How to patch where that window was...

With Grandma in the TCU, getting the hole cut between the addition and the existing house took a higher priority. Thankfully Korey was able to come over the night before she was supposed to be discharged and he and Matt worked together to get the opening cut through the old exterior wall.

Look at that! From the entry we can now look right through into the kitchen!!

As a 1939 house, the original cape cod is finished with plaster, and not drywall like more modern houses. We'd been wondering how we were going to make a decent patch where we removed the old window. Matt had a brilliant idea - we saved the chunk of plaster and backer that we had to cut out when we cut the doorway between the new addition and the existing kitchen! For a few weeks, it just lay against the wall in the kitchen next to the opening:

Looks kind of funny!

But then, when he had a free afternoon, he carefully measured, and cut it down to size: 

And now, with a few screws and some joints to patch, we've got a finished wall surface that perfectly matches the original 1939 finish!

It will never be "perfect" but it will look WAY better than any other option we had beyond refinishing that entire wall! We particularly like the way the plaster was finished on the lower (white) half of the wall. It's smoothed and scored to look like tile, because, as a Depression era house, there was no budget to *actually* tile the walls in the kitchen.

So there's one more little bit done! AND Grandma got to come home up the ramp and roll right into the house on level ground. Amazing. Besides the even more amazing fact that now Bobbi can get herself in and out of the house independently! After nearly eight years of needing to be carried in and out every time, she can now do it by herself. :)

...and then Grandma broke her hip...

 The timing of things has always been one of my favorite ways to see God at work. After the last post (late October), things really slowed down on the garage. For starters, we were able to get Thunder IN!

Look at that! Big van IN the garage!!

And a view from what it currently looks like from the outside.

And once we got that done, combined with colder weather, really lowered the motivation to keep pushing hard (time to get *other* things done around here!)

So, the van's IN. The ramp is done, but we still are going up the ramp into the mudroom and then having to duck down through the old door and up the same old two steps into the kitchen.

And then Grandma fell and broke her hip the week before Thanksgiving. They ended up doing surgery, but because of the severity of her Alzheimers, she has no idea what happened, and why she needs to try standing and moving - all she knows is it hurts - so we ended up having her move out of the hospital into a transitional care unit for the time being.

But now we have real motivation to get the opening between the entry and the kitchen done! Bumping her up and down steps to get back into the house does NOT sound like a good time for anyone!!

Here we all are celebrating Grandma's birthday with her at the TCU:

We managed to get everyone - even Owen - and were given the use of the activity room to fit all of us! That's a Snickers cake the kids made for her. :)