Kitchen progress

Ruth walked into these rooms when we got home today and said, "Wow! Pretty walls." So true, Ruth! Here's the current state of the kitchen. The old wall is gone, and new wall blocks off laundry room (french doors not yet installed). Fridge will go on the left where the sink used to be, and new sink will be located under the window on the right. Ceiling will have beadboard instead of drywall.

Pre-insulation, same area:

Looking the other direction. Stove will be in the center of this wall. City building inspector said, "Yup, that's insulation."

By the end of the week, the drywallers will be 100% done. We can then start priming, hooking up lights and outlets, and moving on to floor tile. Cabinets get installed on 9/19!

Before & After - Front Door

Quite the transformation with the new color scheme! Since our house is located in a historic district, the colors had to be approved by the historic district commission. Front Door After The colors and products used here are (not affiliate links): Door - Sherwin Williams Cajun Red ( link , a pretty red-orange in real life, looks slightly more brown here) Siding - Sherwin Williams Rookwood Blue Green ( link ) Trim (white) - Sherwin Williams Pure White ( link ) Trim (teal) - Sherwin Williams Still Water ( link ) Porch floor - Sherwin Williams Pewter Tankard ( link ) Brick foundation (not shown) - Sherwin Williams Rookwood Dark Brown ( link ) Mailbox - Ecco E4 in Bronze ( link , available via Amazon and elsewhere) Similar Craftsman-style Door With Dentil Shelf ( link ) Front Door Before

Alaska Day 8 - Wasilla

The second to last day of our trip, we had a relaxed travel day back south with the goal of ending up somewhere near enough to Anchorage for us to turn in the RV on time the next morning. Jim did some fishing (no luck), we had a leisurely breakfast in our boondocked RV, and wondered when exactly a huge moose pooped so close to our RV during the night. Fishing by our boondocked RV We didn't have a campground reserved for the night, but knowing that Anchorage campgrounds are primarily super expensive parking lots, we decided to stop 45 mins north in Wasilla. The city might be best known as the hometown of Sarah Palin, and it was covered with Palin signs. We later learned that Alaska was holding elections this Tuesday (Palin lost). In more entertaining news, Wasilla is also home to the Iditarod Headquarters and Museum. The Iditarod is a long-distance sled dog race covering over 900 miles in 8+ days. The headquarters had dog houses but no dogs visible during our visit, so we looked ar...

How We (Lazily) Earn Credit Card Rewards for Travel

I've mentioned before that we use credit card rewards points to cover some of our travel costs. Since this is a topic I've gotten a lot of questions about, I thought it was worth a post to help anyone who's considering getting into the travel rewards game. Before we jump in, two disclaimers: We are lazy travel hackers. If you want to learn how to get free business-class seats to Bali by churning 6 cards a year, I'm not your gal. More power to those folks, but that level of obsession and planning is not for me. If you deal with open credit the way I deal with open packages of chips, stop reading now. Credit card travel rewards work only if you never pay interest or late fees. Seriously. If you don't pay off the full card balance every month, you'll never make more money from the card than they make from you. Likewise, if you buy stuff that you wouldn't have ordinarily bought just to earn rewards, that's a loss. How much can you earn in rewards? Generally...

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