Tornado...

Tornado certainly describes the past couple of days in our household.  Robyn had been complaining about her leg for the past couple of months.  She strongly suspected that the artery leading to her leg was blocked; she had stents put in about 3 years ago.  Friday, she had an angiogram and the surgeon found that the stent in the right external iliac artery had closed.  He said this was basically due to tissue growth caused by inflammation; the left side was okay.  He put in a new stent inside the existing stent that rotated as it was inserted to remove the tissue.

Friday was a long day.  We had gotten to the hospital at 8:00 am expecting her to go back shortly thereafter.  She was taken back for the procedure until about 12:15 pm.  They finished up about 1:45 pm.  After laying completely still for 3 hours, Robyn was moved to a room in cardiac care where she spent the night.  She on restrictions (no driving for 3 days) and then reduced activity for 10 days.

As for the other tornado in the news, my sister, Tammy, who lives in Mississippi about 30 miles south of where the tornadoes went through, went over to Alabama near Tuscaloosa with a friend of her's to volunteer at one of the local churches.  After spending the first part of the day sorting donations, they went to a local residence where they worked to clear debris from the yard.  Tammy compared the devastation to that which was caused by Katrina.

Here are a couple of photos she took yesterday:

Saturday morning, while I was waiting on Robyn to be discharged, I went over to the house, which is only 10 minutes from the hospital where she was, to put another coat of mud of the soffits in the living room.  Robyn was discharged at 12:30 pm.  We picked up some El Loro for lunch to celebrate a late Cinco de Mayo ( the line was out of the door on May 5th) and had Robyn home by 1:30 pm.

After getting her settled in, I headed back to the house for some more work.  I actually had a very productive day.  

I worked on the small closet in the master bedroom which I needed to complete so I could put down the flooring.  Alternating with the other closet in bedroom two, I spackled, masked and primed.  I could hardly believe, in one of the closets, I could see wallpaper patterns bleeding through; I wondered if it was the original and if there had been only one coat of paint over it in the past 110 years.

As spackle was drying, I pulled the ugly cove molding off in the middle bedroom.  I couldn't understand why anyone would have put something so ugly and sloppy up... until I saw what was underneath.

Once again the original wallpaper was visible... along with a gap of anywhere from 1/4 to 3/4's of an inch.  Apparently when the house was re-wired, they put sheetrock on the ceiling.  Rather than tape off the edges, they covered the gap with cove molding.  Although the joints were pretty sloppy, they weren't anywhere as sloppy as the tape job I saw in the larger closet.

Rather than replace the cove molding after we painted the room, I decided with all my new mudding experience I would go ahead and tape and mud the junction of ceilings and walls in the room as well.

We had to do our most extensive wall repairs in this room.  The floor has settle some and the stress had caused the plaster to crack and, in some places, fall out.

Between the general grunge and scribbling on the walls, sometimes it was difficult to see where to patch.

One more layer of mud and some sanding, this room will be ready for paint.