New and Old and Old

I apologize to those of you who are regular readers.  This has been a very different week!  As any of you know who read my blog regularly, I am in Florida for the winter.  I have a small mobile home -- one bedroom, one bath, open living room and kitchen, a screened in porch or lanai, and an outer Florida room which can serve as a guest bedroom as I have a futon and an air mattress.

This is an older mobile home and has been added to and changed a lot over it's nearly 50+ year existence.  And just like when you start any updating of any 50+ year old home you never know what you are going to run into.

Within a day or so of my arrival I realized the two slider windows in the living room area needed to be replaced because of dry rot.  Fortunately, there were no termites, as that can be a problem in Florida.  I have a awesome handy man who is almost 82 years old.  I have yet to ask about a job that he doesn't say, "Yes, I can do that."  Or he will say, "Yes, I could do that, but you will have a better job done if you don't hire me and use a skilled professional in this area."

Then the base of the toilet cracked.   I wasn't expecting that! That was replaced on the day it cracked!  I knew there was some painting that had to be done.  I did some of the painting, and I  hired someone to do most of the exterior painting work.  While the hurricane awnings were down to install the new windows I managed to get those painted. And I have washed off the dirt and mold from the siding.

I knew I wanted to do something with the kitchen cupboards to update them.    As I thought about what to do, and how to do it,  and what the property value changes would be -- I finally decided to just replace the existing cupboards with new and redesign the arrangement of the cupboards, move the exhaust fan, put the microwave and exhaust fan AND light over the stove like any normal kitchen.  I will have a spice cupboard and a cookie sheet cupboard.  I will have more usable storage areas, it will just be better.  After I made the purchase, I then began to get cold feet. It was more money than I really had planned to spend. I couldn't help asking myself if I was I making a mistake spending this amount of money for a place I only spend 3-4 months in a year?

Then I learned a neighbor could use the kitchen cupboards.  I told him they were free for taking the cupboards out.  The work involved in taking out the cupboards would have cost me $200-300 by my handy man so that saved me money.  My handy man had to take out the base cupboard for the sink because of the plumbing involved.  Then oh dear,  the sub floor under the sink and out into the main are sub flooring show water damage over the years as there were water ring stains.  And the sub floor under the sink was not just stained,  it was totally gone and a bowl appearance was there.  The sub floor was wet and swollen and in pieces.  Had I not made the decision  to replace the cupboards this might not have been discovered for another year or more.  In the mean time, the water damage  would have spread and according the experts in all of this, I would have had a huge and very costly mess on my hands.  The water damage would have spread and I would likely have had to replace the sub flooring in the whole home (at least in  the kitchen, eating are, and living room), including some of the wooden supports. And I wouldn't have had new cupboards either.  So here I am in the middle of a mess, washing dishes in  the bathroom sink (I fix and eat breakfast and a simple lunch but not the main meal of the day) which is very inconvenient.

In the midst of this mess I will create cards for the Technique Junkie March Release Blog Hop on March 1. I hope you can join us.   I received a crafting package from Marco's today and perhaps I can use some new stuff.

See you on Wednesday morning for the Blog Hop!

Judy Jackson