A typical day at the museum

 Most people wake up, have a cup of coffee, get dressed and go to work.  We like to be a bit more leisurely in our morning routine.  We enjoy a cuddle while watching highlights from The Late Show, or John Oliver.  After that, we do our exercise, have a glass of juice in bed and take a nice hot shower before dressing and starting the day. By now it's 10 am.  

I head into the office to search the auction sites for puzzles we are wanting to obtain while George putters around with his 3D printers, or designs new puzzles on his computer.  Around noon I head to the kitchen to make lunch for us and we park our bottoms outside to watch the golfers go by while we enjoy a long lunch.  

The afternoon is dedicated to a nap for George and a bit of puzzling for me or a round of golf. I'm currently attempting to put together all of the crystal puzzles I have so when new ones come out I will be caught up.  Dinner in the evenings is a leisurely affair either in front of the big screen with a movie George has been wanting to see, or in the breakfast room with candles lit and a good bottle of wine.  

But now all of that has changed.  It's jump out of bed at the first ping on my phone because the work crews are coming in, lunch gets started around 10 because we usually have a crew of at least 8 to feed.  George is busy building shelving units while I am working on organization of what is about to come in.  At night I make dinner and we collapse.  We purchased an air mattress for the museum and have been using it for the past month since we started working there.  This past week we finally decided to sleep in our own bed.  How wonderful it is.  Such a simple thing.  

But you don't want to read about my daily life, what you are interested in is information on the transfer of puzzles.  The movers have begun packing puzzles and they will be boarding a ship soon.  We've been told they estimate that 1/3 of the puzzles have been packed up and moved into storage. The trip across the ocean will take a month, then it's the wait for customs and driving them up to us.  Yes, I said them.  This will take TWO containers to get to us.  TWO.  I had no idea.  Then there is the unpacking....AND, I'm still working on that catalogue...

These shelves look very different from the last time I saw them.

One truck down, so many more to go.

On to the museum progress. The library is finished and from the looks of the photos James has sent us, we will need every inch of space. George is experimenting with his phone camera. The shelves are flat, I promise. 

The garage powder room has had all the disentanglement hooks installed, and the bar cum laundry room hooks have been painted and hung.  The shelving above the washer/dryer have been installed and are awaiting painting and trim.  The doors to close off the washer and dryer are on order.  George calls this area the room of 1000 erections.  We plan to keep wire disentanglements here.  Should we run out of space in these two rooms, we have at least 4 more areas in mind to put them.

The holes in the walls have been patched, the shelves are being covered for painting and the hook has been placed in the ceiling to hold a puzzle sculpture we have coming in. 

The ceiling has been painted, the calking work has been completed in the library and all the book shelves have been remounted so we can get to the electrical outlets, and finally the under-stairs cabinets have been built.  It's amazing how many small details go into putting this place together.  The guy calking the bookshelves in the photo below didn't like the way they looked when mounted so he has now trimmed them all and has done a real bang up job on making these Ikea book cases look like they were purpose-made for the space.

This set of cubies is a double set of Kallax boxes with  a custom made end that weighs a ton.  It was measured to fit the width of two Kallax boxes and the angle of the stairs.  It simply didn't look right with out the addition.  

Tomorrow I take one more load of the Kallax boxes from Ikea.  This time it's much smaller.  I believe we only have around 53 of them coming in.  It should take a week to assemble and place them.  After that, They will be on their final push to be mounted and the garage floor needs finishing off.  Then it's just waiting on the arrival of the puzzles.  This project is a puzzle cave in the extreme. When we started it, we had a dream.  We had no idea how much work would go into actually bringing that dream to fruition.  

Finally, a bit of puzzle candy: Three for the price of one. This museum piece belongs in a museum.  Open the drawers and you will find surprises a plenty.  The golf ball is hanging off the edge because I got tired of finding it each time someone wants to see the marquetry.  And of course, what's a museum without a dinosaur skeleton or two-yes, they are puzzles!  Made by Beverly for the Japanese market.

It's all coming along nicely now.  I am eager for July to roll around so we can start unboxing and installing puzzles.  That's when the real fun begins.