08:58 – It was 69.6F (21C) when I took Colin out at 0700, overcast and drippy.
The basement den and master bath are both complete except for some punch-list items like re-installing vent grills and installing the ceiling light fixtures downstairs. We’ll stay off the ceramic tile in the master bath until tomorrow, by which time Justin says it’ll be fully set. We have all of the furniture in place in the downstairs den, although Barbara still has to re-shelve a whole bunch of books. The unfinished lab/work area is pretty much cleared out and the food storage room is in reasonably good shape.
We’re going to walk next door this morning, where Bonnie’s house and its contents are being auctioned. Barbara is very concerned about who will end up buying it. She afraid it’ll become a rent house. I’m not too concerned. Not all renters are undesirable neighbors. After all, we rented for the first four years after we were married. Ideally, we’d like to see a nice young couple buy it. Either that or weekenders from Winston or wherever. But we’ll deal with whatever happens. If worst comes to horrible, we’ll put up a tall hedge or similar barrier along the property line.
Email from Kathy, who says she’s all dressed up and nowhere to go. They’d planned to spend this weekend repackaging bulk food, but the foil-laminate Mylar bags and oxygen absorbers they ordered from LDS online haven’t arrived yet.
They don’t drink much that is sold in 2-liter bottles, but they do drink a lot of flavored sparkling water that comes in heavy 1-liter bottles, which they’ve been washing out and saving for the last couple of weeks. The only food they have that made sense to repackage in those was the case of twelve 4-pound boxes of Morton iodized table salt they got at Sam’s Club. So they transferred that yesterday afternoon. One box fits nicely in a 1-liter bottle and doesn’t need an oxygen absorber, so they now have a dozen or so neatly labeled bottles of table salt. As Kathy said, it isn’t much, but it’s a start.
10:27 – There are scores of cars parked up and down the street for the auction, which just started at 10:00. When I walked up to the house around 0930, there must have been 150 or 200 people there already. Barbara was looking around at the personal possessions, but I don’t think she’ll bid on anything. We agreed standing there that she won’t bid on the house.
More email from Kathy. Mike decided that since they couldn’t repackage their LTS bulk food this weekend he’d spend the weekend building more shelves. Their food-storage-room-to-be is in the basement, with concrete walls and floor. There are already solidly-built, foot-wide, floor-to-ceiling shelves around the perimeter of the room, but they agreed they were going to need more shelving. They have room for two eight-by-two foot islands in the middle of the room, so they decided to build them themselves rather than mess around with modular steel shelving. Four 2X4-foot steel units would have cost them around $400 at the local building supply place, and the plywood and lumber Mike needs to build them will probably cost at least as much, but Mike prefers to build them himself from US-sourced materials rather than buy Chinese-made stuff.
They’ll end up with more shelf space than they actually need for what they’ve bought and have on-order, but Kathy thinks one can never have enough shelf space. And she’s probably right.