Attitude Adjustment

Renovating a house is overwhelming... even if you're not the one doing the manual labor. It is a weekly (sometimes daily!) exercise in optimism to focus on the progress instead of on what still needs to be done or the mess created by the progress.

Let's take today for example... when I got home from work I was hungry (never a good time for me!) and feeling a bit overwhelmed by some future challenges my boss had just talked to me about. Yes, slightly bad attitude already. And with that pessimism I find myself focusing on the ugly pile of aluminum siding in our back yard (waiting to be taken to the Iron & Metal Recyclers), the dirt that was tracked into my house (even though I just cleaned the floors 2 days ago) and the DUST (which seems to conspiratorially hang in the air until while I clean the house... only the settle moments after I finish). Also, I had thought our new front door was being installed today, but it wasn't, and I was discouraged about that. I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel, but without the light anywhere in view it's easy to be overwhelmed.

However, in an effort to remain positive, here are the good things that happened this week. The clapboard siding has been removed from the front of the house on the 1st level... only a small triangle of clapboard remains! Our living room has been gutted, except for the final layer of ceiling. (I believe we had 3 layers of ceiling in that room.) The wooden frames for our windows in the front of the house are complete, and both were installed today. And after the two front windows were installed today, ALL of the windows in our house are new and energy efficient!

God, help me focus on the blessings!

January 30 and 31

Another busy weekend of work at the Cundey household! It was 19 degrees on Saturday, but David, Bryan and I stayed warm with layers of clothes and lots of hard work. Here's David tearing off the many layers of siding on the front of the house. (This is the final wall to have old siding on it.)

Bryan worked on getting all the plywood on another wall, then started putting up Tyvek.

It started to snow around 3pm, but the guys kept working! We even got more help from a neighbor.

This is how the front of our house looked as of this afternoon. Yikes! But with renovations things have to look bad before they can look good.

This afternoon David and Bryan moved everything out of the living room and we started tearing down walls. We closed off this room with a wall of plastic to try to keep the dust out of the rest of the house.

January 23

Bryan fixed the roof so that you can't even tell that a chimney was on this wall only a week ago!

David's sister, Marney, and her son, Julian, came to visit for dinner tonight. Julian asked "Why dey have stickers on deir house?" I guess the Tyvek looks similar to stickers when you're 3 1/2!

How to Destroy a Chimney

David is blessed with many good friends, 2 of whom helped us all day on Saturday with tearing down our chimney. (Why are we tearing down our chimney and fireplace? Because it's old, poor quality, brings cold drafts in the winter, and the fireplace takes up a lot of space in our living room.)


Bryan and David used a hammer chisel drill to break the chimney apart.



Noah and Haley, the neighbor kids, watched the work for over an hour (while their mom and I were able to visit).



By late afternoon on Saturday, a lot of progress had been made! (We discovered that when the chimney was put in it had covered over an original window.)


David started working on the chimney as soon as he got home from work today. Thankfully it was much easier work than the top of the chimney. By 8pm the chimney was completely gone and he had nailed plywood to the outside of the house to keep out the drafts. What a huge change in just 2 days of work!

Snowstorm!

The ground was covered with snow when we woke up at 7am this morning... and 10 hours later it still hasn't stopped! This is the type of storm I was used to in Upstate NY, but not typical for NJ... and I'm loving it!

Renovations!

David and I started more construction on our house this past week. Currently we are making what used to be our back porch into a laundry room. (Our washer and dryer are in the basement... it will be so nice to have them on the first floor!) Also, we are getting new windows and siding for the whole house. And yes, we are planning to change the color of our house!! David's best friend has his own construction business and things have been slow lately... so David is helping him out by giving him work, and he is helping us out by doing all the house projects that we don't have the time to do! It's a win-win situation, and after only 4 days I'm already very happy with the progress. The top picture shows the work that was done on Tuesday (the first day) and the bottom picture is how the laundry room currently looks.

Visiting the Loucks

This past week I was able to spend 3 days in NY with my sister and her family. Her daughter, Cora Adelle, was born on 9/1 and her husband headed back to work on Tuesday. I mostly helped with taking care of my nephews, Seth and Aiden, so mommy and Cora could rest as much as possible! I was glad I got to meet Cora when she was only 2 weeks old, especially because I wasn't able to meet Aiden and Seth until they were 2 months. I was glad I was able to take time off from work to spend with my family. I had a great time with all of them!

Lilacs... in August?

When David told me that our lilac bush was blooming, I was completely confused. Lilacs in the Northeast bloom from the end of April (where we are in NJ) to the end of May (in Upstate NY), but I'd never heard of them blooming in August! Sure enough, I checked the bush and found a few tiny blossoms! And the best part, they smelled just as wonderful as they did in the spring! I have no idea how our bush managed to bloom twice this year, but it was a great surprise!

Girls Weekend to Chincoteague, VA

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to Chincoteague, Virginia for a Girl's Weekend! My good friend, Karen, and I had gone there last August while she was living on the Eastern Shore for the summer. We had so much fun that we decided we should do it again this summer and invite more girls to join us! So I drove down from NJ on Friday night and Karen, Jessi, Jessica, Stef, Christina, Jenn and Courtney drove up from VA. Thanks to the research and planning that Karen, we had a whole house that we were able to rent for the weekend! It was perfect!

Saturday we headed to the beach on Assateague Island, even though the weather didn't look ideal. Here's me, Jessi, Christina and Stef being the first brave people to get our feet wet!


Poor Karen was so cold she wrapped up in her towel and took a morning nap!

Around 1:30pm there was a mass exodus of the beach as a thunder storm approached from the west. We were about 50 yards from the vehicles when the downpour hit! All of us were soaked! Karen told us to wait because she thought the storm wouldn't last for long... and she was right! 20 minutes later we were back on the beach again.

And then about 3pm the sun came out and almost all of us went into the ocean and jumped the waves. It had finally turned into a perfect beach day!

The wild Chincoteague ponies were close to the road when we were leaving the beach, so we stopped to take pictures of them. There are a lot of foals in the herd this time of year. At the end of July most of the foals will be auctioned off at the annual Pony Penning.

This is the house that Karen found for us. It had 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms and beds/couches for everyone! We couldn't have wished for a better place to stay.

Here's everyone at the house on Saturday night... eatting our take-out dinners from the local seafood and Italian restaurants and enjoying each others company. It was a wonderful weekend!

Harley Ride to Strasburg, PA

As some of you know, David and I decided to buy a motorcycle last summer. David knew someone who was selling a Harley-Davidson Softail Deuce, so we said we would buy it. Well, we waited and waited and WAITED for the guy to get the title so we could buy it, but all we kept getting was excuses on why he hadn't yet received it from the state. David was very frustrated, but since the guy was someone that David had been acquainted with for many years we were patient.

Last Wednesday David heard about another Softail Deuce that was for sale. He went to look at it on Thursday and we bought it on Friday! That's how easy it should be to buy a motorcycle! David felt a little bad about backing out of the "deal" to buy the other bike, but since we waited for 10 months I feel like he was more than patient.

We could hardly wait to get our new motorcycle out on the road! Friday was a cold, rainy day, but thankfully today was beautiful. We thought about driving to the shore, but then decided to drive to Strasburg, PA instead.

Here's David before we left the house.


Sitting on the bike during one of our stops along the way.

Walking down the sidewalk in Strasburg, PA.

We stopped at this store for ice cream in homemade waffle cones... delicious!

David enjoyed his cone and his maple walnut ice cream.

It was 7pm when we returned to our house this evening. We had gone over 200 miles on the bike this afternoon! I was a bit sore (still trying to talk David into getting me a sissy bar!), but it was a wonderful day.