BBQ, Bathrooms and Lawn Furniture...

Happy Monday Morning from Pekin.  I haven't written for a few days and thought I'd take a few minutes to share some stuff with everyone.  Basically, all is still moving ahead although the heat and humidity slowed our pace a little this weekend.  It was about 87 with fairly high humidity.  Any of you that have ever dealt with humid weather know what I'm talking about.  It takes the wind out of your sails pretty quickly especially if you're still getting acclimated to it.

Bar-B-Q is a big thing in the south.  You can look back to one of our first blog entries when we arrived here and see we wrote about a place called Pig Miracle.  There are secret recipes for this sauce and that one and everyone's process varies a little.  The fact of the matter is that, for the most part, there is no such thing as bad bar-b-que so what difference does it make?  My only problem is that when I go back for 5th's or 6th's (servings) there isn't anything left.  But that problem was solved at (drum roll please), Bass Pro Shops.  I know, I know... Bonnie told me all along how great the place was but I didn't listen.  She extolled the virtues of BPS daily, sometimes in song.  But I'm the parent and I'm supposed to be the teacher... How wrong I was.  Here is what we encountered on one of our trips to BPS (Warning!!! Anyone who loves trucks and BBQ may want to sit down before looking at the pictures below):

Yes folks that is a 379 Peterbilt pulling a 48' grill and smoker with a picture of bacon on the side.  I know... speechless right?  Imagine how I felt when they put out the sign that read, "Free Samples."  It was like a gift from heaven placed right in front of me at Bass Pro Shops.  I think I'll move on... I'm getting kind of emotional about it again :-).

The two rooms that were going to be used as our bathroom "suite" have been repurposed again.  After thinking about it a little more and really looking at the space and what we need Ann and I decided to scale it down a little.  We will have a standard bathroom and the second room which would have contained the sink and been a dressing area will become a storage space (pantry and closet).  After we opened up a doorway off the kitchen that had been closed off we realized that we could use the space for  kitchen storage as well as for a place for our hanging clothes.  The room will have a door that goes to our bedroom and one that goes to the kitchen so it worked out well.  We end up with a smaller bathroom but with more storage space.  That is a good trade off in my book.  Also it saves a bit on the price of the flooring.  As a bathroom it would have had marble tile but as a storage and pass through area it will have rustic wood.  That works for me as well.  Here are a couple of pictures of the space.  The first was taken from what will be the bathroom looking through the future storage area into the kitchen (our bedroom door is on the left) and the second is taken from the kitchen looking into what will be the bathroom through the storage area.  We are in the process of tearing down old stuff and framing in new.  I will post some new pictures in the coming days once we get it all framed in.

Ok, on to the real subject of this blog post... my "new" lawn chair.  I like to build stuff.  If I recognize a need and have the ability to build something to fulfill that need I will do it.  Sometimes my projects turn out pretty cool and other times...  Well, there are other times (let's just leave it at that).  So yesterday Ann and the kids and I were out and about in Louisville and we went into a store that had some nice wooden chairs that would have been great for our front porch.  They were comfortable and not too small and flimsy.  But, we weren't shopping for chairs and quickly moved on to something else.  But then I started thinking...  I would really like to have a chair to sit out by my developing and evolving fire pit.  I (being a guy) had to create a place for me to burn stuff (old wood, paper... gasoline.... you know guy stuff) and I wanted a chair for sitting by the fire... Oh, here's a picture from the other night.  You'll notice I have the fire built right up against an old stump in the yard.  That stump that is about 3 fires away from non existence as of this post:

So I decided to build myself a chair out of the materials I had on hand yesterday (2x4's and drywall screws).  This is still a work in progress and hasn't got all the bells and whistles I intend to install so keep that in mind.  Also, if any of you were wondering what you might be getting for Christmas from the newly "ruralized" family in Indiana... Take a look (and keep an eye out for the UPS truck in mid December):

Now that's a chair!!  I'll update photos of this as well once I install the arms (and the satellite TV dish), sand it, paint it and whatever else I decide to to do.

That's about it for now.  We will keep you all posted as to how things are going and we really appreciate your interest in what we're doing.  It's nice to get your emails and comments and we encourage you to ask or suggest things anytime you want.  Except about the chair... the chair is off limits...  Just keep those comments to yourselves...

Kevin