Stuff going on indeed!

In yesterday’s mail we got notices of a couple of upcoming auctions that will have some furniture and carpets for sale. Suffice to say we will be checking them out. I’m not sure that we will need any more furniture but I really would like to get a couple more nice carpets to go down in the living room and den to brighten up the place and to take the chill off the floor in the winter. We had some really good luck in the last auction that we attended and got a couple of carpets, a round one for the upstairs hall and a rectangular one that has found a home under the dining room table. Now if we can only find some more of the same quality……

Today Barb and I got to work and got the suspended ceiling down in the living room. Two to three hours of balancing on a step ladder pulling down aluminum framing and following that with pulling staples and wire from the ceiling – such fun. Even without doing any additional work – plastering, repairs, rewiring, etc. the place looks so much better I can’t believe it. I guess I basically can’t believe that anyone would have butchered up the room in the first place, but we are going to do our best to remedy that. I have a vision of a late Victorian living room complete with “coal” burning fireplace, wall sconces, hardwood floors and luxurious window seats. We have most of those already. We just need to “pimp” them up a wee bit. The big step will be to plaster over the damage to the walls and ceiling and painting the place. Then at long last we can hang the paintings
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Yesterday our friends Ian and Robin invited us to a pot luck dinner in a home near Lockport, that turned out to be a sort of book launching/author introduction for a children’s book written by a fellow called Mike Issacs. His book is called “How the Cougar Became the Ghost Cat” and is a sort of parable on self awareness, pride and acceptance. The books has depth as well as a good story and the author was a sort of interesting fellow in himself. First Nations, police officer, CSIS operative (Canada’s sort of equivalent of CIA), and now author and teacher. A real renaissance sort of guy! It is really beginning to hit home how small this community is. The daughter of the woman who hosted the pot luck is married to the electrician who will be working on breaker panel on our house. Plus, we had already met a lot of the people in attendance.

I am just about done the first of the two bookshelves that I am building. Then it will be up to Barb to do the staining and varnish work. Ashe has developed quite a skill at that aboard Nelleke so she is ideal to work on the first while I am finishing off the second and getting started on the mantelpiece for the fireplace.