Highland Line Number 33

Here are some photos of some of the finished parts of our renovations: the new entryway, the new utility room, and the new shower room.

Highland Line Number 33
1 June 2006

At last we are finally getting there. A tremendous amount of work was done during the month of May. Two of our six renovated areas have now been completely finished (the shower room and the utility room) and a third (the new entryway) is finished on the outside but for adding a doorbell button and an exterior light. The interior of the sitting/dining area should be completed within a week as it only lacks having the wallpaper (which should have come in yesterday) put up. When the painters are here to do the wallpapering, they will also paint the hallway and the entryway. The entryway cloak closet door was put on a week ago so, once it is painted, the entryway will be finished. That only leaves the studio, which is finished except for the wardrobe/cupboard that is being fabricated elsewhere; and the kitchen, which is finished except for the missing replacement worktop, due to be delivered on 8 June. Other than that, there are only minor finishing details that remain to be done.

Outside, the roof tiles over the sitting room extension and the verandah overhang still need to be put on, but the excellent news is that after waiting almost a month for the tiles, nails, and clips to be shipped up here from England, they finally arrived this morning. As soon as the roofer can get that job done (which includes making a hole for the cooktop vent fan), the joiners can come back and finish the cladding. As soon as the joiners get that finished and the painters have painted it, the plumber can hook up the downspouts and the electrician can hook up the vent fan and install the verandah lights. By then perhaps we will have planned our landscaping sufficiently that the electrician can also install walkway lights to go alongside the really nice pathway the brickies laid down from the start of our driveway around to the front door.

So as you can see, we are very close now. The house is fully functional and comfortable as it is, although when it's been cool at night, we have wished for either the radiators in the sitting room to have been installed (they can't be until the paper is up as they are wall-mounted) or the gas fire to have been commissioned. In fact, the fellows from Home Heat came today to get the fire connected and checked out so that we can begin to use it. We had hoped to enjoy our first fire tonight but, alas, it turns out that the pipe bringing gas to the fireplace doesn't let a sufficient flow through to run the fire without it sooting up. We now have a call in to our plumber to get that taken care of.

In case you haven't checked the blog on a routine basis, I'll recap some highlights of the month of May. Donald has been happy to get back into his golf game and he's done so in a big way, having won first prize at the Probus Golf Outing at Monifieth near Dundee. The blog for May 30th has a photo of him holding his winning cup. Right now he's away playing in the Comrie Course's Senior Men's Open. (Good thing we now have a mantel!)

I am getting back into my quilting. Yesterday my spiffy new Horn sewing machine table was delivered and set up. The day before we brought the last of our stored items home (mostly things from the studio but also some hanging clothes). Yesterday afternoon I unpacked and put the sewing things and fabric away in the studio. I'm almost finished but will need to rearrange some things once the long-awaited wardrobe/cupboard gets installed (who knows when that will be).

In addition to spending a week away at the start of May on a quilting retreat in Cumbria, I am currently exhibiting 14 of my quilts in the biennial Floral Arts and Quilt Show in Sandison Hall, the St Fillans town hall. Other quilts on display are by my fellow So and Sews members. We hung the quilts yesterday. Today the floral arrangers are doing their thing. The show opens tomorrow morning and runs through Sunday afternoon. We all have various duty assignments over the 3-day event so it will be a busy time. In fact, I need to make 80 finger sandwiches for Saturday. I really look forward to next week when I can get back to making quilts again. I started 9 quilts on retreat and look forward to finishing them. Four of those were quite small and likely to be put together into one quilt.

A couple of weeks ago, Don and I and Trish Hamilton went to Dumbarton, north of Glasgow, for the second annual Loch Lomond Qult Show. The three women who have worked so hard to get this show established have done a magnificent job and this year, attracted excellent quilters not only from Scotland and elsewhere in the UK but from Europe, Scandinavia, and the States. We look forward to next year's show.

We helped our friend Gordon and his family celebrate his long-anticipated (and threatened!) retirement. We also helped David Sutcliffe celebrate his birthday with a trip to Perth to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company's production of the History of Hollywood (abridged) which was great fun. We, David, and Juliet were gobsmacked to find ourselves (and the rest of the third row) called up on stage after the interval to play the role of extras. That added an extra dimension to the evening's entertainment, especially for Don who was singled out to come to stage left and do jumping jacks. (They must have recognized the showman that he is!)

The highlight of this month, however, was a 4-day visit from my cousin Gene Crowe and his wife Carol from Tucson. We had a wonderful time catching up with one another and showing them some of our favorite places. We walked around Comrie the first afternoon, took them to Stirling Castle and the nearby Wallace Monument the next day, spent the third day in Glen Lyon, and on the last day of their visit, drove to Ft William to take the steam train from there to Mallaig. The journey includes spectacular scenery and is particularly popular since the third Harry Potter film came out because the train was used as the Hogwarts Express and filmed along this route. We were quite lucky with the weather and all got some good photos. (See yesterday's blog for a few of them.)

The gardens are blossoming everywhere around the village. Even though not much gardening is getting done in our garden, the flowers look lovely. Soon the house will be finished and we will have to turn our attention to landscaping and cutting down/back/out some of the existing plantings as well as planting some new ones.

We appreciate hearing from you now and then. What are your holiday plans? Whatever they are, we hope you enjoy and are refreshed by them.

Love,

Lynn and Don