December 1, 2023 - December 9, 2023 - A WEEK'S WORTH OF PROJECTS COMPLETED

Friday:

I added a pieced of chain to each of the light switches on all the ceiling fans. Hopefully I will now pull the correct chain when I want the light or the fan. This picture shows why I needed to do this. It was always a guess as to which one to pull.

With a piece of chain added to each fan light chain there no mistaking they are different. The chains for all lights are now all longer.

Saturday:

It was a nice day so we went to a number of garage sales. We ended up buying a number of small items. I am always on the lookout for tools. I bought a circular saw and extra blade for $2.00 and a rubber mallet for $1.00. I have projects that need a circular saw to complete. 

 

The rubber mallet will come in handy. I could have used it to pound down the paint lid the other day and I'm sure that type of use will come up again.

I saw this ceramic fish for $3.00 and had to have it for the front window. He is a big old boy and so cool and colorful.

Daughter Erin said we had to have a Christmas Tree when they come down for Christmas. Our thought was to just decorate the fake Ficus tree which is in the living room. We don't have a lot of room to store a Christmas tree and ornaments so we weren't real keen on getting a tree. The last seven years we have been in the fifth wheel on Christmas and did not have a tree, just a few little Christmas decorations. 

At one of the garage sales Kelly found a very nice flocked, four-foot tree for $10.00. At another sale we found a small tub of ornaments for $3.00. When we got home we spent the afternoon decorating the tree. The tree came with some white lights and we had some color lights.  Kelly bought a tree skirt with Flamingos. How cool is that!  We are now all set for the grandsons to come for Christmas. Ho Ho Ho!

Saturday evening while watching TV we noticed a little issue. The end of Kelly's BIG TV sits close to the thermostat. The TV puts out heat that then triggers the AC when we really don't need it. I pulled the TV out away from the wall and thermostat and put a piece of tape on the left edge of the thermostat to see if that solves the problem. If not, I will have to look into moving the thermostat. The TV is too big, I can't move it. LOL  This is a picture of how close it is.

At another garage sale for 10 cents Kelly bought an unpainted wooden reindeer cut-out which is about fifteen inches in diameter. I bought a can of red spray paint for $5.00 and painted it for the holidays. We now have $5.10 in a 10 cent item. What a deal! We hung it for the season on the wall in the kitchen entry way.

Sunday:

Our kitchen is small, with limited cabinets, and Kelly is short. Kelly uses lots of spices when she cooks and they were difficult for her to reach in the back of the cabinet. I bought a pair of sliding spice trays online and installed them.  Kelly loves them. "Happy Wife, Happy Life".

Monday:

Early in the morning, while it was still dark outside, I went for a walk. I walked up to the clubhouse and back a couple of times. The clubhouse area is nicely decorated for Christmas with a huge Nativity scene out front. We hadn't been out at night so we hadn't seen it all lit up.  Beautiful. 

Last year Kelly wasn't happy with the humming sound that the fan made in the guest bedroom. She said it had to be replaced.  I bought a ceiling fan on Facebook in Perryville a few months ago for $10.00 and brought it down. Here is the humming fan.

The "new to us" fan is bigger, has five blades, and three lights. The wood color is close to the wood in the desk. Both help break up all the white in this room.

I may hang the old fan in the shed. It gets really hot in there, especially when the clothes are drying. Another project. LOL

I worked on the dishwasher again today. We are not happy with how it is not cleaning all of the dishes. If this fix doesn't help it may just be time for a new one. Another project!

Tuesday:

Several projects today. The first two projects I was able to complete due to my $2.00 circular saw purchase the other day at a garage sale. The springs on the couch and loveseat are weak. When people sat they sunk way down making it hard to get up.  I brought plywood from home to fit under the cushions to provide support. What I brought needed to be fine-tuned with another saw cut. The plywood gives the cushions much needed support.

The other "wood cutting" project was for pieces of plywood under the cushions on the patio chairs. The seat cushions are supported by plastic strips attached from one side to the other. The strips have stretched over the years thus not providing much support. Here are pictures. The chair cushions are much more comfortable now. I may get ambitious and paint the plywood brown to match the frames.

Another project of the day was painting a step stool that my friend, David, gave me when they were selling their RV last year. Since they were in an RV with limited space the step stool sat outside. As a result, it rusted pretty badly. Here are a couple of pictures.

I addressed the rust issue by scraping what I could and then spraying the chair with Rustoleum Rust Reformer. It is a product advertised to seal off the rust for painting. It is black and covered nicely. I was going to paint the stepstool white again, but I think it looks cool black so I sprayed on a coat of  gloss black. 

My last project of the day was painting the small bench vise I bought last year. It was originally red but had become pretty nasty looking. I had red paint left over from the reindeer cutout so why not make it look better?

In the evening I attended my first Men's Club meeting here at the park. The club has a meeting the second Tuesday of every month. Only five attended, including me, quite disappointing. The President had no idea why the attendance was so low but announced that due to a lack of help the Pancake Breakfast scheduled for this coming Saturday would be cancelled. Too bad. I was all pumped up to help. LOL.  It doesn't appear that this club is going to be an avenue for me to meet guys to hang out with.  

Wednesday:

The shower in the hall bathroom did not provide hot enough water to shower unless the water heater was turned up to an extremely high temperature - too high for other uses in the house. I turned the water heater down when we got here but the water is still hotter than it needs to be for anything other than this shower. 

I made an educated guess that the shower valve had an anti-scald setting which was out of adjustment. Upon checking on YouTube, I learned that the anti-scald adjustment is part of the valve core, which is behind the handle. I tore into the project. The first problem was getting the handle off. It was really stuck on. I watched a YouTube video of a guy trying to get his handle off. In the process he broke the valve. I REALLY didn't want to do that because I didn't know if a replacement would be readily available. Additionally, there is no way to turn off the water to just to the shower until I could find a replacement part, which could be days, if ever. I proceeded very cautiously. 

The handle is held on to the valve with a set screw. Here is a picture. The arrow points to the hole where you access the set screw to loosen the handle to be able to take it off.

The set screw is an Allen screw. Try as I might, I couldn't get any Allen wrench to work. I even went out and bought a set of Metric Allen wrenches, which were already on my list of tools to buy with the Harbor Freight gift certificate I got from daughter, Annie for Father's Day. None of the Allen wrenches worked. I kept shining the light in that small hole and it looked round rather than multisided like an Allen screw. Strange.

I decided to try my luck at prying the handle off. Before doing that, I sprayed vinegar into the hole in the handle to hopefully loosen any calcium deposits. I let it set for several hours before I started prying on one side of the handle, then the other - back and forth, back and forth, gently, gently. While I was doing this the Allen screw fell out onto the floor. No wonder I couldn't get an Allen wrench to work, the screw wasn't screwed in at all. It apparently had just been lying in the handle for who knows how long. Finally, the handle popped off. I immediately soaked it in vinegar to get all the calcium deposits off for a reinstall. 

Once the handle was off I watched two YouTube videos on how to set the anti-scald feature on a Delta faucet. Unfortunately, while the videos were of all of Delta faucets, none looked like my valve. Mine had a piece on the shaft that the others didn't.  Here is a picture. The arrow points to the metal piece peculiar to mine. The green plastic piece is the anti-scald dial. It pulls out and is turned to adjust the setting.

The metal piece on the shaft prevented the plastic piece from pulling out to adjust. It had to come off before I could change the setting. The metal piece was really stuck on as well. When I pried with a screwdriver, I could see that the gray metal piece was on a brash shaft. So clearly this piece comes off. Very cautiously I pried but the part wouldn't budge. After studying the situation, I decided to put an adjustable wrench behind the nut head and tap the wrench with a hammer. I did this moving from one side to the other, back and forth, back and forth. After about ten good taps on each side - BINGO - the piece popped off and on to the floor. Now I could adjust the anti-scald setting. Behind the green plastic piece there is a black piece of plastic that is geared to it. In the picture you can see that when I started the black piece wrapped around the top of the valve. This setting did not provide enough hot water. 

I reset the anti-scald dial to the hottest setting. I'm not worried about getting scalded. In the picture below you can see that the black piece is now entirely on the left side. i.e. the hot water side.

As I put the parts back together, I covered everything with Vaseline hopefully to make it easier to take apart in the future. I also repositioned the handle so that it now is set correctly for "OFF" and turns to the left for "HOT".

This was a nerve-wracking project because of the chance of breaking something on the valve, which may or may not be available or replaceable. I am really pleased with this fix. I again lowered the temperature of the water heater and it is still plenty hot for a shower. YIPPIE!

The final project of the day was an issue with the back steps. They are painted with shiny gray enamel. Looking down as we came out the door it was hard to tell where each step ended. Complicating the issue, is the fact that the top step is much deeper than the other two steps. This proved a little hazardous for us old people. LOL.  Here is a picture.

On Amazon I purchased two-inch wide "Black Anti-Slip Tape". I installed it on each step. Now there is no problem seeing where each step ends.

Later in the day we made a Costco run for some items we needed. While there I purchased new batteries for the golf cart. I had planned on buying Lithium batteries but Costco had a good price on Interstate flooded cell batteries, so I bought them. Using these will save about $500.00 and they are easier to install since it is just a matter of swapping them out, not rearranging cables. Also, while there we bought a Yamaha Sound Bar and installed it that evening.

Thursday:

The entire day was spent at the St. Lukes Eye Center in Tarpon Springs where Kelly had the first of four eye surgeries she needs. We got there at 10:30 p.m. and left at 4:30 p.m. The surgery went well. She goes back for a checkup next Wednesday and if all is well she will have surgery on the other eye on Thursday. She will then have to wait eight weeks for cataract surgeries.

Friday:

I installed the new golf cart batteries. Here is a picture of the of the new batteries installed and the old batteries in the truck headed back to Costco to get the core charge refunded. He runs like a rabbit now. I still need to install a DC-DC Converter for accessories. The way it is wired now is improper because all 12-volt accessories come off two batteries, instead of all six.

We weren't at all happy with the Yamaha Sound Bar so we took it back to Costco and bought a better (and more expensive) Sony system with a big woofer. 

Saturday:

Although the men's Pancake Breakfast was cancelled, the Ladies Bake Sale fundraiser was held. for a donation I took up bakery cookies we bought at Der Dutchman bakery the other day in Sarasota.

 

We installed the Sony Soundbar. It sounds great and Kelly got it set up that she can listen to music from her phone on it as well as the TV.

Unfortunately, since the soundbar sits in front of the TV it blocks the TV Infared signal. We can't turn the TV off and on with the remote. Here is a picture. The arrow points to the bottom of the TV which is blocked by the sound bar. I solved this by making a box to raise the TV up above the sound bar.

Here in Florida I have very limited tools, and only a few scraps of wood to work with for such a project. Luckily the other day my neighbor gave me two pieces of wood to make a shelf in the shed. The smaller piece was a piece of plywood that was large enough for this project. With a little scrounging I came up with enough wood to make sides of the box. It is a little tricky ripping two-inch strips with a circular saw but I got it done. I painted the box black, like the TV base, with paint I had left over from the stepstool project. Here is a picture of the box as the paint is drying.

Another project today was fixing the bed frame in the guest bedroom. When we moved the bed we did not realize that there was a center support underneath which did not have a roller on it like the four corners. Moving the bed dislodged this support. Of course, the bed was way too heavy for me to lift to reinstall this support. Fortunately, I brought from home a scissors jack (which came off the front of Homer) for working on the golf cart. Here is a picture of the jack in place for this project. The drill couldn't budge it, so I had to use a half inch ratchet.

 

Here is a picture of the center support which fell totally off when I jacked up the bed. I didn't expect that.

The reason it fell off is that it was just sitting in place with a bolt with no nut on it on both sides. When I got the mattress lifted up I got the bolt out and this is what I found on each side. These were too small and not the correct type of bolt.

The frame is made to have a carriage bolt come down through the side rail and through the center support. The carriage bolt allows you to put a nut on the bottom without the bolt turning on top of the bedframe.  I trip to Home Depot was in order to get two carriage bolts, lock washers, and nuts.  Here is the final result. You can see the support leg in the middle with no roller on it. This set up makes it a little tricky to move the bed around since the bed rolls but the center support doesn't. I don't understand why it is made that way.

Final Note:

It is interesting getting into the swing of things at the park. This is what our calendar looks like this month with many activities and several doctors' appointments. Crazy.

While we haven't participated in several of the activities marked on the calendar yet, we have had plenty to keep us busy so far. There is a dance next Wednesday but with Kelly's follow-up doctor visit we will skip it. 

Sunday after church will be a day of "rest" since it is supposed to rain all day. There is a water shortage here, so they are welcoming the rain.

 
  

November 27, 2023 - November 30, 2023 - Social Sunday, Spectrum Equipment, Paint Purchase, Dishwasher Cleaning, Painted Walls

Sunday:

The Sunday Social Dinner and Dance in the park was from 5:00 p.m. until 8:00 p.m. It included free drinks, a meal, and live music. It was a good deal for $10.00 per person. At first, I thought the hours were a little early but as it turned out I liked the time frame. We had a great time. I was told the band members are guys who live in the park. They were quite good and played a lot of Beatles music. Here is a picture of the band which I took over Kelly and Celina's heads. LOL

The following is a picture of us that was on the park Facebook page the next day. The lady in black in front of me is Sharon. A really nice lady from Ohio who lost her husband last year. We got her to get up and dance. She said she hadn't danced in years and thoroughly enjoyed herself. The lady behind me is Donna and she is a hoot. She and her husband Richard (he was gone for the picture) moved here from the State of Washington last year. Their place is behind Celina's place.

It was a dancing crowd. They played music we all liked from the Sixties. The guy in the black shirt and white shorts in the following pictures is our neighbor across the street, Doug. A really nice guy. He and his wife, Judy, live here full-time. I don't know the lady he is dancing with. His wife only danced slow dances.

Monday:

The TV equipment from Spectrum acted up all day Sunday so we took it back Monday morning and exchanged it. From the Spectrum store we headed to Sherwin-Williams to buy paint for the living and dining room accent walls. I was concerned about getting coverage over the dark "Raspberry" color. I asked about putting on a primer coat first but the salesman said primer then a color would be two coats. If I just give it two coats of color it will cover fine. 

After Sherwin-Williams we headed to Publix to grocery shop. We needed a lot of staples and items for the long stay like flour, peanut butter, salad dressing, pasta, etc. We ended up with a full cart. I didn't even look at the final bill. LOL

After we got home and put all the food away, I decided to clean the dishwasher and its filter. The dishwasher is an older Maytag model. The bottom is white plastic and it had a stain trail down from the door to the center drain. After seeing how the air-conditioning filter looked, I figured the dishwasher filter would be bad as well. Unfortunately, this old model Maytag did not have an easily removable filter like ours at home. I dove into the project by taking apart the center wand assembly. Once I got the top pieces off I found a round screen filter inside. In the picture below it is the round piece just outside the "X" shaped piece. I took all of the pieces apart to clean them. In the picture you can see the nasty brown trail from the door to the drain. Kelly tackled it as well as the rest of the bottom with Bartender's Helper and it came out like new.

Surprisingly the filter wasn't bad but all the working pieces in the center were coated with a mushy lime, or some other deposit. Here is a picture of the piece that covers the filter before I cleaned it up. 

I thought I took a picture of the center assembly as I took it apart, but I didn't. I guess I thought about it but got busy and forgot. Luckily, I was able to get all the center parts back together correctly, or so I thought. We ran a load of dishes and there was a strong electrical smell. Upon opening the dishwasher, I found that there was no water coming in. I tried several different settings but never got any water.

I obviously didn't get something put back together correctly! I took it all apart. The top piece in the picture above is the only thing that could be put in differently. It could be installed in a couple of different orientations based on the bolt patterns. I couldn't tell the proper orientation from on top and of course I didn't mark it before I pulled it off. I rotated it 180 degrees and reinstalled it. After making this change it worked perfectly. Yippee!!!!  I don't have to buy a new dishwasher.

Tuesday:

All of the rooms, except the bathrooms, have ceiling fans. We leave most of the fans on all the time to help with the humidity and air-conditioning. Each fan has two chains, one for the light and one for the fan speed. The chains are all the same length and I pull the wrong chain every time! Too solve this issue I bought a length of chain and made all of the chains for the lights longer than the chains for the fan speed. Now I hope I can remember - long chain - light; short chain - fan.

In almost fifty years of owning a home in Perryville I never put outside Christmas lights up. We found some Christmas lights in the shed and put a string of green and red lights out on the porch. Here is a picture. They don't show up very well in the picture because right across the street is a very bright LED streetlight. I ordered a timer because I will forget to go out and unplug them each night.

Wednesday:

Every Wednesday morning I go to the doctor to get my allergy shot. I asked for the earliest appointment which is 10:30 a.m. For me 10:30 a.m. is the middle of the day. Anyway, even though I have the first appointment it is usually 11:00 a.m. before they call me in and by the time I see the doctor, get the shot, and wait for a reaction, it is close to noon before I get out. I hope they start working.

After getting home from the doctor I went to work prepping the accent walls for the new paint color. All the old picture holes were filled in and everything was taped. The China cabinet is quite heavy but Kelly was able to help me get it moved out of the way. I then began painting. Here I am starting the process.

We are quite happy with the result. The new color gives the area an entirely different feel. A much more "Florida" vibe. 

Kelly placed all the dishes and wine glasses that she brought down from home in the cabinet. It makes for a very handsome China Cabinet.

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Thursday:

Down here garage sales are Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. A huge garage sale was advertised in Largo so we headed down with Celina. When we got there it was a total bust. The guy is a junk dealer and that is all he had - junk. He needs a big dumpster. We then went by the Restore to check out desks but they don't open until 10:00 a.m. We didn't want to wait 45 minutes, so we headed home.

We had lunch and decided to head back to the Restore to look for a desk and chair. To our surprise we found a desk and chair that would work nicely for $35.00. We bought it. Before heading home we went to the Salvation Army Donation Center to give them all of the items which weren't picked up on the lawn yesterday. 

Once home did a little work on the desk and cleaned the chair. We then put it in the guest bedroom. Here is a picture. 

It is much nicer than a folding table and dining room chair. A good place to work on the blog!

I then used the green paint from the wall to pain over the raspberry leaves on the living room floor vase that came with the house. We think it looks a lot better. Tomorrow, when it is totally dry, we will put the flowers in it and tie them up with a dowel I bought for that purpose.

Things in the house are really shaping up. Tomorrow is an off day. We are heading down to Sarasota to scope out a place for the members of our Carri-Yals RV club, who winter in Florida, to meet for a winter luncheon in January.  We have gotten together for years in the middle of the state so this year will be different. I'll report on what we find.

    

November 19, 2023 - November 25, 2023 - Trip Down to Florida and Setting Up the House and Settling In

Trip down:

The trip down to Florida this year was much different since we were not pulling a fifth wheel trailer, as we did for the last 10 plus years. Since we weren't hauling we let Apple Maps lay out our route. It took us to places in Tennessee and Alabama we didn't know existed. It was a zig-zag route which ended up being 50 miles shorter but took the same amount of time. It was an interesting route but we won't go back that way. 

Sunday:

We arrived at the house about 2:30 p.m. on Sunday and wasted no time unloading the contents of the truck onto the lanai. (They don’t have porches in Florida, they have lanais. LOL) Celina invited us over for supper, which was great because we had no food in the house.

Monday:

Monday was spent getting the Spectrum internet hooked up, buying groceries, unpacking totes, and deciding where we wanted things to go. I brought down a rolling toolbox and found space for it in the shed and loaded it with the tools I brought. I also unloaded and glued together a shelf I made by cutting down a wider folding shelf we weren't using at home. We are using it as a spot to hold our phones and haring aides when they are charging, as well as a place for small items like sunglasses. We had been using the kitchen table, which created a constant mess. Here is a picture. We may paint it in the near future the same color as the accent wall. I like the natural wood color but I've always been partial to the natural wood look.

Tuesday:

Tuesday was spent buying a TV, organizing the shed, getting the golf cart operational, and attending a Golden Nuggets meeting here in the park. The Nuggets are a group in the park which puts on potluck suppers, dances, etc. throughout the year.  At the Nuggets meeting I mentioned that I wanted to try shuffleboard and a lady invited to come Saturday morning at 10 a.m. and she would show me the basics.

Wednesday:

Wednesday morning I met with my new Florida GP for the immediate purpose of getting my allergy shots. I brought the serum down from my allergist in Perryville. Dr. Iyunni was quite busy and, as a new patient, I had lots of paperwork to complete and they needed time to put it all into the computer. The visit ended up being a two-hour affair. I was pleased with the time Dr. Iyunni spent with me. I then headed to Walmart to pick up a few things we needed.  I hate the local Walmart for a lot of reasons, but it is handy since it is next door to our park.

Thursday:

Thursday morning I switched out a number of light bulbs to LED to get more light. The lamps and the ceiling lights had fluorescent bulbs, which I hate.  

The new LEDs are brighter and more efficient. Thursday I also started individually charging the six golf cart batteries. It took a full day to disulfate each battery, so I got the process started. I also put all the empty totes in the back shed to get them out of the way until we head home in March. 

Then, on a whim, I next decided to check the AC filter. I was absolutely shocked at what I found. It was totally black. I never saw anything like it. Here are a couple of pictures. We thought maybe it was a charcoal filter, but it wasn’t, it was just a cheap Home Depot filter. Crazy! I think it was a lot of mold, which you fight all the time down here because of all the humidity.

The inside of the grill needed a good cleaning as well.

I also checked the master bath toilet because Kelly said it was running at times. When I pulled off the tank lid it was easy to see the problem. The flapper was crusted in calcium deposits and sometimes would not set down right to make a seal. Here is a picture. I never saw anything like that before either. The flapper color was black.

We had Thanksgiving Dinner at Celina’s. She and Kelly split the food preparation chores. Since there were just the three of us, we had a roasted chicken for the main course instead of a big turkey. It turned out great and nobody went away hungry. After dinner Celina taught us how to play Mexican Train dominoes. After dominoes we had our pumpkin pie for dessert. A nice evening.

Friday:

Early Friday morning, as in 6:00 a.m., I went to Walmart and got a new AC filter and a new toilet flapper. I learned that early in the morning is the best time to go to Walmart here because it is not crowed. People get up later here. Many businesses do not open until 10:00 a.m. I came home and installed the filter and the flapper both of which have to help with the utility bills.

The hall closet is very dark. There is no electric in there so no light. I installed a battery-operated ceiling motion light I bought. Before I could install the light I had to hunt up a piece of plywood to cover a whole in the ceiling. We have no idea why it was cut out. The light works great, here is a picture. 

Once Kelly was up and moving around we started moving furniture and hanging pictures we brought down. We rearranged the living room furniture and hung the Sandhill Crane wall hangings above the couch. My friend Ron bought these for his Florida condo in 2006. We bought the contents of his condo from his estate ten years ago and had the cranes hanging in our basement at home. They are back in Florida where they belong. Here is a picture.

On the lanai there was a wreath of colorful plastic flowers hanging over the water heater access door. It was ugly. We took it down and hung up two items Kelly purchased the other day. Here is a picture

Also on the lanai we hung a three-dimensional hanging of parrots in a tree, which we also got from the contents of Ron's condo. It really livens up the area.

On each side of the shed door on the lanai there was a little shelf with plastic flower baskets on them. We took the flowers down and replaced them with bottles of silver and gold tequila and margarita glasses. It gives the lanai a little party atmosphere we think. Here is a picture.

On Friday all of the golf cart batteries were finally individually charged. I headed up the street and down the next but barely made it back to our place. In fact, I had to hook up the charger to get it all the way up beside the house. I won’t be going anywhere in the cart until new batteries are purchased. LOL

While moving furniture Friday Kelly vacuumed with the Hoover vacuum cleaner that come with the place. She turned it on and OMG it smelled like twenty-year-old dirty socks. It was disgusting. I took it outside and opened it up, removed the bag, and began cleaning it out. The area behind the bag was caked with white stuff. I don’t know if it was baking soda or what. After I cleaned it all out and sprayed the guts and hose with Febreze it smelled fine. There is supposed to be a filter on the side. It was missing. In opening the filter holder the plastic tabs broke off. I superglued the pieces back on then used JB Weld to reinforce the area. I ordered a new filter and bag for it.

Here in the park people put things they don’t want out near the sidewalk. Sometimes they notify everyone via the Facebook page but often not. People walking by can take the stuff if they want it. Wednesday morning I put a plastic lawn chair, the plastic flower wreath, and the little flower baskets out. Within an hour all of the items were gone. It beats having to drive to a donation center. Here is a picture of the next pile of items we took off the walls and will put out on the street. You can see the prior owner loved fake flowers and little shelves, we do not.

Saturday:

Saturday morning I had my first experience playing shuffleboard. The courts were packed. We played three games. Folks play on Saturday and Tuesday mornings. It costs $.50 to play. If you get the high score, you get your $.50 back. LOL. The rest of the money goes into a pot for a party at the end of the season.

While waiting for the TV to be delivered we put a couple of strings of Christmas lights out on the porch. I also decided to clean the shower doors. They had lots of water spots from the hard water here. I took them off and scrubbed them with vinegar then sprayed them with Rain-X window cleaner. It is supposed to shed water. Time will tell. They look better for now. I also installed a new Oxygenics shower head. It is a big improvement.

My friend Gary asked what the size of our place was. I didn't know so I went out and measured it. It is 43 feet by 23 feet, which comes out to 989 square feet. It also has an 8 x 10 shed attached which provides space for the washer and dryer, storage, and a small work bench. There is an addition metal shed out back that is 5 x 8 foot. That is where I am storing the totes, my bike, etc.

About 4:00 p.m. Best Buy delivered Kelly's new TV. She wanted a large one. This one is actually smaller than the one she had her mind set on. I'm glad she settled for this "smaller" one. Here is a picture of it in the living room before we unpacked it.

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It was a two-hour ordeal to get it unpacked and set up. We switched to Spectrum TV and we could not get it to work without a call to tech support. The guy was very helpful and got everything going. Clearly the instructions were not complete. Here is a picture of it up and running. I need to work on hiding the modem, router, and all the cables. Kelly agrees it is plenty large.

Sunday:

Here is a picture of the raspberry accent wall in the living room as it was when we moved in. This wall is going to be painted a medium green next week, along with the wall behind the China cabinet in the dining room, which you can see on the left edge of the picture.

This is a current picture with the love seat there instead of the couch. Yesterday Kelly purchased the two prints from a man in Clearwater, about fifteen miles away. They are framed St. Petersburg "Mainsail Art Festival" prints from past years. He delivered them and we quickly hung them up to enjoy, even though they are on the Rasbery wall.

Yesterday the plastic handle broke off the sprayer in the kitchen sink. I HATE plastic.

I went to Walmart this morning after church and purchased a new one and installed it. Of course it leaked until I made a modification using parts from the old one.

Three plumbing projects and we've only been here a week. LOL.

Our first Golden Nuggets event is this evening - a Sunday Social consisting of a light dinner and a dance with live music. It should be worth the $10.00 admission charge. I will report.