Free Food On The Hoof

Well, actually, on the stem ....

In less than a month, this young forest will present us with a year's worth of blackberries:

The salmonberries are ripening nicely and should be ready early next week:

And the first crop of rhubarb now resides in the fridge, ready to be chopped and baked into tomorrow's muffins:

Motivation

How do I get it back?

I had so many good intentions ... I was going to find a good job, finish organizing my workroom, finish all four sweaters, get a herb garden going, plant some raspberry canes, get out for a long brisk walk every day, get started on making a real patio out back, watch a couple of my DVD lectures every evening, post a blog entry at least once a week ...

None of those things have happened, not really.  I'm still working on the first sweater a little bit at a time, I do go for a walk every few days, I did make it to all my job search workshops, and I do chip away at the workroom organization a little bit almost every day.  But ... I just can't seem to get motivated to actually finish anything.  For the last couple of weeks I've spent far too much time reading fiction, overeating, and watching NCIS reruns.

What happened?  I don't really know.  Maybe after being hors de combat for so long, I tried to do too much too soon?  Maybe the loss of FatBrat hit me harder than I thought?  Maybe the job-search stress and uncertainty is getting me down?  It could be one or all of those.  It could be  -  Goddess forbid!  -  that the clinical depression that runs in my family has finally tracked me down?  Though I don't really believe it's depression ... when I do get out for a walk  -  usually with P and The Dog  -  I really enjoy it.  And when I get something significant done in the house or the yard, it makes me happy.  And I do enjoy socializing with friends and family.  But it takes a real effort of will to get off the sofa and do something; though once I'm doing whatever it is, I'm glad I did get up.  So I think my problem is a lack of motivation.  But how did I lose it, and how can I find it again?


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Sister S and I took Mom to the rhododendron gardens at Deer Lake Park on Mothers' Day  -  lovely gardens, a beautiful warm sunny day  -  altogether a very good afternoon.  That's Mom in the bottom pic, asking me to get a close-up shot of the lovely red blooms:

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I have a couple of promising job leads, both for work I'm very good at.  One is what I would call my "dream" job; it's local (which means a one-zone transit pass at $81/month), it's in export lumber, it's with a company that only deals in FSC-certified forest products.  Overall, this would be the job I'd keep showing up at every day even if I won the lottery.  The other is also in my field; it's export CS for a shipping line agent, and while it's in downtown Vancouver (a three-zone transit pass at $151/month) it's at a company where I already know some people, have worked with them before, and get along well with them.  So, now I wait to see what happens with those, and in the meantime I keep looking.  Who knows?  There might be something even better out there!


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I don't normally talk about specific products by name here, but I'm going to make an exception for this one: I will never again use Avon hair colouring, nor will I recommend it to my Avon customers.  It's touted as a "salon-quality" product, but (at least in my case) that only applies if said "salon" is affiliated with a clown school ...  The brochure, the package, and the website all called the colour I chose "dark brown".  After following the directions to the letter  -  and I've been colouring my hair for nevermindhowmany years  -  did I get dark brown?  Nope ... I got a weird bright purplish red.  Think day-glo maroon; and vigorous shampooing only served to tone down the purple a bit while making the red even brighter.  So it's back to Miss Clairol for me  -  she's never let me down. 


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P and I, while walking The Dog, discovered a really nice little park a few blocks from here.  It has a grassy field and a kids' playground, but also has some nice trails through a patch of forest.  We've found blackberry canes galore, of course, and also lots of salmonberry vines.  So we're checking on them every few days and hoping, once they're ripe, to get our share before they're all gone.  Salmonberries are best fresh, while blackberries make fabulous jam; salmonberries also tend to be ripe a few weeks before the blackberries.  I foresee a number of walks with ice-cream pails in hand ... exercise, sunshine and fresh air, and free fresh berries!  And S has said I'm welcome to go over and dig up a couple of her raspberry canes, which I'll probably do next weekend.  I already know where I'm going to put them  -  along the side fence in the back yard, where they'll get plenty of sunshine but will be out of reach of hungry passers-by!


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It doesn't look like I'll get my patio this year after all.   Currently it looks like this:

 Sigh.

It's actually all paved with 12" x 12" cement slabs; I'd like to keep those, but pull them up and put down a bed of gravel and sand, then lay them back down level with better drainage.  Then I'd put my lawn swing near the left back corner, my sundial (now residing in the basement, alas) in the centre, put up a trellis across the back with grapevines (Thompson seedless if possible), have planters along both sides for my herb garden, and maybe get a little wood-burning chiminea for cool evenings.  I'd prune all the overhanging laurel back to the fence line, but leave the white lilac alone  -  I can't resist the smell of blooming lilacs!  (In fact, I went out a little while ago and cut a bunch for the living room, which now smells heavenly!)

Big Guy is trying to convince me that if he moves all the firewood from the fence side to the garage side, there will be more patio space.  Sure there will, just like Daylight Saving Time actually makes the day an hour longer ... if I cut a foot off one end of a blanket and then sew it on the other end, will I have a longer blanket?  Thought so.

And it's not just the firewood, it's all the other junk.  Windows we took out of the house that he might put in the garage wall some day, outdoor toys the girls outgrew a decade ago but might want back some day, a dozen empty cat litter pails we might need for something some day, a dead water heater he might turn into a smoker some day, dead tires he might turn into planters some day ... scary stuff, some of it.  And you'd think, with a 900-square-foot workshop and a storage shed, he could find a better home for the stuff he absolutely can't part with.  Some day ... I will simply start hauling the crap out of that area and dumping it where he has to deal with it or keep tripping over it.

But for today ... back to the sweaters.

Finally Getting Somewhere

After almost four months of forced inactivity (illness, injury, house guest) I feel like I'm finally starting to make a little progress.  I've rescheduled all my job search workshops, I'm getting out for a long walk almost every day, and my workroom is coming together beautifully.  I have the fabric ready to lay out and cut for the curtains, and nearly all the organizing is done ... only two more shelves to go.  Then some art pieces will be hung up, and I will be a very happy camper.

Even the sweaters are moving along nicely!  The pink hoodie is almost completely sewn together, and the camel short-sleeved v-neck pullover is half-sewn and awaiting its neckband.  After that, the green shell will get sewn together and neckbanded, and then the cream/wine/forest cardigan will get sewn together and its shawl collar and i-cord ties knitted on.


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I've been thinking a lot about money lately.  Not surprising, since Big Guy was just laid off again.  Today I emptied my piggy bank and rolled up what I could, and was very pleased, when I added up all the finished rolls, to find I have $200 to deposit into my savings account tomorrow.  (I don't deposit loose coins, just whatever can be rolled.)  This makes up for a third of FatBrat's vet bill, so I'll have that money back in savings quite a bit sooner than I thought.

As the years go by, I find Big Guy's attitudes towards money more and more aggravating and worrisome.  For example, he has no problem at all spending hundreds of dollars he doesn't have on the truck ... but even though he's been the only one driving my car for the last few months, he refuses to chip in a penny for the insurance because "it's not his car".    Well, the insurance expires next month, and if he wants to drive it after that, he'll have to insure it, because I can't afford to.

It just really, really bothers me that he's always taken debt for granted; his view is that everyone has debt, everyone lives and dies with debt, and his debt load is not a big deal.  He actually doesn't mind having thousands of dollars in credit card debt plus a ten-thousand-dollar overdraft!  It completely baffles me that he's never given a second's though to who will get stuck paying that off if he dies ... or maybe it ties into his ongoing conviction that his income is his alone to do whatever he likes with, while my income is "ours" and should all go into maintaining the household.  And people wonder why he doesn't know I have a savings account!


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This year's gardening is off to a somewhat slow start.  The tomato seedlings are doing well, and all the varied flower seeds daughter P planted have sprouted nicely.  However, when I went looking for my stash of veggie and herb seeds, they were nowhere to be found.  It turns out Big Guy tossed them all because he thought seeds over a year old were no good.  Cue his red face when P pointed out that all the flower seeds she'd planted were at least eight to ten years old ...

So I'll be seed shopping tomorrow.  Sigh.  I plan to get green beans, zucchini, pumpkin, pickling cucumbers, parsley, oregano, tarragon, dill, thyme, garlic chive, sweet basil, mint, and spearmint.  If the price is right, I'd also like to pick up a few raspberry canes and some lavender.

The apple tree and the plum tree blossomed lavishly, and we had a few nice dry semi-sunny days, so I'm hoping everything got pollinated and we'll have a good fruit crop.  There are a few flowers on the cherry tree and none on the pear tree, but we didn't expect fruit from those two for two or three more years anyway.


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Is it cheating or stealing to scan/copy knitting patterns from library books?

Interesting Times

As in "May you live in ...".

And has it ever been an "interesting" few weeks!

First there was the broken elbow.  Ever try to shower with one arm taped into a trash bag, or put a decent bra on one-handed?  'Nuff said.  Even tying my hair back in its usual ponytail was a real challenge.

My very dear friend S arrived from the midwestern USA on April 8th.  Almost the 9th, actually, since her plane landed at 11:35 p.m. and by the time she was through Customs and we got back in D's car it was after midnight.  So far so good; we got back here and sat around drinking coffee and chatting until after 2:30 a.m., then D went home and S and I crashed.

The morning of the 9th, my elderly FatBratCat started throwing up blood.  Raced off to the vet, who wanted to keep her overnight to do bloodwork, x-rays, etc.  Went back on the 10th, and was told that she had suffered catastrophic kidney failure, and that at her age the prognosis was pretty grim.  So I did the right thing ... the only possible thing ... Why is it that so often, the kindest and most loving thing to do is also the hardest?  She did have seventeen good spoiled-rotten years.  And we did know that, like GabbyTabby, it was only a matter of time.  But losing two much-loved kitties in less than a year really hurts.  I get up in the morning feeling like I've forgotten something ... it feels strange not having a cat in the house for the first time in over thirty years.

Honestly, it would have been much easier to deal with if S hadn't kept pushing.  "You're not even crying!  When I had to put my cat down I bawled for days!  But then, I really loved my cat."  Finally I had to tell her, "Look  -  I don't cry in front of anyone, not even Big Guy  -  never have, never will.  It has less than nothing to do with how much I loved FatBrat or how much I miss her.  The subject is not open for discussion."  Rude to a guest?  Possibly  -  although not nearly as rude as what I wanted to say.  Especially after S then asked if I was going to let the cat's death spoil her vacation!  Well, no, I wasn't, but it was ... difficult.


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Between the 10th and the 14th of April,  we took S up to Lynn Canyon to hike up and down the river and across the suspension bridge, we took her up to Squamish for lunch and then to Shannon Falls, and D took her up the Fraser Canyon and into the Rockies as far as Revelstoke.  I didn't go with them that day, as I had to see the orthopedic specialist about my elbow.

The doctor very obligingly inspected the new x-rays and removed the cast!  Smiles all around  -  no surgery needed, I just need to be a little careful with it for a few weeks.

The following day we drove down to Washington State  -  D and S dropped me off at J's new place in Everett, then headed into Seattle for a baseball game (D is a staunch Mariners fan).  I just hope they enjoyed the game as much as I enjoyed my evening with J!

From the 15th through to when we dropped S at the airport the morning of the 21st,  we didn't go so far afield, as D had to go back to work and Big Guy had my car every day.  We took public transit a couple of times  -  into Vancouver to have lunch with my girls, and to Metrotown to do some shopping  -  and walked around the shopping areas here a couple of afternoons.  But with no car and the weather turning cold and wet again, we spent a lot of time in the house gabbing, watching movies, and playing cards.  I taught S a variant of rummy the girls and I play a lot, and she picked it up quite quickly in spite of its intricacies.


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In other areas since my last post  -  having a house guest really cramped my style in some areas, and it was very hard to bite my tongue:

Power must be super-cheap where S lives ... she never turned a light off, never powered down the laptop I'd set up in the guest room for her (even when we were leaving for the airport!), kept wanting the heat bumped up about eight degrees above where we keep it, took half-hour showers daily but never used a towel more than once, and ran the washer and dryer every night for whatever she'd worn that day.  Come on, a "full" load for one pair of leggings and a t-shirt?  Please!

Food waste  -  let's not even go there.  Never before in my life have I seen anyone eat half a slice of pizza, throw the other half away, then grab two more slices and do the same with them.  Or take the biggest pork chop and the biggest baked potato, then throw away a third of the chop and half the potato.

Frugality  -  went right out the window.  S wouldn't eat red meat but loves seafood (expensive), didn't bother getting enough Canadian cash to cover more than the souvenirs she'd promised her friends, wouldn't drink coffee but can't survive without a two-litre bottle of Coke a day,  took it for granted that D or I would pay for all her meals out, all her transit fares ...

She's still a very dear friend but it's so true that you never really know someone until you live with them! 


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Garden planning proceeds well, though rather differently than I'd envisioned last winter.  Big Guy decided to try starting tomato plants from seeds rather than buying bedding plants, and they're coming along very nicely.  He planted 24 seeds, of which 20 have sprouted.  Once the weather cooperates, we'll bung the best eight or ten into the outdoor tomato planter, and I'll plant chives and parsley in between.  The rest of the herbs will be in pots hung on the chain-link side fence, and if I can I'll be putting cages made of old window screening around those to keep the squirrels and birds from eating the plants.

My fruit trees are all blossoming, so I'm hoping the rain will hold off until everything's pollinated.  Apples, plums, pears, cherries, black currants ... if all goes well I see a busy canning/freezing/drying season ahead.  Not to mention the rhubarb, which I'll be eating the first stalks of this week, and the mint and spearmint to be dried for tea.  And if I can talk Big Guy into it, I'd love to put in some raspberry canes.


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What comes next?  Re-scheduling all the Options workshops I missed (between whooping cough and the broken elbow), picking up the intensive job search again, and seeing if I can't get my home-based business up and running again.  Oh, and starting a new batch of crafts for next winter's craft fairs.  And finishing four (yes, four!) sweaters that had to be put on "hold" until my new workroom was ready and I could use both hands again.  And the mending keeps piling up ...

Wish me luck!

If It Weren't For Bad Luck ...

I'd have no luck at all, as the old saying goes.

After eight long, dreary weeks of coughing and exhaustion, I was finally able to start really working on my new room again ... for two days.  On the third morning, I tripped over the suddenly-underfoot cat and smashed my elbow into a door frame.  Ice didn't help, heat didn't help, OTC painkillers didn't help, and after a while I could feel/hear bits of bone grating and realized I'd actually broken something, so Tuesday morning last week I gave in and went to Emergency.  At 6:00 a.m., figuring I'd have plenty of time to get the elbow seen to and still make my 9:30 a.m. workshop at the career centre.

Not so much.

I told the triage nurse at 6:00 a.m. that I'd broken my elbow.  So without anything to eat or drink or dull the pain  -  "Oh, no, nothing by mouth, in case it might need surgery"  -  the doctor sent me for x-rays, after writing up an order for an IV with one of the pain meds I had just told him I'm severely allergic to. And for the next twelve hours he could not be found, and apparently it's against some unwritten rule for another doctor to change the first doctor's written meds orders.  So while I sat there in tears from the pain, the doctor vanished.  Six hours later, he called the nurses' desk to say they should send me for an ultrasound.  He did not, apparently, feel any need to change the pain meds order he'd written, even though if they had given me the stuff it could have killed me ... Four hours after that, they finally actually sent me to Ultrasound, where they stuck a lot of huge needles into the joint and found no fluid or infection.  Finally, they decided to do a CT scan and then I was taken back to Emergency  -  still unfed, perishing of thirst, and in unbelievable pain  -  where the doctor wandered through, was surprised to see me still there, and sent the orthopedic surgeon to look at the CT scan and tell me that Guess what?  I've broken my elbow!  At that point, I'm afraid I may have sounded a little caustic when I replied that I knew that, I'd said so when I came in twelve hours ago.

So here I am in a fibreglass cast  -  at least it's not twenty pounds of plaster!  -  and enormously frustrated by how little I can do and how long it takes to do it.  I see the orthopedic surgeon again on April 12th, at which time he will decide if the elbow is healing fine on its own or whether it will need surgery.

But ... this coming weekend will include two moves and a family birthday.  And the following weekend a good friend friend arrives from far away for a two-week visit.  And though I'm not expected to help with the moves, I do need to come up with a decent birthday gift for J and get the new guest room ready for S's arrival.

Big Guy got called back to work this week.  Much rejoicing, but also a large upswing in my frustration level, since he will no longer be helping me with anything in the house and expects me to cook every night since I'm not working.  Even something as simple as a one-pot casserole takes forever one-handed, and I can't even pick up the heavy cast-iron pots and frypans ... well, if he's not happy with whatever meals I can manage, he can just cook his own supper!  Honestly, I'm not looking for sympathy, but a little understanding of how difficult things are for me right now wouldn't hurt my feelings.

* * * * * *

On the up side  -  I'm happy to report a week (well, nine days, actually) with zero food wasted and, except for the prescription painkillers that Blue Cross paid most of, zero money spent by me.  How's that for frugal?

Getting Back On Track

Ever notice how the longer you're away from your regular routine, the harder it is to get back into it?  That's what's happening to me now ...

I spent almost four weeks coughing to the point where I could only sleep, at most, an hour at a time.  Now, even though the cough has eased off considerably, I'm finding it really difficult to get to sleep.  Consequently, once I do finally fall asleep  -  usually somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00 in the morning  -  I have a tendency to either sleep until noon, or wake up early and then have a long nap in the afternoon.  I need to get back on track in keeping (more or less) "office hours" ... I also need to re-book all the workshops I missed, and get the job search up and running again.

The switch to Daylight Saving time this past weekend didn't help much, either; my body keeps insisting it's an hour earlier than it really is.  It always takes me at least four days to make the mental and physical adjustment; oddly, though, it doesn't take any time at all to adjust to putting the clocks back in the fall.  Of course, then I can just roll over and sleep for another hour  -  and as a person who's chronically short on sleep anyway, that doesn't hurt a bit!

I'm happy to report zero food wasted this past week!  There was one sad-looking forgotten apple in the back of the veggie drawer, but the guinea pigs leaped on it and it was gone in about three minutes, so not really wasted at all.

The work on my new room  -  shifting, weeding, organizing  -  is still going quite slowly.  Even though I'm not coughing much any more, I still get tired awfully fast.  I can work steadily for about half an hour, and then I have to stop and rest; if I don't, pretty soon I have to stop to cough for ten minutes.  Baby steps.  It will be finished before the end of the month.  Most of the furniture is in, the computer gets moved tomorrow, and the last bookcase goes in next week.  After that, it's down to organizing, and making the curtains.  And I already have two big bags of donations ready to go the next time we're headed that way.

It snowed this morning!  I was, naturally, utterly disgusted.  But by early afternoon it had stopped and pretty much all melted, so we were able to do the Costco run for the things that are (according to my price book) better value for the money at Costco than anywhere else in our area: milk, coffee, peanut butter, mayonnaise, and toilet paper.  Big Guy pouted a little when I said "No" to a $20 beef roast, until I reminded him that he had insisted we should eat out of the freezer instead of buying more meat until at least one of us is back to work.  Frugal win for me!

Big Guy spent yesterday pruning the huge old evergreens along the west side of the house.  Now we have a lot more daylight in the yard, and more light in the house.  He was worried that the sunshine might make the yard and the house too warm in the summer, so I reminded him that in the summer the sun follows a different path in the sky and we'd still have plenty of shade.

I was checking some of my old posts earlier today, and ran across something that may have appeared to be a big contradiction, so I'd like to clarify the house-heating situation at present.
When there is no tenant downstairs, we heat with the wood stove, since we only need to keep the main floor heated.  When there is a tenant, we use the furnace, since there is only electric baseboard heat in the bedroom of the suite.  And since we'd like to have the suite occupied all the time  -  after all, that's why it's there  -  we invested in the new furnace.  I'm happy to report that since its installation our gas bill has dropped by almost 35 %.  Combine that with the almost 45 % savings on the annual water and sewer bill since we had the (free) meter installed, and the huge drop in the gas bill we saw when we had the tankless on-demand water heater put in, and you can see why I'm not as unhappy about the cost of home ownership as I used to be!  Now, if we could only agree on what style of double-glazed window to put in the living room ...

I've given P the go-ahead to plant whatever she likes in the raised bed along the west side of the yard, and she has all kinds of alien-looking flowers and ornamental grasses planned.  Considering how little of what we've planted there in the past actually came into the house (as opposed to being eaten by the local wildlife), it's not really a loss for us.  My plan for this spring is to hang planters all along the chain-link fencing, with chicken-wire cages to keep the squirrels out of my herbs.  Fresh vegetables will be dirt cheap all summer at the farmers' markets, so I can buy and freeze enough to last a long time without going over budget.  Now, here's hoping the sun will shine the whole time our fruit trees are blooming!

Feeling Better, Sort Of ...

Wow.  I don't remember ever being sick for this long ... it's been three weeks so far, and I'm still coughing, though not nearly so incessantly or painfully as last week or the week before.  The doctor thinks I probably have/had pertussis (also known as whooping cough).  Oddly enough, though the cough was a killer and left me raspy-throated, achy-ribbed, and utterly exhausted, I had no other symptoms.  No fever, no rash, no green goop, no digestive upsets ... just the damn cough.  Said cough, I'm told, could take another week or two to finally disappear.  I'm finally starting to feel more like myself, though, and getting a lot of my energy back at last.  Which is nice after weeks of being too tired to pick up the remote and change the channel!

Of course, the job search had to be put on "pause" along with everything else; there's no mileage in applying for a job you can't go to the interview for, is there?  "Yes, I'd love to come in for an interview.  How about three weeks from now?"  That, I figured, wouldn't make a very good first impression.  So the plan right now is to spend the rest of this week getting the new workroom in order, and gear up the job search again next Monday morning ... including rescheduling all the Resource Centre workshops I missed.

Big Guy, bless his heart, tried to take care of me.  He made chicken soup, brought me Benelyn (with codeine for the aching ribs), intercepted phone calls ... then again, he also did his usual You-are-a-plague-rat-and-I-will-feed-you-with-a-slingshot routine.

And ... he painted my new workroom.  Just got up one morning, grabbed a roller, and did it.  Over my protests that I would do it as soon as I could stand up long enough,  He claimed he only did it because my new desk is taking up too much room in his workshop, but we all know better.  And I love him too.

So ... the painting is done, the windows are sparkly clean inside and out, the curtain rod is back up.  We're still working on the floor; it really needs professional refinishing, but for the moment all we can do is try to get all the paint splatters and scuff marks (from J's furniture) cleaned away.  I'm hoping to get the desk in there some time tomorrow; after that I can start shifting everything from the current room.  And yes, I'll be sorting and tossing/donating as I go ... nothing is going into that room until I'm absolutely sure it will be used.  I refuse to move things in that I'll just end up taking back out!

Our downstairs tenant gave us notice for the end of March.  Whereupon daughter P and son-in-law N promptly asked if they could move in on April 1st!  The suite is pretty small for two people and a dog (and two cats), but the price is right as P is still looking for work (she was laid off last fall), and N likes the closeness of the Skytrain for his daily commute.  So they have given their notice to their current landlord, and the weekend of March 31st - April 1st is going to be interesting, to say the least.  Oh, and did I mention that March 31st is daughter J's birthday?  "Interesting" may turn out to be far too mild a word for it ...

On the frugal front, things are going well.  Instead of buying paint for the workroom, I used primer and paint we had left from painting the living room a couple of years ago.  It's a lovely soft, warm oatmeal colour, with a white ceiling to reflect more light.  For drapes, I'll be using some fabric Mom gave me; a sheer lightweight silk patterned with pastel flowers.  Not my first choice, but it will work well with the room and is mild and inoffensive.  And if we can't get all the paint off the floor, I'll check out Freecycle and the local thrift stores for a couple of nice light-coloured throw rugs or sisal mats.

Convincing Big Guy to cook in smaller quantities is going to be harder than I thought.  Good thing we have that big chest freezer  -  which he now says we should be eating out of instead of grocery shopping!  I've been saying it for months  -  but now that it's his idea, it's a good idea!  ::sigh ::  But it looks like he might be back to work soon, which means I'll probably have to take over the cooking.  Now, I hate cooking.  Frankly, I'd rather scrub toilets than cook.  But if I do the cooking, I can control how much gets cooked, which in turn means I can cut the food waste way down.  We ended up tossing a quart of homemade chicken soup last week, because he made a huge pot of it and then stalled on batching it up for the freezer, and I was too exhausted most days to eat more than a tiny bit.

I was enormously amused by something I got in the mail a while back.  Last year I joined BC Hydro's "Power Smart" project; a couple of weeks ago I got a little package from them in the mail.  I opened it up to find ... half a dozen wooden clothespins accompanied by an estimate of how much I might save by hanging laundry up instead of using the dryer!  I giggled madly as I tossed them into the basket with the hundred or so I already have  -  I guess they had no way to know I've been hanging all my laundry for years!

Anyway, back to the floor cleaning.  I've been taking pictures at each stage of the room conversion; I'll post them when the room is finished.  Can't wait!