The phlox is creeping nicely, too. Soon we will have some iris blooming. They are currently in bud stage. Interestingly, our iris is several weeks behind the rest of the neighborhood. Maybe, the shady area has slowed them down.

The laurel is flowering and smells great. It brings the bumblebees in full force though. This is one of 5-10 at any given time during the afternoon. They hover for long periods in zones. Occasionally, one will enter the next bees area and they fight or transfer pollen and then split back to their zones. Fun to watch and hard to catch on camera.

And this is a pound cake fresh off the cooling rack that we made for our neighbors. We topped this off with fresh cut strawberries and homemade whipped cream. Our new neighbors invited us over for dinner last Saturday night for steaks. We contributed dessert. Very nice couple. Great conversation. Hopefully, we didn't wear out our welcome. Before we knew it, the clock was showing almost midnight.

Here are the cabinet doors minus the knobs with the countertop.

Here are the cabinets with and without the accenting stain. I'll publish more with the complete look after this. What a difference the cabinets and countertops make for the kitchen. I only have the baseboard and drawerfronts left to finish now. Closer every week!

Happy Birthday to Christie! This is the cake and dinner we had. Mom and Dad Perry joined us and brought some pretty flowers. Dinner was grilled salmon with a glaze that I made up. The cake is kind of creation, too. It resembles a little yellow hat. Not really intended, but kind of interesting. It is angel food cake - two layers. I used vanilla pudding that instead of making with milk, I used a fresh pineapple that I pureed to help flavor the pudding. In keeping with the yellow, I washed and placed our last two jonquil blooms into the side. I think that is what made it look like a little hat.

Here are the latest flowers blooming in our front yard. I am pretty sure they are Hyacinth. Look at all of the different colors.

We have a nice bank full of Creeping Phlox, too!

Some of the first signs of Spring around our new house are in full bloom now. These beautiful jonquils are growing in the flower bed as you come up to the front door of the house. Christie was excited to see so many since this is her favorite flower. She has many fond memories of walking through acre upon acre of these with her grandmother picking as many as she could hold. What a cool way to bring back memories of childhood and start new memories together in our new house.

There are some hyacinths growing around the lightpost too, but they were not in bloom quite yet when I took these pictures. They are starting to come into flower now though.

I guess I better go get some more painting done. The cabinets need doors!

Here is a shot of the finished floor and partial view of the appliances in place. The cabinets are painted, but not accented yet. The cabinet doors and the drawers are still to be painted. We hope to have the countertop people come out sometime this week and measure to get the new countertops fitted. Supposedly, the process is two weeks after measuring before they return with final pieces and install. If you click on the picture for the larger view, you can see the steam rising from the stovetop. That would be the first meal we cooked in our new house. All-Beef hotdogs and potato salad. Oh yeah, and some chips and dip. We went as simple as it gets. Neither of us is real sure we remember how to cook. It seems like it has been so long since we have been able to cook anything.

Here is the finished (almost) product. I haven't put the grout in yet. After the grout, I will add a sealant to the grout and then it will be done. Then, I will be able to put the baseboard back on and finally get the cabinets painted and appliances installed. Yeah! Not much longer! Our first home cooked meals in the new house are coming soon.

The color in the bottom closeup picture appears on my screen to be closest to the real colors. I didn't color correct for the lighting on all of the pictures.

This is a better view of the tile space testing. It all seems to be fitting together nicely. Very thankful for square walls.

This is a closeup of the Schluter Ditra. The thinset fills the little squares and is combed to 1/4" on top with a square notch trowel. The tile rests in that thinset. Hoping to get the tile down this weekend. The laundry room has become a phase 2 project.

All of the Schluter Ditra is down and cured. The instructions said I could lay tile immediately following the adherence of thinset below the Ditra. I am not that quick or prepared. These pictures show the measuring method I used to see how to start the tile laying portion of the project. The room fit the tile very nicely with only minor cutting. The far side of the room only had an inch or two taken off. It just didn't seem necessary to split the difference with so little removed. Especially since the far side of the room will be mostly hidden behind the breakfast nook table. There are quite a few tiles that had to be cut to fit around things on the perimeter. Heating vents, desk supports, stair handrail posts, and bay window angles all had to be marked off and cut out.

Christie was happy to have finally gotten the old living room light down and replaced. What do you think of the replacement. Home Depot and Lowe's have some really cool inexpensive fans these days. Big difference in appearance. The light is nice too. The old fan didn't have a light fixture.

Here is the kitchen with the new flooring down. The orange roll is a new product I found that should help to keep the grout and tile from cracking. It is called Schluter Ditra. The underside is covered with a thin layer of fleece. The top side is a plastic grid of squares and ridges. It decouples the flooring from the tile allowing the wood below the tile to expand and contract with the environment without disrupting the rigidity of the tile.

It comes on a big roll that you cut to fit the floor space. It is then applied to the flooring with a layer of thinset. Finally, the tile is applied to the top of the Ditra layer with another layer of thinset. The little squares fill with the thinset creating a column like effect. This is the engineering part that is cool. The column effect is basically a bridge support for the tile above. Very strong and effective.

Here are some more pictures of our first snow. Breezer, the Snow Schnauzer made the 6pm news for these pictures. Channel 4 WYFF has a place to upload pictures of the weather, so I submitted these of Brea and she was used on the evening news!

This is the view from the front porch of our new house with the first snow of the year. We ended up with 3 to 4 inches! The tree is our Peach tree that Christie wants to get rid of. Maybe when she sees the pretty flowers, she will like it. But on the other hand, after the fruit drops all over the walk way leading into the house and brings flies and gnats, I may be ready to get rid of it too. Who knows? It is low on the priority for now.

This is the view from Mom & Dad's place in St. Louis on New Year's Eve.

This is the kitchen with the old linoleum coming up and the original flooring below also being removed. The black is the tar paper that goes between the subfloor and the flooring. The old flooring had to come up in order to get some of the height back for placing the new tile. The original owners put in a thick flooring and then linoleum to match the height of the 3/4" hardwood flooring in the foyer and dining room.

I have also removed all of the cabinet doors and drawers. All of the cabinets will be sanded down to degloss the surface and then be repainted and antiqued. This is by far the most difficult task. The popcorn ceiling removal was messy, but not quite the strain on the body that the floor removal has been.

We arrived home from Christmas to a leaking water heater. There were 2 or 3 places within the water heater that were leaking internally. The leak wouldn't have been detected had it not been dripping on the pilot light. Christie said the water wouldn't get warm, so I checked the garage and found it to be slowly puddling. Unfortunately, the overflow drain pan also had holes in it. So all the water was going onto the floor. All was fixed the next day though. Home Warranties on a newly purchased home are well worth the cost. We have had HVAC and water heater replacements now.