Seen at Goodwill

We stopped by the Goodwill store looking for a blender (the folks at the rental office indicate that we need to have a blender supplied in the casa for our tenants).

We didn't find a blender...

....but we did see a roll of baler twine!

I found it interesting that it was classified in the Electrical department at Goodwill... I hope no one tries to use it as electrical wire! (I'm guessing the department just indicates to the workers/volunteers where it should be placed in the store.)

 

AireBeam Fiber

I posted about the work going on in our park to install fiber internet service (https://journeyinamazinggrace.blogspot.com/2025/11/fiber-project-in-park.html). The providers of the service are funding the installation, at no charge to our community. I had an eye doctor appointment scheduled, so Carl went without me to a presentation that provided information to encourage us to sign up for the service...

He sent me this picture while I was at the eye doctor's office to show me that the room was packed. They had moved the meeting to one of the larger rooms in our community as the number of folks who indicated that they were interested in attending was quite large. They were giving away free donuts... and you know about seniors and free food!

Flyer provided by the company

The speeds listed are for both upload and download (many times companies tout their download speeds, which is good for streaming videos or reading social media, but they don't have as great upload speeds which are needed if you are uploading videos or pictures). We can't imagine that anyone here in our community really needs anything more than 500Mbps -- our current Verizon home device provides about 60Mbps download and ~10Mbps upload -- and that is faster than what we were experiencing when we were traveling this summer. If the new service really provides 500Mbps, then we'll have much faster service than we have been receiving. There are incentives, however, to go to the higher plans, that end up making the price not a lot different for the first year... so although we've signed up for them to provide us the 500M plan, by the time they get to our house to do the run to the house, we might decide to go for the 1G or 750M plan.

Some completed projects at the casa

We are renting out the casa (the older park model next door to our RV lot) to tenants for 4 months this season, so we're getting it ready for the tenants who will be there December - March.

Carl had gotten a Nest thermostat from the electric company when they were running a special last season. We liked it because we could control the temperature from our phones without having to go over to the casa. But, when we had friends and family staying there, it did not seem to be intuitive for them to use to control the temperature themselves at the unit. We decided that we should put the old unit back into place...

... so Carl took the Nest thermostat down...

... and then replaced it with the old style thermostat.

We also had dealt with a screen door at the slider door that was not easy to use, and had a hole in the screen at the place where you would pull it to open or close. We had tried several things to try to make it slide more easily, but nothing seemed to work. We decided that, instead of trying to put new screening on the door, we would get a new screen door for the sliding door...

... we got one at Home Depot (it had English on the other side of the box)...

... the new screen door installed.

Honestly, we're a little disappointed; it does not slide much better than the old one. We've waxed the runners, but that doesn't seem to help. We decided to leave it slid open -- I think the number of times that the tenants will want to just have the screen closed is going to be low (most people use the air conditioning or heat much of the time here, not wanting fresh air), and it is there, albeit not real easy to use.

One of our neighbors gave as his opinion that we need to get something better than the lowest cost option to get a screen door that works well, but he agreed that they rarely use their screen. 

We're almost done with the projects to have the casa ready for renting. 

Some more tasks completed at our new house

Carl has been busy with lots of tasks around the new house (as if he did not already have enough with the motorhome!)...

We installed in a new keyless (combination) door lock on the front door so we don't have to carry our keys all the time around the community.

He got the new switch (that lights up when it is on) installed for the water heater.

He spent several days (bits of time over several days) trying to debug the issue that we weren't getting hot water at the kitchen sink... here he is examining where the pipes go from the water heater...

... and checking where the pipes go from another access point under the house.

Under the kitchen sink -- such a tight space! He found that the hot water was getting delivered to the faucet, but the faucet was not delivering it -- he determined that there was some restriction in the faucet. He hooked the hot water inlet up to the cold water input to the faucet and we got hot water (but no cold except when we just turned the faucet on). He worked on the faucet -- determining that there must be some debris in the hot water line -- used the air compressor to clear it out (though we never saw the debris) -- and now it is working (we hope that the debris has not lodged itself somewhere else that will later cause a problem). Then there was the challenge of re-tightening the faucet's connection to the sink -- we borrowed a basin wrench from a fellow resident and after much tribulation, we have both hot and cold water on demand at the kitchen faucet!

Whether it is a motorhome or a house, it's always somethin'!  

New flooring

I mentioned before that one of the big projects that we wanted to get done at our new-to-us park model is to replace the carpet in the living room and bedroom with a solid surface flooring. Last Thursday was the day...

We elected to move the furniture out of the rooms ourselves -- you can see from this view of the living room how discolored the carpet was, and how it has ridges from needing stretching. Carl found a carpet stretcher among the tools that the previous owner had in his shop -- so we think that the previous owner may have stretched it, or attempted to stretch it, in the past. Since our community has asphalt roads, it is inevitable that we will track in black dust on our shoes... and that had been done a lot to this carpet -- the areas where furniture had been or an area carpet had been laid over the carpet were the only clean areas. We didn't think that it was going to be worth trying to clean and/or stretch the old carpet.

In preparation, we moved much of the living room furniture in the dining/office area...

...we put some more of it onto the front porch.

We got the bedside tables out of the bedroom, and we put the mattress into the bathroom, but... we couldn't move the base -- too heavy and too awkward. We decided to leave it and ask for help from the installers. When they came, they indicated that they could just move it around within the room as they worked -- great! cuz there really was no other place to put it!

The installer brought in a few pieces of the new flooring so we could approve that it was what we wanted (it was!).

 

I had to leave to go to a doctor appointment (normal testing), so Carl was left to "supervise" and deal with all the noise and disruption...

They took up the carpet in the living room...

... product awaiting installation on the porch.

They did a lot of sanding down of the subfloor to remove any raised portions that would cause the new flooring to not lay flat.

Laying the flooring -- we got laminate flooring as it was recommended as being the best for raised Arizona room floors (not on concrete). Christian, the installer, used something that looked like a large nipper to cut the pieces at the ends of the room.

Work in progress

After the installation, we wanted to clean all the floors before we put things back... 

... so I was cleaning under the bed (it has a foundation that raises up like in an RV) when Carl took this picture.

Some of the living room put back together (Miss Kitty is on her heating pad on the sofa). The furniture came with the park model when we purchased it.

We still have more things to get set up in the living room -- the home theater system that we brought back from Kim's and other electronics need to be re-hooked up. Right now, the TV is working with a Fire stick, so that's sufficient for the moment. 

We are happy with the new flooring -- though, as Carl says, we won't even notice it after a week or so!

Powered chairs

We've been doing a lot of doctor / dentist / medical test appointments since we've been back in Mesa. When I was in a waiting room last week, I noticed the chairs across from me...

Hmmm, what *is* that down at the base of each of those chairs?

Ah, yes, it is power outlets -- two for USB connections, and two for 110V.

I guess if someone had come along with the patient, they might have a long wait in the waiting room, but this made me wonder how long I might be waiting before they called me back! It would be nice to have these kinds of chairs at airport gate areas! 

Half a dessert?

We enjoy going out for a nice dinner, and we went to Longhorn Steakhouse since we've been back in Mesa. We both ate half of our steaks at the restaurant, and brought half home. Then we shared a "Chocolate Stampede" for dessert -- but it is two pieces of cake, so we asked that half of it be packaged to-go.

They served us one piece of cake and two scoops of ice cream, and gave us the other piece of cake in a to-go container.

The picture from their website

Description from their website (https://www.longhornsteakhouse.com/menu/chocolate-stampede/prod280602): 

Six different kinds of chocolate, paired with two scoops of vanilla bean ice cream and drizzled with chocolate sauce for a dessert so big, you'll need the whole herd.

All kinds of decadent!