At the beginning of May we contracted with a local builder to turn our deck under the canopy on our lot at Cedar Blue into a room. We also contracted with him to put in a new covered cement patio. The project didn't get started for nearly 3 weeks while he was waiting on supplies and here it is the end of June and we are still not done. It's coming along though. The walls, siding, windows, doors, electrical and insulation are in for the room. He still has to install flashing on the metal roof, foam and batting on the ceiling, drywall and laminate flooring. The patio is started with posts and framing for the cement. Hopefully, when we return in two weeks we at least will have a room that we can put furniture in. Some of problems with the project have been a canopy and deck that weren't square and lots of rain.
The room will be about 10' x 19' and will be used for extra living space. We plan to have a loveseat with reclining seats, a couple of swivel/glider barrel chairs and a TV. We also have a 6' folding table and plan to get some padded folding chairs that can be used for feeding company and playing games or putting puzzles together. We will have an AC unit in the wall and a radiant type of heater for colder months. The deck will be 18' x 20' and we plan to get a new swing, a nice grill and a gas fire pit. Besides having to get all the furnishings for this project, we will have to paint the inside and outside of the room, put in some window dressings, paint the shed to match the outside of the room, and we want to stain the cement. Then we need to do some landscaping. So this project will keep us busy for a few months I'm sure. We hope to take a full week in August here once it's done.
Since we plan to spend a few months a year here once John is retired this extra space will be wonderful. The room is big enough to put down a couple of large air beds if we have overnight company, unless, of course, they prefer to put up a tent in the yard or come with their own camper. Yes, there are hotels in town as well. We will probably do a combination Thanksgiving/Christmas with family and/or friends here in Novembers before heading to south Texas or Arizona for the winters.
More pics to come as the project progresses.
It's been a while since I posted and Spring is coming to an end. The pics you see are the place we park near Newcastle and Blanchard, OK.
In April we had the reunion visit with my sisters followed by John's 60th birthday celebration and we ended the month spending a week at our friend, Priscilla's, home house and pet sitting. As I think I've told you before she has 3 large dogs, 3 large cats and a dove and one of the cats has diabetes so needs two shots a day. We always enjoy staying there because she has a lovely home and the animals are very easy to care for. There's a bit of work involved in the mornings feeding, watering and cleaning litter boxes as well as time loving on them but none of it is hard. Also she has a bathtub and John loves to soak. Finally, when it's nice out she has an beautiful inground pool to swim in.
April and May are supposed to be our wet months but that certainly wasn't the case until the week we stayed at Priscilla's and it poured. We caught up from our prior drought at then end of June 2012 and then all the moisture stopped. We didn't even have much in the winter so we started out this spring way way behind. Our ponds were dried up and many of our lakes were several feet down. The lake we boat on (Lake Arbuckle) was down 7'. There were islands were there weren't supposed to be islands. Well the end of May started to bring in rain and this June we have had several inches. The ponds seem to be full and the lakes are starting to come up. Lake Arbuckle is still down 5'. We have more rain predicted for the end of this week so we pray that it will keep coming.
This past weekend we spent on projects. We live in a gully and for a long time the cell/data booster antennas we had worked well but more recently they ATT and data boosters seemed to go by the wayside. So we switched out to different directional antennas and hoisted them up on one pole and we are doing great now. John had to switch out poles as well to get something more sturdy to clamp to the metal cover we park under. I'm also in the process of changing from ATT. They are just way too expensive especially to use as your dedicated hot spot. So I down graded to 2 GB of data which dropped my cost by about $40-45 a month (I have one more year on my contract before I drop them completely) and picked up a Straight Talk Hot Spot and love it. It's only 3G but I can get 4 GB of data for 2 months for $40 and eventually will switch my phone to that as well for $45 a month with unlimited talk, text, and web. Way cheaper than ATT! And they ping off Verizon which is what we are setup for with our antennas. I'm sure that's way more info then some of you want but for RVers this is definitely something to consider. Since I'm just using the hot spot for personal stuff 4GB lasts me a long time as long as I don't stream movies, videos and so forth.
We finally were able to get a mask/bra made for the front of our RV. We have a 2013 model RV so there were no companies with patterns to fit this rig but a company in California worked with us and based on pics and measurements made one for us. When we got it there was only one thing that was off by several inches so we returned it, they fixed it and we had it back in less than 2 weeks and it fits beautifully. We had to install all the little metal things you attach it to which meant drilling holes and using a rivet gun but it was a piece of cake. Now we are protected from all the junk and rocks that hit the front of the rig driving down the road.
The final story for the day was my little accident! This past Friday I spent 2 hours going up and down a ladder waxing the RV and had no problems at all. I had already down the front before we put the mask on and got the entire passenger side done and looking great. I got all my stuff setup to start on the back of the RV and went inside for some water. On my way out I went down the RV steps too fast and when I stepped onto our last step I stepped on the edge and my right foot slipped of turning completely under and down I went. OMG the pain was incredible and I was sure I had broken my ankle.
John rushed out and sat with me while I rolled around a bit waiting hopefully for the pain to subside, which it did. I then realized it was my foot and not my ankle - thank goodness. So far it seems to be a bad sprain - no broken bones as far as then can tell but had a huge hematoma on the foot. The doctor put me into a cast boot for 1-2 weeks. Sunday it felt so much better so I spent a bit of time getting around without the boot and it swelled up like a cooked marshmallow so back into the boot. I see my PCP today so will get her thoughts. This slows me down way too much! But it will heal.
My next blog will share about our building project at our lot in Cedar Blue where we are enclosing our deck into a room and adding on a new covered cement patio. That's an entire blog by itself.
I hope you all have a great week.
