Greetings!
Remember me?
Remember this gas lantern from my pink post?
Handsome, isn't it?
Bear that in mind as I show you what I've been doing.
This post started life as a postscript to a lovely wedding post I had prepared for Valentine's Day, but I decided it needed space of its own.
You see, the renovations on our soon-to-be new/old retirement nest left us seeing daylight... literally!
The back of the house, basically a lean-to addition that includes the kitchen, bath, and sunroom, was completed somewhere in the late 1800/early 1900's. Well unbeknownst to any of us, the addition was rotten from hidden water damage.
The word "gnarly" comes immediately to mind!
As you can imagine, this threw us back into the planning stage and sent everyone involved scurrying back to the drawing board.
Mr. Magpie has become a lawyer-architect or larchitect.
Me?
I have become catatonic. ;-)
This was not expected AT ALL as we intended to stay within the existing footprint. We had spent months, the last two in particular, in the planning stage and had all the details ironed out, or so we thought.
Surprise! Surprise! Surprise! ;-)
Scary!
And not my idea of fun...
Always looking for the silver lining, there is some good news.
Underneath the veritable splinters of material that comprised the back roof section, which was the original porch roof, there are some neat brick walls that are now exposed along with fireplaces, one of which we intend to utilize in the kitchen. Hooray!
We were all scratching our heads as to how the ceiling underneath looked to be in such excellent condition. I'm just glad we found out BEFORE we moved into the house and before we started to spruce up. Thankfully, we decided it needed a cosmetic overhaul. God is good!
As to my health, I have been put on restriction for several months and have been told AGAIN to stay out from under ALL stress and curtail all my obligations which I have done with a couple of exceptions. The first exception left me weak for weeks, and I learned a valuable lesson for a person who has always been blessed by high energy. So I throttled back to strict rest. As a consequence, I am doing better each day. Oh, and I got a snazzy short haircut that gave my spirits a lift and made me wonder why I didn't insist on this years ago. I walked into two parties (one the sweetest engagement party I have ever been blessed to attend) last weekend and must have had twenty or more compliments, and I mean raves. Young and old alike. Old friends and some acquaintances. My hair stylist is my new hero! :-)
Hope all of you are doing well. I plan to do some visitng this week as soon as I finish with some planning.
Missing you...
Mrs. Magpie (Sheila)
PS
I can tell how rusty my blogging skills are because I hit publish before I had finished and then had to update half a dozen or more times! Oy!
