Home Improvement

Travels with Tessie World Headquarters is starting to shape up. We still don't have pictures up on the walls, and there are just a few cardboard boxes remaining to be unloaded, but just about everything has settled down and we can get around to living in our new home. (Or as Tessie calls it, "New House." As in: "Where are we going, Tessie?" "New House!")

I've spent a considerable amount of time in the garage, trying to make it a functional workspace. The previous owner left behind a bit of a mess, and I've been clearing it out, as well as reconfiguring the space (adding storage, etc.) a bit at a time. I'm about half done. Upcoming projects out there include replacing the doors and windows, tearing out the non-functional plumbing, and building a workbench. That'll keep me busy for a while.

Inside the house, new projects pop up faster than the existing ones get resolved, but I understand that's par for the home ownership course, at least in the early going. On the project list are the following items:

• fix the dripping shower
• fix the pet door opening left by the previous owner
• get drapes/curtains/blinds
• add a shelf and hanger rod to Tessie's closet
• paint new wood that replaced the termite-damaged stuff
• replace the kitchen faucet

And those are just the highlights. There's a lot of even more mundane stuff to deal with. Like last weekend, I replaced a few of our damaged crawlspace vents by fabricating new custom ones. (Any two the same? No. Any of them square? No. Silly questions!) This task moved up to the top of the list one night when we heard something gnawing underneath the kitchen. We have squirrels, opossums, raccoons and skunks in the area; any of them could have been the culprit, but access to the crawlspace is now more of a challenge for them.

Tessie is very excited about all the changes going on. She loves to come out and visit while I'm working in the garage, frequently pushing a broom and saying "I'm sweeping Daddy's mess!" She's already demonstrated her prowess with the screwdriver, lately it's been the tape measure she can't seem to keep her hands off of. Mommy and Daddy did an awful lot of this sort of thing while shopping for the new couch, so it must be important, right?