Ready, Set…

We’ve begun to bring a few of our belongings over to our home: bags and boxes of clothes, some linens, pottery and two pieces of furniture. I just had to hand-carry our Victorian muffin stand (from my old Redeux Furniture shop) and an arts and crafts period clover leaf side table. The pottery pieces, from local artists, were also taken to the house today to ensure their safe passage. If those old pieces of furniture could talk I wonder if they would be saying,”where the heck are we”, or “hey, there’s no dust here”! In any case, they are a long way from their original New England homes. Hope they like their new digs!

Being somewhat gluttons for punishment, we’ll enjoy only a day or two of relative quiet in the house. Sometime between Tuesday and Friday the following is scheduled to happen: The kitchen finished – counter tops installed, drilled for fixtures and all fixtures installed (at least we have the refrigerator); bath vanities completed with counters and fixtures; all remaining electrical hookups completed. Then the fun starts! The foundation for the new sun room has been staked. The city inspector is scheduled for sometime Monday (maybe he will help carry a few boxes!) to give the go-ahead approval. Also, Tuesday is when the dumpster for the new roof is being dropped off. The roof will be started sometime after Tuesday and will take about 2- 3 days, weather permitting. The foundation for the sun room will be poured sometime next week and work will commence on the frame about 3-4 days latter. With luck, everything will be completed by early to mid-July. Of course, we will be living in the house all this time. We leave the apartment entirely by the end of June. But, we expect to be completely out as soon as our appliances are hooked up at the house. Whew!

The kitchen cabinets are turning out to be fantastic. The carpenter installing them is Mr. Wayne Moss.

Wayne has his own woodworking company but is the installer for the kitchen cabinet folks. Lucky us. Wayne is a perfectionist and has an old fashioned ethic about him. As he was making sure everything was just right with the cabinets, the layout man for the counter tops arrived. Watching him measure and cut the patterns for the tops was intriguing. It turns out he used to work for Embraer – American Airlines in Brazil. Life happens and now he uses his skills to be the pattern-maker for one of Jacksonville’s best stone, granite and quartz fabricators.When friends and family visit us they will see the work of several very skilled tradesmen – tilers, carpenters and stone cutters. It is amazing what God has done for us by putting these folks in our lives.

With all of this work going on around us, I am getting the itch to again start working on some furniture. My skill level is nowhere near that of some of the men that has worked on on new home. But, in looking at some of the pieces from my shop that we kept and will put into our new home, I am grateful for the “new-life” I was able to restore into so many pieces.

A real Morris chair. Soon to be restored by Redeux South!

Sometimes, it is interesting to guess where all of those bits of furniture are now and how they are being used. Ours will always be treasured.

In looking around for just the right piece to put under our TV I’ve searched through several antique and cottage furniture shops in Jacksonville and Neptune/Jacksonville Beaches. Today I re-visited one on the beach, Bungalow by the Sea, that is a small beach-type house with several rooms, each for a particular artist or crafts-person. Perhaps I’ll look into putting some things there. But, first, there is this little thing called renovating a house that is keeping my attention. You never know, though.