Stix and Brix Projects

It's hard to believe it has been over four years since we purchased our condo in the Lexington Lakes Community in Stuart, Florida. When we bought, our plan was to live here in the winter and travel in Opus four or five months a year. We did that in 2019 and it was great. But like in so many things, 2020 and Covid changed our plans. While we have been cruising, going to all inclusive resorts and returning to WashPA the last two years we have had more time to do projects in our new home. 

When we moved in the sellers left all the furniture and much more. We have replaced some things but the dining area and counter gets a lot of use. That is where I'm starting this post. Because it gets so much use the wall under the counter was getting marked up and needed to be covered. After much thought we decided to make it into a wine corner.

The first step was putting together a wine rack to install in the corner. It took a while but I finally got it assembled.

We decided to buy old wooden wine boxes to cover the wall. We first laid them out on the bedroom floor. It was like working on a jigsaw puzzle without knowing what it would look like when finished.

Once I started gluing the pieces to the wall there was no turning back. Some had to be trimmed but it slowly came together.

Nothing says job well done like a smiling wife. Nanc can now buy a few bottles at a time and have a place to store it.

You can see how different it looks now compared to the first picture. There are a couple of symbolic things on the wall, a wine cork with 2019, the year we bought the condo, printed on the top. Another thing is a box from Opus winery, we called our RV Opus, and another with an archer, Sagittarius is our Zodiac sign.  

After we moved in we realized the kitchen storage space was not as good as what we had in Opus. The pantry had a bi-fold door so the 18 inch opening was only 14 inches wide....

....and the four wire shelves were not very deep. Almost half the pantry was wasted space.

We bought five slide out drawers to replace three of the wire racks. The drawers were cut to order but had to be assembled.

After removing the three lowest wire shelves and patching the holes I needed to use 2X4's and wedges to narrow the space where the drawer sliders would be attached. 

Next I attached the sliders to one of the shelves to make sure they would fit. Surprise, surprise! Even though the condo is relatively new, the pantry was not perfectly square meaning each corner was a bit different.

After painting everything I installed the five sets of guides for the slides.

We left the top wire shelve in place and installed the five new roll out shelves. The old bi-fold door did not have trim which I needed to glue and screw in place as the new door was attached to the new trim board.  

The new door was the next step. It had to be where it would open all the way to the wall to clear the shelves when they were rolled out.

The last step was a new spice rack that fit nicely inside the door frame. The pantry now holds double what it held before and everything is much easier to get to.

Another project for Nanc. She took a class and made a neat patio stone out of glass. She did a heron, her favorite bird. 

This is a project we had done. The concrete at our entrance was very discolored and it was not something that could be scrubbed out.

The same thing on the patio. The concrete also holds dust and dirt and there is no water spigot in the back so it was difficult to keep clean.

Along with two of our neighbors we got permission from the HOA manager to have an epoxy finish put on. First the old material was sanded and vacuumed.

Then they painted.....

....and spread flakes on the paint.

After letting that dry for a couple hours they top it off with epoxy.

The finished entrance. 

The finished patio. They both look much better and will be easier to keep clean.

This was the living room when we moved in. Everything here came with the condo when we moved in. It was okay, but it did not feel like our home.

The living room has slowly been changed by Nanc with our own pictures, a new rug, sofa and recliner. We are very happy with our home in Stuart and it now has the feeling of the way we want it to be. As in most homes the projects are always ongoing but our place is finally feeling like home.   

End of an Era - Stuart Life

It has been a long time since we posted a blog. As we said in the last post,we are much more comfortable being out and about since we were vaccinated and we have been enjoying that new freedom. Some things have changed, while in other cases it is like we never stopped what we had been doing pre-covid. We have tried several new restaurants, been to the beach, took in a baseball game and continue our weekly gatherings here at Lex Lakes.

As the title says, an end of an era. Nanc decided it was time for her to move beyond her old flip phone and move into the 21st century. We went to the Verizon store and she got a new iphone. It took a couple days and one return visit but she is now all set.

Wow, she gets a new phone and all she wants to do search the internet!!!! Yes, a new era has begun:) For those who want to call her, her number is the same as the flip phone. The difference is, she will now have her phone with her and turned on most of the time. 

Every Wednesday the Lex Lakes Happy Hour group gathers in the driveway. One week it was very rainy and muggy so we invited the group inside our place. We felt safe knowing we all had our shots.

We were on the patio one evening and caught this peeping Tom looking inside our place.

Here in Lex Lakes we have all our ducks in a row.

It's great having the beach so close. This is the Bathtub Beach, so named because of the reef, were the white waves are, keeps the water calm. It was low tide when we were there and you could walk to the reef and not get your bathing suit wet.

Soaking up the Florida sunshine. One thing we learned being here since November 2019, there are more cloudy days during the summer than the Chamber of Commerce likes to talk about. 

A egret rookery. It is hard to see but there was one blue heron that tried unsuccessfully to butt in.

Our neighbor Morgan was doing a fundraiser at the St. Lucie Mets game. The Mets class AA team plays at their spring training facility.

We had great seats looking down the third base line. It was great being at a game in a neat little ball park and watching the Mets bring home a win.

Morgan (right) on the big board presenting a bat to one of the donors for the event. Being at a ballgame is another sure sign for us that things are slowly getting back "normal".

There are three lakes at Lex Lakes and this picture taken at the end of May shows that we were in need of some rain. As we are now in the rainy season the lakes are filling up. 

Don't ask me why I did not get a picture with the real person. We knew Broadway Joe, a Western PA native, had opened a new restaurant in Jupiter that we wanted to check out. As we were walking in Joe was walking out. I called his name and told him we were fellow Western PA natives. When he asked where we were from I told him Washington and his response was, yeah, Little Washington. As any native would know, that is what the locals call it. We had a nice chat for a couple minutes. He was very open and friendly and I was impressed that he did not try to sell us Medicare insurance.

Our view from our table at Lucky Shucks. The food was very good. This is one of three restaurants in the complex that vary from up scale to pub like with different food offerings and pricing. 

A new mural in downtown Stuart is of the House of Refuge at sunrise. The city does a good job keeping the town looking good. 

One thing we really missed during covid was the Sunday afternoon Rockin Riverwalk concerts. There are different bands 50 out of  the 52 weeks a year. This band was a very good bluegrass band.

On the 4th of July the band was Burnt Biscuit, a band we heard last year and really enjoy. They had the place rockin for three hours. After the concert we had an early dinner but did not stay for the fireworks. We are glad we left as the display of flashes and noise in the sky were both man-made and natural. 

Nanc getting rid of her flip phone was not the only era that ended this month. We are now without an RV. Since we had not used Opus for nearly a year and a half we decided it was time to sell. Even while not using it was costing us a lot of money for storage, insurance and a repair we wrote about a couple posts ago. This does not mean we are done traveling and a smaller one may be in our future.

Even though we had removed all of our clothes and many other things from Opus, we still spent three days cleaning and removing everything else. Some of the boxes fit on the shelf I built in the garage last year, but more storage was needed for the rest of the stuff as having things on the floor make it impossible to get out of the car.

We have a small storage area off our patio where all this stuff was just stacked, meaning if you wanted something on the bottom you had to move many things.

I had three 2 x 4s that one of our neighbors gave me and some plywood and screws left over from the garage shelf project. I only had to buy a small 2 x 2 sheet of plywood to finish the job. Of course this was when lumber was very expensive so I asked for an armed escort to protect me on the way to the CRV.  

The completed shelves with all the stuff from the picture above in place. Almost all the RV stuff that was on the floor of the garage fit on the top shelf, so the passenger can get out of the car in the garage when it is raining.

Nanc had another project. During our twelve years on the road we collected a lot of memorabilia of the many places we visited. Nanc wanted to display much of it on our glass coffee table.

We found a slightly smaller piece of glass to put under the top and now have a beautiful collage with reminders of our twelve year adventure traveling across the USA and Canada. That time being full time tourists and retired travelers is something we will always look back on with the fondest memories of the places we visited and the many, many people we met along the way who became a part of our lives.

OUR PLANS.

Even though Opus is gone we still plan to travel. We will be leaving Stuart this week, slowly heading north. We plan to spend a few days in St. Augustine, then visit my brother Rick and his wife Denise in North Carolina before spending two months in an apartment we rented in WashPA. We will have plenty of time to get caught up with family and friends as we won't be doing all our doctors and dentist appointments back there. On our way south in the fall we are stopping in Washington, DC and then spending a week on the Outer Banks at the old motel we stayed in many times before we went on the road. We also have reservation to spend our anniversary in Punta Cana. 

One thing I don't know is what will happen to this blog. It is a journal of our travels and I don't want to be writing about the routine things we do here in Stuart. I may blog about our travels this summer and see how that works.

One thing we know for sure. We will still continue to LAISSEZ LES BON TEMPS ROULER!!!!!