Unseasonably warm weather has brought an early spring to north Texas. Even though this post is about the LOAP Alpha, I’m opening it with a shot taken out of the window of the upstairs master at the SoMoToHo, which I’ll get back to in future posts very soon (promise). This Mexican plum joins saucer magnolias, apples, pears, and all manner of flowering fruit trees bursting with renewed life and color – all before February has drawn to a close. Lovely. It makes us all that much more anxious to get the LOAP Alpha finished. And we’re making progress!

Things are happening in a lot of different directions right now. I’ve been using the blank kitchen space to spread out and assemble a vanity from Ikea for the hall bathroom.

These things have a lot of small parts. This pic was taken after most of the cabinet, itself was completed and I still had all of these little things waiting to be used:

Here is a shot of the vanity, minus the drawers:

The self-closing drawer glides are a nice touch. You can see where the sink will fit in the center support. The cabinet was sold without legs – if you’re installing it on a solid wood wall, you wouldn’t need them. The wall attachments, however, aren’t adjustable to ensure that you can hit studs, so we’re going to use legs to support the weight and prevent wall anchors from pulling out of the sheet rock. Finished product to appear in a future post.

The inside portion of the new HVAC system was installed.

As was the new water heater:

And new garage doors (SUCH an improvement!):

Speaking of doors, I need to brag on Debra a bit. We knew that we wanted (and needed) to replace the doorknobs in the Alpha. Many of them were missing and others didn’t work properly. We also are replacing the doorknobs in the SoMoToHo because they’re all shiny brass and we don’t like them. Rather than purchase new knobs for the Alpha, Debra decided to re-purpose the ones from the SoMoToHo. She sanded and spray painted them.

I think they look great:

Very proud not only of her initiative but in following through and finishing the project. And, I confess, I didn’t help even a little.

Still speaking of doors, among those that we replaced were the front:

the hall closet:

and the larger closet in the “blue” room:

I’ve begun replacing the bad boards on the deck out back

and replaced the mailbox:

New windows are about to go in, the better to see the beautiful spring foliage popping out.

In honor of the spring, I’ll close this post with a picture of a gorgeous bush outside the window of the blue room. I’m not sure what it is (flowering quince?) but it certainly is putting on a show:

It won’t be long before we’re ready to transition the Alpha to some new owners – I hope you’ll be there!

Thanks, as always, for reading!