We’re still moochdocking at our youngest daughters’ house in Bowling Green, KY.  But we’re definitely paying for our spot in the way of house renovations and daily chores.

In the kitchen of Joleen & Dylan’s new house, I’ve done a lot of patching, sanding and priming on the walls…

and also on the ceiling…

The old kitchen cabinets extended all the way up to the ceiling.  I had to do a lot of scraping and repairing where the old paint and caulk lines left a distinct line across the ceiling.

Before…

and after…

Before…

and after…

We were lucky to be able to fix the holes and blemishes in the ceiling and match the existing texture without having to sand down and retexture  the whole ceiling.  After a fresh coat of paint it looks like new again 🙂

I also finished fixing all the wall surfaces that won’t be hidden behind the new cabinets.  After lots of hole patching, skimming and sanding, I put on a fresh coat of primer and paint.  I used “texture in a can” to hide all the minor blemishes.  There were lots of scratches along with high and low spots from scraping off the old wallpaper.

Stilla and Joleen picked out the wall color called ‘Tsunami Sky’.  I think it looks good and the ‘texture in a can’ works really well too.

The next step is to get the new kitchen cabinets installed.  Wish us luck 🙂

Since my last post, I did some research on a scooter that I had my eye on at a local motorsports store and ended up buying a Kymco Super 8 150X (←link).

We found out it was a mistake to leave the Harley in Arizona and take the Can-Am ATV along with us on this trip to KY.  There really isn’t any place nearby to get much use out of the ATV; but there are lots of cool winding, hilly roads here that are perfect for motorcycle riding.

The scooter is street-legal and gets up to 50-55 mph easily, even with both of us on it.  The 150CC engine seems to have plenty of power for scooting us along just fine.  I ended up getting a pretty decent deal for $2,125 out the door but am still expecting some registration fees from our domicile state of South Dakota once I get a permanent plate.  Now I just have to figure out how to haul both the ATV and scooter when we leave here… the scooter will add an additional 235 lbs.

While Stilla & I were out getting the new scooter, a micro-burst of heavy rain and wind came through the neighborhood and took down  some trees.  Here’s one that came down in the back yard (below).

Luckily, I had put the main awning in on the Urban Escape Vehicle before we left.  There doesn’t appear to be any damage but I do wish I had thought about running the satellite dish down.  The weather here has been great (hot & humid) with just some isolated rain storms that occasionally roll through.  So far, any rain storms have been brief or occur during the night.

The ATV came in handy with the front winch.  We hooked the winch cable up to the fallen tree and pulled it into the yard so we can cut it up.

Dylan’s boss Jim came by to help out.  Here we are hooking up some straps to the winch cable…

Jim pulled on a strap to help guide the tree while I winched it off the chain-link fence.

Now Joleen & Dylan will have a little firewood for their fireplace once we get the fallen tree cut up.

Check back soon for more exciting updates on home renovations, etc.,,,