After two months of living in a hotel, we finally moved back home this weekend. It’s been long journey having to put our home back together after getting hit by a tornado, but it’s nice to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Even Bentley was getting sick of living in a hotel.

Since we were out of our home, Anita and I took the opportunity and redo our shower tile. It turned out to be a huge pain in the ass but we’re happy with the results. We redid our bathroom 15 years ago but it seemed a little outdated so we figured it would be the perfect time to spruce it up. Includung the new tile, we had the electricians install a can light in the shower so it wouldn’t be so dark inside.

All the rooms needs to be repainted after the drywallers replaced our ceilings. Anita is taking charge of this since she loves to paint and she says I’m terrible at it.

We had our hardwood floors refinished and I saved $700 by installing the shoe molding myself. I used my Stanley 150 miter box and it did a fantastic job. It was nice and small and it was a lot easier to use than dragging my power miterbox upstairs.

We put our kitchen back together as soon as we could so we could stay at the house and eat dinner. Fortunately, our appliances and cabinets were in pods in our driveway so we just had to put them on a dolly and wheel them back in.

With the house being a priority, the shed will have to wait a few more weeks until I decide how to take it down and what type of shed to rebuild in its place. Hopefully, I’ll get back to woodworking in a few months but there’s still a boatload to do, including putting up the crown molding in the dining room, the backsplash in the kitchen and the railing on the deck.

As bad as this experience has been, the worst part of it is that my cat died. She was 18 and in poor health. We couldn’t bring her to the hotel every night so we kept her outside as she was an inside and outside cat her whole life. I would feed her at night as we went to the hotel and then again in the morning to let the contractors in the house. I saw her around for the first couple of weeks but then I never saw her again. I asked my neighbor if he had seen her and he said he did at first but hadn’t seen her in a few days. I assume she went off in the woods to die. She had stage four renel kidney failure. The vet said she would only last another six months when I took her in two years ago. She had a great life. I’m just sorry she died alone.