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Mea Culpa! We skipped our weekly update last week because, well, life got in the way. But we’re back on track. I think.
Un-Groovy Hurricane Florence
We want to give a heartfelt “thank you” to all who checked in on us before, during, and after Hurricane Florence. Fortunately, we remained pretty unscathed here. Rainfall was heavy and the winds reached maybe 40 miles per hour on Saturday. But all in all—we’re very lucky. None of our family’s homes were affected and we’re all safe.
Monday we tried to take our regular constitutional on the greenway path, but we soon came upon a barricade by one of the creeks along the way. Then we turned around and took a different path but ran into the same issue. We ended our walk by going up and down the hilly streets in our neighborhood. However, by yesterday morning we were able to resume our routine. Here’s a view of a pond we regularly pass on the greenway. All was back to normal and the skies were blue.
Effects of Florence on Groovy Ranch
Groovy Ranch is totally intact. No leaks or blown-out windows. Terry installed temporary locks on the two doors to keep them from flying open and he boarded up the garage opening. We found one small issue that’s a remnant from the storm—a trench with standing water. The water will either dry up on its own or Terry will pump it out. Another rain-filled trench already dried up, so one more day of sunshine might do the trick.
Build Update
I don’t believe we’ve shared an image of the exterior of Groovy Ranch painted white. We’re so happy we stuck to our guns with our color choice.
Work resumed yesterday on Groovy Ranch. The tile guys were putting up the backer board in the bathrooms and the dry wall guys were sanding the ceilings in the great room. Terry’s floor guy completed the installation of all the oak flooring last week. We’ve got red oak throughout the house, except for the two bathrooms and the utility/mud room. This week we need to decide on a stain color for the floors.
We’re seeking a light, rustic floor to complement our walls, cabinets, and our yet-to-be-purchased furniture. Terry provided us with samples of eight colored stains on red oak but we weren’t doing back flips (as Mr. Groovy says) over any of them. We did some research and decided to buy some stain and do a little experimenting on our own with a few remaining floor planks. We tried Classic Gray, Weathered Oak, and a 50/50 mixture of both—and we decided to go with Weathered Oak. It creates the perfect farmhouse look. We know the floors won’t exactly match our experimental plank because the installer will sand the floors, stain them, and finish them with two coats of polyurethane. If we were 100% on top of our game, we’d go to those lengths ourselves—but we’re just not that finicky.
Groovy Book
We want to give another heartfelt “thank you” to all of you who supported us in launching Mr. Groovy’s book, The Groovy Guide to Financial Independence. We’re extremely appreciative of the purchases, the mentions and images of the book on other blogs, the emails, comments, and reviews. Josh from Money Buffalo blew us away with this glowing write up—thank you very much, Josh. This is such a great community—bloggers and readers alike!
Speaking of a great community, we missed an error in the book but fortunately, Susan from FI Ideas contacted Mr. Groovy about it. In what other space do bloggers and readers send private emails to alert you of a mistake you made?! It’s more common that they call you out, deride you, and embarrass you in public. So thank you, Susan. Again, this is SUCH A GREAT COMMUNITY!
The error in the book was actually made by the person we hired to format it—but that’s no excuse. We should have caught it. I think we were just SOOOO ready to birth this baby of a book that our worn out brains and eyes were incapable of picking it up. But Mr. Groovy made the correction and it should take effect on Amazon within a day or two. (The process involves replacing the book file; you can’t simply edit the book directly on Amazon.)
If you haven’t bought the book and think you might—I suggest you do it now because we’re raising the price on Friday. We always intended to sell the book at a higher price but we wanted to make it very accessible during the first couple weeks of publication. We also enabled the book for sharing and made it available though Amazon Prime. That won’t change. And if you don’t know about The Groovy Guide, you can read all about it in my previous post about the book launch.
That’s it for this week, groovy freedomists. I hope you are all safe and sound.
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