Remodeling - Day Seven

Today we got a rather late start. When we left our rental in Reseda it was completely overcast / smokey, but considerably more humid than the past few days. The increased humidity should help the firefighters battling the Station Fire. When we were driving up north the smoke was so thick that you couldn’t even tell that there were foothills around. On the 14 the air quality got so bad, that we had get our air through the AC only. When we got off Sierra Highway exit air quality started to improve. Once we got to the house the air quality was sorta acceptable. You still could smell the smoke in the air, but there were no billow’s of smoke visible, and that's always a good sign.

We talked with our contractor Danny about the way we wanted to have the tiles in the bathroom and on the fireplace. We also were talking to him about having the the carpet in the Living and Dining Room torn out and replaced with Bamboo flooring. Yesterday we found some nice Bamboo flooring at Home Depot that we liked for a really reasonable price. We haven’t made any final decision about that yet, but it looks like we will end up doing bamboo flooring in the Living and Dining Room.

Later we dealt with some touch up work in the Guest Room (Green room). While we were doing that the air quality got worse and worse. You barely could see the ridge in front of our house and Sierra Highway was nearly invisible. It pretty much looked like as if the entire Western Angeles National Forest was on fire. But I knew that wasn’t the case since Harry was keeping informed about the fire situation online. It’s great having a working Internet at our new house. The sound of Super Scoopers and helicopters flying back and forth to the fire line and dousing the flames helps to keep your mind somewhat at ease. The reason that the smoke got so thick was that we got the wind out of the south east during the afternoon hours (Acton area) where currently a lot of the active wildfire action is happening. Once the helicopters had completed a lot of their water drops, the air quality started to improve significantly. But we persisted and finished painting the nook in the Guest Bedroom the same color of the accent wall.

By the time we were done for the day, the air quality had pretty much returned to normal and no smoke billows were visible anywhere. We still didn’t want to take the chances so we packed up Harry's truck with more of my toys that we wanted to bring back to our rental in Reseda… just to be on the safe side. When we got home Harry checked the latest Fire Perimeter Map and it turns out the the north flank of the fire appears to be pretty stable and that the Northern Fire Perimeter is still south of Soledad Canyon Road. In essence that means that there are still at least between 10 and 11 miles between the Station Fire and our house. That certainly puts our minds at ease… But you never say never with fires.. could change at any moment.

Ok time for bed.. remodeling is hard work.