Happy New Year to you all. And Merry Christmas and Happy Thanksgiving as well, as I seem to have missed them all.

Looking back at my last series of posts (On the workbench) I was pretty confident that I would soon have time to do some major work on the layout. In fact in the first of the series I had said that I had a cut list and timing for getting the major projects going.

Unfortunately that all fell apart. First was work (and no, I won’t apologize for this as I have to keep a roof over the layout), the last quarter was hell with two trips suddenly tucked in between Thanksgiving and Christmas. My wife and I also host Thanksgiving, Christmas and this year New Years for family and friends, 20+ per holiday. And then the thing that totally shot any hope of getting anything done was a simple little thing off from my wife’s “Honey do list”.

She had originally asked if we could repaint the office as the color was left over from when my daughter had the room as her bedroom before moving out. I agreed as the color kind of sucked. The easiest way to tackle this was to move most of the stuff out of the office as we had desks, bookcases and other things tucked against the walls.

As I was laying out the plan to move things out so that I could gain access to the walls to paint them, my wife’s eye kind of glazed over as her mind went to work. Yes, I knew I was in trouble.

She felt that since we were moving most of the furniture out then why not move everything out. That way we could replace the carpet with a nice laminate wood flooring. And since we did that then she had some pictures of built in desks and shelving. If you give a mouse a cookie.

So her desk went down to the sunroom off from the dining room and mine went to the only other area that had any space… the basement. After I tucked a desk into the only open area large enough, which was at the end of the peninsula, getting anything downstairs was impossible.

Oh, and I had to have it complete enough to get things moved back in by Thanksgiving.

Tough schedule, but I felt I was up to the challenge. Everything was moving along well. Repaint ceiling and walls, check. Install floor, slight delay as Home Depot didn’t have enough in stock, but got it in, check. Start construction of built in desks and shelves, well this is where God decided to show he has a sense of humor.

My two least  favorite home projects are plumbing and taping and sanding sheetrock. As I was making pretty good progress on the desk part, a leak developed in the upstairs bathroom which came through the ceiling in the downstairs bathroom. I had to tear out a large part of the ceiling downstairs to gain access to the upstairs. It took me a couple of days to isolate the leak and repair it, which still left me with a large hole downstairs.

My wife decided that the office was more important and that’s was where I concentrated my efforts. I got most everything done in the office (except the cabinet doors) and moved everything back in the night before Thanksgiving. Then, between Thanksgiving and Christmas (and the business trips) I finished the doors and replaced the ceiling downstairs.

So, that’s why absolutely no progress to report, kind of. When buying wood for the office project I also picked up enough to get some stuff done downstairs. Before cleaning up out in the garage I cut a bunch of it up to sizes needed to get projects rolling downstairs.

They are as follows:

1/8 hardboard for the rest of the backdrops on the lower level and for the fascia on the lower level.

Wood for the power switch box ( will explain later)

Plywood for the upper valance supports.

And wood cut to size for the rails and stiles for the cabinet doors.

So I should have some progress to report soon, Till then, here is a picture of the finished office.

Till later, and it shouldn’t be long, Happy New Years to all and Happy Railroading…