patched dozens of nail holes and other kinds of minor damage, so it’s just a matter of going over that again and making sure everything’s smooth and ready to go.

Yesterday, I tore up all the carpet, pad, and tack strips in the kitchen and great room to make way for the parquet wood flooring. Today, however, we’ve had a small change in plans. We’ve decided to do ceramic tile in the main kitchen work area and the wood flooring everywhere else in the kitchen and great room.

Here are some other updates on our progress:

• My mom and dad took up all the linoleum in the kitchen and main bathroom.
• My mom washed down all the walls with a trisodium phosphate solution to get them ready for paint.
• My brother has applied tape and two coats of mud to the new ceiling in the main bathroom. One more coat and it should be ready for texture and then paint.
• Christine’s dad and I installed a garage door opener yesterday. It should have been a 2-3 hour job, but it ended up taking a lot longer because we needed a couple extra bolts and had to drive through a snowstorm to a home improvement store to get them. Then, we had some problems adjusting the opener once it was all installed. We had to take the cover off the motor once to figure out the gear that spins a threaded shaft holding a contact plate which slides between the “opened“ and “closed“ sensors was not aligned properly and fix it. Then, we had to take the cover off again to discover we had replaced the cover backwards. :-) Works great, now.
• My mom washed all the light fixtures and cleaned the master bathroom.
• I ordered some inexpensive carpet from Home Depot. I would have ordered some nicer, more expensive carpet, but Home Depot would have had to have ordered it from Georgia and it would not be installed until just before Christmas. By settling with what they have in stock, we save some money and get the carpet installed in the next week or so. Plus, it kind of makes sense to get cheap carpet when you’ve got three kids under the age of 6 and a dog. :-)

It’s been very cold since yesterday with the high temperature for each day not exceeding freezing. Driving yesterday was really bad and there were lots of accidents around the Salt Lake valley. Fortunately, nobody I know was involved in any of those accidents.

Finally, I just wanted to take a moment and say how grateful Christine and I are to all members of our families who have volunteered to help us with our new home. Especially my parents and my brother. They’ve been out there almost every day and have offered invaluable suggestions and advice.