Thankfully, this log cabin of ours does NOT feature one thing true of the original log cabins in the U.S.–an outhouse. Thus, I actually deemed it fun deciding how to “outfit” our 2 bathrooms, our kitchen sink and our laundry sink.

I wanted the bathrooms to have that arts and craftsman “feel,” so I already had decided that the fixtures would all be white, as they would have been back in the arts and craftsman era.

As you might suspect, this is where the hubby’s engineering end of the build came into play with my aesthetics end. This was particularly true of two plumbing areas: faucets and toilets.

I have had a lot of bad luck with faucets throughout my life. Why? Because I listened to commissioned salesmen “voices” who sold me on Moen and other brands I knew I didn’t like in the first place. In my experience other brands leak remarkably soon after installation and become a cleaning nightmare in the process.

Howdy, Word Lovers! Last week’s WOW (Word of the Week) was bloviate. The Merriam-Webster definition is: to speak or write verbosely and windily. How have I gone over a half century not knowing this word when I’m quite obviously a bloviator. Example A right here, folks!

The father-in-law gets darn close on this one–honestly, he should win this one because he stated that it’s about talking at great length with a lot of hot air and that’s probably the connotation of this word in every day use. I hear Bill O’Reilly is a bloviator. Not sure I’m wild about being lumped in there with Mr. O’Reilly, but I suppose there are lots of ways to be verbose!

This week’s WOW is veld. Here are my guesses for its definition; I feel like I should know this one, but I’m not completely certain of its definition:

The Mom person and I do not exactly agree on my food. I will grant you that she buys me tasty food, but she and I don’t see eye to eye on the matter of how empty my bowl should be before she refills it. Doesn’t she know that it’s my food and thus, I should control when it gets refilled?

She maintains that it should be really empty–absolutely no food in the bowl, no matter how long and how stale it gets. I espouse the “sniff test method” and if I think it’s past its expiration date, I’m not eating it. Besides, the last few morsels are usually pretty difficult for me to get to, since the ornery little suckers move to the outside of my bowl where it’s hard for me to get my rather large, lumpy nose and mouth positioned so that I can eat it.

While we were acquiring flooring, cabinets, counter tops, appliances, and plumbing fixtures, we were still existing with few interior doors. There are no hallways in the cabin to utilize every inch of floor space, so not having bedroom and bathroom doors all this time was often a problem.

If the hubby and I were the only ones there, it really wasn’t a problem, unless neighbors or contractors came without warning. But if our awesome family came to help, it really made things awkward for all of us.

Even for our little cabin, there were a lot of doors. Eleven interior doors had to be stained and sanded 3 different times. Since both sides of a door have to be treated this way, that makes for 6 different rounds of sanding and staining per door, or 66 rounds total.

Trying to sand and stain one side while another side is drying is very difficult for even the best do-it-yourselfer. Based on all of these factors, we decided to have our interior wall staining crew price this job. It turned out to be a very reasonable price and within a weekend, we had doors installed!

Yes, yes, yes, I know…I’m late with this post. But here’s the good news–I’ve written the rough draft of 53 pages of my book. At least I think that’s good news.

Last week’s WOW was agon. Merriam-Webster says that agon means the dramatic conflict between the chief characters in a literary work. The DD was right on target with her guess that it had to do with fighting!

This week’s WOW is bloviate. Here are my guesses for it:

bloviate (ˈblō-vē-ˌāt) 1. what happens to your insides when you realize you’ve just blown it 2. a former Soviet 3. inflating something, preferably not your ego

What’s your guess for bloviate? Comment below to see if you are right next week!

Wednesday’s Post: Interior Door Staining…

You Might Also Like: Word of the Week: agon; Word of the Week; blench; and Word of the Week: sacerdotal

I’m getting lumpy. Seriously lumpy. I have lumps on my nose, my legs and my torso. This does not exactly make me jump for frisbees, folks.

One got so big that the Mom person made me go to the place where they often stick me. The people are nice enough…I’m just not wild about what goes on there. There are weird smells and I have to heel and I just want to get out of there as fast as I can before they can stick me again.

The last time I went I not only got “stuck,” but I had to spend an entire night there! It was the longest night of my life. There were all kinds of dogs there, barking and whining. We were all together in one big room and we had to eat weird dog food and drink weird water.

And I don’t even know how I got there. One minute they were sticking me and the next minute I was in that room with all the other dogs and I had a wowie-owie on my leg. They wouldn’t even let me lick it to make it feel better…it had this weird kind of meshy fur all around it.

As you may have noticed, I have a “particular vision” for this cabin and I don’t compromise that, easily. Part of the “vision” was to have very, very simple farmhouse cabinets. And while I’m sure the hubby could have made cabinets for our kitchen, laundry room and bathroom, it was just too time-consuming for a guy who is regularly on the road.

Thus, we elected to use a local cabinet maker. The hubby selected the cabinet maker he felt would do the best job. Unfortunately, I am a very “visual” person–I have to “see” what something is going to look like before I can tell you if that is what I envision. Our cabinet maker chose to very roughly sketch how the cabinets would look and the drawings were not to scale. The hubby convinced him this was necessary to get a final okay from us.

Then, he wanted to put crown molding on everything.

Good evening, Word Fans! (Okay, so I’m late with this post…)

Last week’s WOW was blench. Merriam Webster Online says that blench means: to draw back or turn aside from lack of courage or to flinch. Ummm….this begs the question: Why not just use the word flinch??? It’s the same number of letters. In fact, with the exception of two letters, it’s the same friggin’ word! Clearly, MaryAnn is not a part of the word wizarding team at Merriam-Webster when they’re deciding what words to label “archaic” in their dictionary. I suppose now that most of us look up the words online anyway, deleting out-of-use words from the dictionary is not a particularly cost-saving venture anymore. But, still!

This week’s WOW is agon. Why do I have this weird feeling all my favorite MIP readers are going to know this one??? Heck, I feel like I should know it, too, so here are my guesses (both serious and not so serious) for agon:

agon (ˈä-ˌgän) 1. the condition or state of someone or something being gone 2. how a Southerner refers to processing cheese and/or wine 3. all gone 4. argon gas once it has started dissipating (Think about it–it will hit you later.)

What’s your definition of agon? Comment below with your guess!

Wednesday’s Post: Cabinetry at the Cabin

You Might Also Like: Word of the Week: blench and Word of the Week; sacerdotal

It’s been a long time since I played in the Big Water Bowl. Honestly, I had begun to wonder if I had done something wrong while there the last time. When the Mom person leaves with those ominous suitcases and bags, she gets angry if I hop in the back of the thing with the  round legs.

But, today I got to go with her and the Dad person both! And when I was whimpering, as usual, once we got inside the green metal gates, I noticed that there was a NEW big water bowl. I say, big only because my regular water bowls are very small by comparison.

However, this is a bit of a misnomer (Yes, I know the word misnomer, because I live with very brainy people.) since this big water bowl is much smaller than the old big water bowl. The new water bowl is in front of the gray house with the big back porch (great for naps on a warm afternoon, by the way) instead of near the big back porch.

Last Wednesday I discussed how we wound up with Wild Horse Sandstone for our counters and tiled areas of the cabin. We even considered putting the floor plank tiles everywhere in the cabin. Indeed, that would have made for easy clean-up everywhere.

When I think of log cabins, I do think of wood flooring. With its rising popularity these days, it seemed important to put in some wood flooring for a few parts of the cabin, particularly since we hope to rent the cabin in the future–potential renters would expect to see wood floors in a log cabin.

Thus, I began researching the possibilities for such flooring. If you are a fan of this blog’s Friday posts, then you know, all too well, that we have a golden lab by the name of Maizie. Maizie is a sweetheart, very smart, and we adore her presence most of the time–she’s often both our entertainment and our dearest companion now that we have an empty nest.