I'd spent the previous four years renovating our house, bungalow, and property. A back-to-studs house reconstruction, a slightly less complicated renovation of our guest house (except for that pesky front room), a renovation of our barn/shed to include an exercise and yoga room, a pool and deck installation, a vegetable garden, a garden utility shed, a lot of fencing, retaining walls, some steps, a French drain, I know I'm missing a few things. I did a lot of this work myself. I was tired.

Rather than start in on the room redo, I figured I'd goof around with the new train tech. After repeated consultation with Stretch and another train enthusiast, Dale, who lives in a cabin in Maine, I ordered up the track and accessories for Phase One, the upper loop. I had my locomotives modified. And, oops, I bought another couple locomotives. After all, it was a bigger layout, so it would need more trains. They're hard to resist. Luckily Delia was still on board. I set up a small oval in our barn so I could learn and test the tech.

But the room beckoned. It required a re-skim of all the walls, new trim, new cabinetry to accommodate shelf junk displaced by the layout and new equipment, and once the shelf was in, new lighting, and, of course, the security cameras.