Welcome to Hanvey's.com

Our Home in the U.K.

This is our new home in England. It's in a nice village about 5 miles down a country lane off the main road south of Yeovil in Dorset County. There's a bakery down the street, a post office an old (hundreds of years old) church, a golf course and lots of paddocks and bridlepaths. On our drive down the lane off the main road we pass a big lake that has a marina and lots of sailboats, a goose and duck farm, a dairy farm and a nursery. We're about 40 miles north of the coast (English Channel), it takes about an hour to get to Stonehenge, and is about 2 1/2 hours to London...

I have been going to London for the day about once per week this past month for training, but in the future I'll go there about once a month for business, which I think is cool. I had spoken with people here who would say, " Oh, I have to go to London tomorrow...", now I get to say it!

We have a nice long weekend and I'm trying to get the harley ready for it's inspection tomorrow. We're still settling in and I still have work to do in the garage as well as helping Rhonda organize all our other storage. We've got a trip to Paris planned for next month, we'll take a train from London and spend 3 nights there, in the Louvre district.

On a darker note, most of you already know that my grandmother passed this week, she was 91 years old. She went peacefully in her sleep and her suffering was kept to a minimum, for which we are grateful. She had a long and happy life, and although I'll miss her, I'm thankful for all the wonderful years she was there for us. I'm really glad she didn't have to suffer and that we got a chance to visit her last Thanksgiving, and that she and Rhonda got to meet before we left. She was very bright and active then, and thought that Rhonda was really sweet.

The "End" is in sight...

Well, we've nearly finished with our housing upgrades. We installed the new linoleum in the guest bathroom last night, after I replaced the sink.

The old sink was enameled steel, and was rusting and old looking. I've never been a big fan of steel sinks so I replaced it with a nice Kohler ceramic one. That and a new faucet that has a higher clearance and swivels, it's really nice.
Rhonda was installing the second half of the linoleum, laying and spreading the glue when I noticed her underwear sticking up out of her pants. She had glue on her hands, so I decided it was "wedgie time"! Boy, did she get mad. First time I've given a wedgie to anyone since I was about 12. Hilarious.
She did a great job today caulking and cleaning up, and we've only got to paint the two guestrooms. We're ahead of schedule, under budget, and everything is looking really nice and clean. I'm proud of us. And of the wedgie!

More housework/painting...

Rhonda's been working her tail off here, painting the living room and hallway. We chose an off white to cover the oddly out of fashion "Martha Stewart" colors what have been the decor for the past 4 or 5 years.

The rooms look fresh and larger with the newer whiter paint and I think once we clean up we'll be very happy with the outcome. The flooring is in one bathroom, as well as the trim and looks really nice. The guest bath is next, and we have a new sink and flooring for that room. I'm trying to work chores in on my off time. We've been able to accomplish a lot in a short period of time and at a very reasonable cost.

New bathroom flooring...

Rhonda and I just spent a couple of hours laying out and cutting our new linoleum flooring. Looks nice, but we're going to wait until tomorrow to glue it down.

The old linoleum was ghastly, and actually the master bathroom was painted hot pink when I moved in. I immediately painted over it in blue, and Rhonda has been having fits trying to prime and paint it, I think she painted 4 or 5 coats of paint over 2 or 3 coats of primer, just to cover the blue. We chose a nice off white/yellow color, it's called "pumpkinseed". After Rhonda got the painting done and pulled the trim off, which she's painted white, along with the bathroom window/ledge, we pulled the shower door and rebuilt/cleaned it and then had to pull the toilet out to place the new floor down. We had also replaced the sink, the old one was a steel/enamel that was rusty, so we pulled that and put in a ceramic one...looks nice. We'll post a photo as soon as it's done.