Well, it’s been a rough couple of months but we are slowly getting back on track with our projects. Before writing about anything else, Rob and I want to extend our sincere thanks to our family and friends for all of their thoughts and prayers, sympathy cards and supportive comments in regard to the death of Rob’s mom.  Your support during this most difficult time has meant so much to us.

Speaking of sympathy cards, we were also very moved when we received a sympathy card from Entegra in May.  It wasn’t just a card signed “Entegra” but each person individually signed it and added their own personal message. That meant a lot to us.

Rob’s Dad is doing surprisingly well on his own – except he can’t find anything in the kitchen! But I guess that will get itself sorted out eventually.  He’s considering possible future plans which might involve selling the house and moving into an independent living facility. But there’s plenty of time for him to figure all of that out.

For several days following Mom’s funeral, Rob and I didn’t do much of anything – we were too emotionally drained and exhausted.  But this week we are back on course again.

The final touches on the year long, often interrupted bathroom remodel project are complete.  In addition to some general cleaning, the only other project that needs to be done before putting the house on the market is the installation of baseboard trim in some of the rooms.

I bet you are asking “why are you missing baseboard?”  Well, it’s not like we have been sitting around doing nothing! Over the past 17 years, we’ve done a number of other remodeling projects – extended the balcony upstairs, replaced the stairs to the 2nd floor, redid the fireplace and surrounding wall, replaced the white pine floors both downstairs and upstairs with harder wide plank “heart” pine, added a mud room to the garage, moved the basement stairway and of course remodeled the downstairs bathroom, bedroom and kitchen. Our house doesn’t look anything like it did when we bought it!

Some of the baseboard trim was never installed, mainly because we had planned for further enhancements (i.e. built in book cases along the wall of the balcony). With the bathroom remodel as another example, there is now a new wall and a new closet in the bedroom that needs baseboard.

So last week Rob started milling wood to address this deficiency – he estimated that he needed about 150 linear feet of 1×4 material to finish everything. The material source included old trim and flooring he had been saving for just such a project. He rough ripped it to width, planed one face on the thickness planer, then finish cut the edges – looks like new wood now!

Of course, milling the wood was just the first step.  This is where the master painter/stainer/varnisher (moi) comes in.  Ah yes, during a recent very hot and humid weekend, I was out in the garage, immersed in stain and varnish. And sanding between each coat of varnish is definitely not my favorite thing! Making progress, but I will be very happy to never see another stain rag, poly brush or sanding pad!

But once again, our home improvement projects will have to go on another short hold.  Our Entegra is ready!!  Woo hoo!   We’ve been notified that all repairs are done so hopefully soon we will be traveling to Indiana once again to pick up our RV. Once we arrive in Middlebury, we’ll meet with PJ and David to review all of the fixes and changes that they have made to our coach.  And perhaps if we are there on a Tuesday we’ll be treated to another breakfast and join in the Q & A session with other Entegra owners.

We may also head to Spartan Chassis in Charlotte, Michigan for an additional inspection of our chassis.  Spartan is only 104 miles north of Middlebury so we figured we might as well have the factory bless the chassis while we are so close.  Once that is done, we’ll have even more confidence that all systems are working properly. At some point we do want to take the 4 day owner training that Spartan provides, but most likely the timing for that is not going to work out this time around.

Stay tuned for new posts about our trip!