One piece at a time

Our compact car has been a good sport thus far in our remodel project, stepping up to the challenges of whatever we fill it up with at the home store. Good thing our house is just a few miles from the store.

Caverns

Today we we went on a mini road trip to Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna. Realizing we haven't explored much of Florida yet, much less the neighboring counties, a new visit was in order. The drive was close to 1.5 hours one way, but we passed the time easily with pulling up music on Google Music, trying to guess artists and song titles of classic rock and old country music. A few conclusions: We knew more Chicago than we thought. Also discovering how much we love Sawyer Brown, even though haven't thought of them in 15 years.

Anyway, it was an on and off rainy day today, with typical mugginess. Florida Caverns State Park features the only public cave tours in Florida.

We bought tickets for the 4 pm cave tour, so we had a little time to kill before the tour.

Checked out the museum, learning about Florida snakes...

So many...

Butterfly

Civilian Conservation Corps statue, since most of the park was constructed by CCC workers under the New Deal. Brought up a debate between us if such effort could done in modern times. Conclusion: would be awesome if such public projects could be done again, but doubtful if it would work in today's society.

Sign welcoming tour attendees.

They weren't lying.

 And the cave. The temp was about 65F, refreshing compared to topside. We were in a group of 25 for about 30 minutes. The air felt dense, but not stale. I wanted to capture the light and dark contrasts in the caverns, so I didn't use the camera flash. I was happy and surprised with the results. Tripods aren't allowed in the caverns on tours, so I had to be creative with the light balance when framing. Plus the low light setting helped me out a lot too.

Right on cue, there was a bat sighting, a sleeping one. Of course the bat was in a narrow passage that the group needed to pass through, so we were to pass quietly and no flash photography near it. I am surprised the kids on the tour with us didn't freak out (or an adult), but the bat didn't stir once. A real well-behaved bat or well placed fake bat? Hmmm... Didn't matter, I took an obligatory zoomed in blurry shot and kept my distance. I didn't care to find out. :-)

Bat! 

After the tour, we checked out the Blue Hole Spring, swimming area in the park that is spring-fed. Did not look refreshing, but I think the recent flooding made the water dark and cloudy. The swimming area was closed anyway.

Hello

More flooring

 Flooring is done now in the living room and kitchen area, leaving the steps and the hallway to complete. We are really digging the color combinations so far. We were a little worried how the floor would look with our dark brown cabinets, but I think it will work. We haven't decided on counter colors or back splash yet, but I hope seeing the cabinets in place will help us pick out the details to tie it all together.

We started moving the cabinets out of the bedrooms and placing them in the kitchen area. Nothing is installed yet, nor what is pictured is the final arrangement of components. I have to admit though, it is exciting to see cabinets back in the kitchen.

Touch of Color

Painting has begun! In the living room, kitchen, and hallway. Well the kitchen has a sage-y green facing wall. We don't think much wall is going to be visible once the kitchen is put together. If there ends up being some, we'll paint those spots later.

 Copper color accent wall in the living room. The light yellow walls and ceiling.

 Continued the green down the hallway.

Peekaboo

 The bedrooms are basically storage rooms at the moment, and will be painted once they get unloaded. Preview glimpse of the kitchen cabinets, the pantry cabinet is in the middle of the picture.

And flooring has begun too! We went with laminate wood flooring, since we are thinking about maybe getting a dog and will be more durable. This flooring will be in the living room, kitchen, and hallway. Still deciding on what to put in the bedrooms.

Mud

 We are in the mud stage now with the drywall. We put the 3rd coat on over the weekend, hopefully it will just need a light/touch up 4th application, and then we can do final sanding. Last week, we had a lot of rain, so the mud is definitely drying slower between coats with all the humidity. We aren't applying much mud to the seams to the kitchen ceiling, as we have an idea for decorative tiles in there.

 We plan to sand the existing ceiling texture a little, to tone down the texture. It is a little spiky for our tastes.

 The rain... we got nearly 20 inches of rain in 4 days over the holiday weekend. Luckily our house is on a slope with the drainage creek next door, so we could shed all the water better than some. Lots of flooding in the county. One thing about Florida weather we have noticed, when it rains here, it rains, hard. None of this light drizzle stuff.

 The rains brought us a visiting turtle to our front yard. I have heard heavy rains in Florida bring out the wildlife. Visiting turtles are fine, other reptiles, maybe not so much.

Tiles

Man and Machine

 This past weekend, we got almost the rest of the drywall up in the kitchen and living room. Just a few more pieces in the kitchen area. Realizing unless we wanted to extend the stay of our dumpster for extra money, we had to be finished with it by Monday. Instead of wrapping up the drywall on Sunday, we took on the dreadful task of removing about 550 sq ft of ceramic tile. The tile was a bit uneven in places, so putting down a new floor over the top wasn't an option. We rented a power hammer for the day from Home Depot. It made the chore a whole lot easier than doing it with hammers and chisels, but it still was a long, dusty, tiresome task. Zachary ran the power hammer and I was on clean up duty as he moved along. It took about 6 hours

After the dust had cleared, we were real happy with the results. Makes a nice level base for the new flooring. Which we are still deciding what to pick...

We added pendant lights to the living room.

New blossom of the day. A lily of some sort, blossoming around the yard right now.

Yard Work

Here is some pictures of our front yard, since we hadn't shared them yet. Much like the backyard, the front yard needs a lot of work too. The plants are overgrown and snuffing out each other and the lawn itself is a sandy patchy paradise. We aren't going to do much to the yard in the short term, besides minimal maintenance and pruning until after we are moved in. The inside renovations are the priority right now. We did spend an evening mowing, pruning, and moving brush around; since it was looking really shaggy and we couldn't stand it anymore.

Here is Zachary pulling up one of the many shotty DIY irrigation pipes that are poking around the yard. It was poorly installed originally and not buried very deep, so they are popping out of the ground in pieces.

Brush pile and shaggy lawn.

View after trimming the small palms around the driveway and moving the brush pile by the road for the city to retrieve. Mowed the "lawn". At least the clumps and patches of "grass" is even now.

Our broken lamppost by the end of the driveway.

This is the creek/ditch/canal we have been referencing. We plan to do a lot of pruning between the driveway and canal. Maybe plant some hostas and small shrubs under the trees? I don't know, that is yet to be explored and an after we are moved in project.

The big dumpster is leaving us next week and we get our driveway back. Yay!

We have 3 of these cactus things in our yard. Cool looking but very sharp.

There is a tiny pond  by the garage that used to be a some sort of water feature before it was overgrown and forgotten. You wouldn't even notice the pond part besides the small patch of water lilies in the sand, like a mini desert oasis. Pretty right now though, the lilies are blossoming.