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August 19 Pat's addition to this blogAugust 19, 2007. We are in the middle of a heat wave and drought in Durham . Work on the house reached a peak before August 10th when Yerik Tlekin, our 12-grade Kazakhstan exchange student arrived. Margit and I agreed with the contractors that the downstairs of the house would be habitable and that Yerik would not feel like he had no where to be.
Although we don’t have some door knobs, like to the new powder room, and two ceilings (back hall and kitchen) need to drop a foot to accommodate the new plumbing upstairs, Yerik’s room is really nice. Theron has done a super job with the painting and Jonathan Garrett Builders have really done an excellent job on all of the remodeling and upgrades. All the windows (19) have been replaced with new, aluminum clad wood, double pane windows and the outside / inside molding has been rebuilt by BJ the master carpenter. A major delay upstairs was trying to deal with a 3 – 4” dip in the floor / joist system and putting the plumbing of the two new bathrooms somewhere in the ceiling. We did not want a step up to happen going into the new bathrooms. Finally after all of us went upstairs and stared at the space for several days we redesigned the bathrooms, moved a couple of theoretical walls, put the toilets in the two bathrooms closer together and swapped the master room vanity with the Jacuzzi / steam shower. This results in two 9’ ceilings downstairs and all the floors upstairs level and with only a 3/4” inch difference in between rooms. So as Theron continues painting downstairs the work upstairs is progressing. This week we should get the rest of the windows installed upstairs and a sub-floor so the plumbing can be put in. We are planning some vaulted ceilings so it should give a new open feeling. The Jacuzzi / steam shower arrived (finally) and is now stored in the garage which has turned into our building supply storage.
Yerik is getting accustomed to the US, living with this strange American / Dutch family and being woken by BJ and Juan setting up to do the work that day. He has been helping me to put up curtain rods, mirrors, and bathroom towel racks. Yerik’s spoken English is good and he starting to figure out all the idioms I use and my sarcastic remarks about everything. He is reading a book that was required reading in the Durham schools last year and finding out more about International Studies on the internet. Margit has been able to spend the whole week with him so they are bonding well.
The excitement of our Spanish vacation, the marriage of our son Joost to our wonderful daughter-in-law Laura, house destruction and finally the reconstruction, and the arrival of our new son Yerik for 10 months has been juxtaposed with my sister’s struggle and death from lung cancer which ended August 5th. She was diagnosed in April and unfortunately ended spending the last months of her life in the hospital due to complications of her chemotherapy. So my life has been filled with painful phone calls and several trips to Florida to try and help with her decline and the memorial arrangements. I am saddened by her passing and the absence of a life long friend and my closest relative. I am blessed to have such a caring and loving wife who is my life partner. We are very excited about the adventure we will have with Yerik here this school year and our new house being completed. Excelsior Patrick and Margit
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