Visitor in the house

My father is visiting this week--I drove down to Moultrie Friday night, and he came back with me Saturday. Saturday night we all (he and I and my brother and sister-in-law) had an "adults dinner", going back to the Woodfire Grill on Cheshire Bridge Road. Excellent restaurant, and we had an extremely knowledgeable waitress who steered us through both the menu and the by-the-glass wine selection. I had a mixed grill of lamb chop and duck breast with muscadine sauce--very nice.

Sunday Daddy and I went to hear Barbara Mertz speak over at Emory. Mertz is better known as Elizabeth Peters, the mystery author. The event was sponsored by the Carlos Museum, which specializes in Egyptology (Mertz has a PhD in Egyptologv). She was very entertaining, even to my father who's never read any of her books. Lots of anecdotes about real Egyptologists who've been used as source material for her books, lots on the writing process, and then a longish question session.

Daddy's visit was planned mostly around Friday, which will be "Grandparents and Special Friends Day" at Westminster, my older niece's new school. I was the fall-back "special friend", but as it turned out, niece will have sister-in-law's parents, my father, and me there. Daddy's visit nicely included the Mertz lecture, and sister-in-law's parents are here for Rosh Hashana. Westminster lucked out in their event timing.

A little movement on remodeling

I somehow let various stresses in other parts of my life overwhelm the tasks needed to keep the kitchen renovation moving. And as my designer is unfortunately having upheavals in her life, she wasn't prodding me along. But I finally sent her the last set of selections (sinks and faucets, and cabinet inserts), and she hopefully is working on the final plans.

In the meantime, I'm going to do a bathroom renovation. Don't think I've blogged this before, but I decided that the very aged fixtures in both bathrooms needed replacement (lavatory faucets and toilets, that is, not the tub and shower fixtures), and that I'd like to replace the counter tops while I was at it. I talked to the contractor who did the last round of work for me, got a bid, and this morning he got the signed contract and the deposit. I didn't meet with him as I had a conference call at work and couldn't wait until the contractor and the fabricator arrived. But brother and sister-in-law are getting some work done at their house too, so I just left the contract and check with them and told them to let the fabricator in to measure at my place.

I'm going with Corian countertops and undermount sinks--Linen color countertop in the guest bathroom (which has peach/pink tile) and Dusk in the master bath (dentist's office green tile). The fun for the fabricator is that the current formica counters were installed before the tile was laid, so they will have to break the old counters out and then contrive to fill the hole in the tile. I'll use a slight backsplash up the wall, as there's bound to be some breakage as they remove the counter and there's no hope of matching these 1960's vintage tile colors.

I'm hoping the bathroom work might get done next week, after Daddy leaves. We'll see what the contractor's and fabricator's schedules look like.