renovating

It's late summer, and of course, the irrigation pump had to break down. That took a lot of work, getting a new motor, having that repaired in town, and finally-- irrigation back up.

Many years ago, we bought one of those worn-out, claw-foot tubs that we saw for sale on a lawn in a nearby city. It came home with us and went into where we store winter wood. We even bought plumbing for it from a renovation store in Portland. It all set there (for years), with us never certain what we'd do with it-- I just liked those old tubs.

You know, I am one of those people who buys books I am not ready to read but want them on hand for when I will be. I live a lot of life that way with finding something but not always knowing when I can use it-- usually, eventually, I find the reason I wanted it.

For the last few years, we knew we needed to replace the bathtub in the main bathroom as it was getting worn looking-- the kind of wearing that you don't use for a bath without a lot of scouring. Besides, it was gold-colored, which years back when we installed it seemed fine but now was dated.

This summer, with the help of our oldest grandson, that bathtub was dragged out of the house, most of the wood paneling around it removed, and an empty space created for the old claw-foot since we had found someone who could refinish it right here at the farm for a reasonable fee-- considering. 

As Ranch Boss sanded the claw-foot tub's base and feet, we found it was made in 1910. It will soon go back into operation... well, not too soon. 

That's when we decided to completely gut that bathroom, move the toilet over a foot or so, put the claw-foot under what will be a new window, use a dresser (we'd also bought years ago but had since put in storage) for one of those bowl type sinks and put it where the old tub had been. Its drawers will have to be reduced in size but it'll be enough storage for what we need in there, with maybe a small medicine cabinet alongside and the current wrought iron shelves. 

This is a project of months, but it'll be worth it in the end and with the help of a country plumber, it shouldn't be too much work... Well, we'll see on that. We don't have a schedule. 

An outside project was rebuilding the well house, which had deteriorated. That was helped by grandsons, as was a repair job under the house with plumbing where the line had to be cut off before the bathtub could be removed. It's nice to have grandkids turning into young adults where they can work around the farm (for which we pay as is right to do when it's real work. It teaches them that real work is valued).
 
Along with all of this, the winter's supply of wood has been scrounged and ordered. It will have to be stacked before the winter rains get here.

In July, I had the desire to redo the covers and titles for my Hemstreet witch books, and those are now done. Since I pulled all the paranormals, the new covers won't be up until October when the fifth book is ready to go up with them. 

For me, covers are as much play as work, but it took a lot of tweaking, for which I much appreciated a working group I formed at Facebook. It's private, small, and lets friends give me honest opinions. It helped me a lot as I consistently missed things they saw-- the reason for the group. I took its banner to FotoSketcher (a fun tool if you haven't already tried it out). I think it was another way to see what worked. More will be coming on that later in the month.

Meanwhile, I came to realize, as I worked my way through editing the paranormal books, that all my books will need the Grammarly treatment. A depressing thought, but I like to face issues squarely. Where it comes to the craft of writing, I have a way of leaving out commas. When I wrote many of these books, semi-colons were okay-- today, no. 

Those appear to be my most frequent punctuation errors, but I also had some split infinitives and those danging prepositions, which can be at the end of a sentence when it's dialogue but prose-- not. Grammarly tells me when I get wordy, which sometimes is needed, but often not so much.

Also there are a few words I misspell consistently-- like descendants. Not sure how Word lets me get away with that, but Grammarly doesn't. My back is already hurting, but I have this thing about making everything as good as I can (Grammarly would tell me I use 'good' too often and suggest something else, which sometimes doesn't fit (it's not a mind reader) but always makes me think). 

So all that and writing the fifth paranormal are my projects while the #1 bathroom gets slowly renovated, and two items from an earlier century become useful again.