A double caterpillar day

Dear readers,

This will probably the last “building under construction” piece from me until after we take up residence at the Folly.  This would certainly give the impression that we are close to doing that—not so.

The reason for my inability to blog away here is that I will be blogging away at tile and paint and plumbing and kitchens and bathrooms and – well it’s a long list.

The Folly is moving along at a now exponential rate—the closer we get the more hectic the pace it seems, and driven by the looming closure of our lease at the little yellow house. While I have in fact extended that by one month, it doesn’t seem like enough, given all that still has to be done.  Should I bore you with the list? Later maybe.

Going back to where I left off last time. 
I got tired of climbing ladders and attempting to paint the outside of the house and –given that I knew I could not scale to the high parts, (even with both original hips) I succumbed gladly to a recommendation from DtheB to a guy called Carlos.  Carlos bugged me for 15 more gallons of paint and promptly finished painting the house in two days.  Such a deal!  I was glad to cough up this cash as I was very bored with my slow progress.   But I must tell you a story of my last day with brush in hand because it amused me highly.

First let me tell you that I am really lacking in insect tolerance—see a spider and I run away like a frightened two year old or usually squish it fast!  So one sunny day while Jake,—(to whom we owe big apologies ‘cause his name is in fact JESSE—Paul got it all wrong again),

was covering in big holes that had been dug for pipes various, and running around in the aforementioned Caterpillar, who should I spy on the very top of my ladder, (i.e. on the platform) but a big furry brown caterpillar.  He had climbed all the way up to the top from the ground in a determined effort to say Hello it would seem. I stopped painting and watched in a bemused effort to not be “bug nuts” and decide what to do with him; you see I did not want my phobia of bugs in general to get me skittish up a very tall step-ladder!

So I waited as said furry thingy walked slowly in centipede fashion to the edge of the platform and poked his head over the edge.  And you could read his thoughts (or in any case I did) and he said—“holy smokes-that’s a damn long way down!”  Actually what he muttered to him/herself may have been a bit more “blue” than that but I am deferring to my high-class readers!  So furry slowly turned around through 90 degrees and walked to the next corner… same process.  So by the time furry had checked out all four corners of my ladder platform I decided that I had stuff to do and did not want furry making  me the next part of his route, in his search for a way out,  up a portion of my anatomy!  

So I did the unspeakable and flipped him gently over the edge,…. whereupon he flew with his furry parachute gently to the floor and didn’t miss a beat before waddling off.  He was very determined that he wanted to play with me because a few minutes later there he was again crawling up the garage wall into my line of vision. It was a double caterpillar day.  Jesse is now happily going under the moniker Jesse-Jake and he says he’s quite happy with that!

MEANWHILE:  All the subsidiary house systems were put in place by teams of guys who all came in and made a big mess—BIG!

The electricians came and turned Rob’s (Framing Fairy) forest of wood into a spaghetti factory. Every joist got drilled and wires passed through them.  We go regularly and adjudicate with visions of where our furniture will go to ensure sockets and switches must go—needless to say the COUNTY has a say in that too!  “YOU CAN’T put the switch for the Jacuzzi in the bathroom!”  Blah blah blah.

The same scenario followed for the heating guys who put giant silver tubes in the ceiling everywhere to carry air in and out and made big holes for fans.  We have had quite the dust-up with the COUNTY as I have islands in my kitchen but did NOT want a big ceiling- mounted extractor hanging over my head while cooking- I am a minor claustrophobe and those things bug me and I also have a tendency to bang my head on ANYTHING I can find within distance.  And I have a pot rack that is much more appealing!   Each insertion or process means waiting for another INSPECTION and a signature.  As I write Paul is meandering around the property waiting for our inspector to come and review the dry wall hanging.

Once the drilling, banging and hole-making was complete, I went in and vacuumed up ALL the sawdust between the framing for SEVEN HOURS!  Matter of fact, one of the inspections occurred while I was doing that and – it turns out- that our inspector—usually the same dude, says “haven’t seen a house this clean and over built in five years.”   Goodness!

Then came the insulation--- fluffy stuff between the joists and even piped in foamy stuff around tiny apertures.  Brother are we insulated. 

 I happened to stop by during this process (which they got done in ONE day) but did not have camera in hand. The insulation team consisted of two guys ON STILTS. The stilts had little feet on the bottom.  They were very sure- footed on them too striding about the floors like ninja’s as they stuffed rolls of fluffy stuff in every hole they could find.  I did catch the STILT process in a photo when the dry wall work was being done though—see below.)

And then it was time for the “sheet rock” aka “dry wall” material to arrive.

I had to supervise this and was prepared. I don’t know how many tons of this stuff there was but it filled a truck and a trailer!    The guy who did all the man-handling of this stuff weighed 150 pounds – go figure!

They unloaded the sheets one pallet at a time and swung them on a giant crane from the vehicle right into the front doorway.

Then they unloaded sheets one at a time onto a dolly and from there into each room of the house.  That was last Friday and on Saturday most of it went up onto the walls.

The last step now is to come along and do the process called Mudding and Taping; take all the nasty nails and joints in the material and apply goo and tape over them until everything is smooooooooth!

Another stilting process!  Then they will sand and spray and blow dry and then apply a texture – a bit like orange peel over everything so – you can’t see the joins! 

At this juncture we wait for this all to dry (around June  22^nd hopefully) and – the Paul and Maggie team finally get control of their domain inside anyway.  (As it happens dream ON!)

We bought 2000 dollars worth of paint a few weeks ago with me standing in the store saying, “we’ll do that bathroom in this color and the other bathroom in that color and wishing I’d figured it all out properly and earlier.  But when somebody puts the paint on sale you concentrate!   It remains to be seen as to whether I made the right choices!  We filled the back of Paul’s truck with many many buckets o’ paint!

We rushed to Renton and bought many dollars worth of cabinets which are now taking up space in the garage. (The MAN CAVE is full of appliances and kitchen cabinets-- to the doors!)

We took delivery of same a few weeks later and spent THREE HOURS checking the list.... have you got a 923.641.004?  We have to do that exercise all over again shortly when we start assembling them. Which pile belongs to the main bathroom, the guest bathrooms etc?"  Talk about bloody big jigsaw puzzles. We fight constantly as I want to begin work on this chore and Paul argues that we can't until the sheet rock work is complete.   And the clock ticks.

But at least we got two garage door openers!

Meanwhile I meet with carpenters and flooring dudes and Propane tank companies and tilers. Well I’m still trying to get with the tiler but – he’s busy; all the good ones are like Kings and have their subjects begging for alms and a slot in their calendars it seems.  (I finally got one but there's always a catch like "mom is sick and I have to go to California.")

You might wonder why Propane tanks—we’ll be like our own little filling station with a 500 gallon tank of it in the back yard. Why?  Well remember we are out in the boonies and there aren’t gas lines around here.  We will be using Propane for M’s gas wok cooking (I have an electric cooktop too) and for water heating and for WHOLE HOUSE POWER in a power outage. In Renton power outages were usually fixed in about 4-8 hours; over here we expect to be at the bottom of the pile so we plan accordingly. Anyway after some haggling the propane tank got installed and is gloriously ugly.

Paul (who has installed ALL the low voltage wiring throughout for cable, TV and internet type stuff and saved us a bundle) is setting up the Folly such that if the power goes out, the generator kicks in immediately to sustain us.  It’s a big one! No wonder I’m going broke.

JOCK—(all the folk who work here have names beginning with J, Josh, Jesse, Jim, no wonder Paul is confused) came to visit and looked over the estate.  He’s a landscaper. He went away muttering – “you do know that this is going to cost you $50 grand right”?  

No Jock me boy, I did not! But I feared as much!  Paul is going to need a riding mower to keep this lawn under control—it we don’t get it seeded before winter it will for sure become forest land again.  The other side of the house is already doing that with all kinds of flora and fauna poking through—and there ain’t too much flora - -crab grass and blackberries.

So I am frantically trying to decide how I want this 2.4 acres filled up before nature decides for me!

Yes I know—it’s too big… don’t nag!  It would have been full of trees only P wanted a fancy heating system!

The pile of wooden waste doubled in size.  Fortunately the neighbors know someone who is entirely sustained by wood for everything so he’ll be over like a hungry vulture to take it all away as soon as we give the permission.

All that remains to be done must be completed by August 28^th or so – when our lease expires and I have already planted myself into the calendar of the team who brought us here.

It’s an almost impossible task. Fortunately we have some jolly carpenter dudes (one of whom is 82 with a pigtail) standing by to install our smashing kitchen just as soon as the paint is dry.

It is surprising how time can be such a big factor. The bamboo (flooring) arrives in boxes on June 27^th.  ( not!) Apparently it must be allowed to get snuggly IN THE HOUSE for at least five days before it can be laid down.   “This is my new house, do I like it here? If not shall I throw a fit and all curl up at my edges. I think I’ll come out of the boxes and see.”  

Untll you do this in person you would just never know right? In the final analysis I had to defer that event for another two weeks or so.  NO room at the inn.

So dear readers, I am going to be working my a$$ off for next 8 weeks or so trying to hold tools for Paul, cutting and grouting tiles and laying a few maybe. And painting, doors, crown molding, floor molding (aka skirting boards) and nineteen interior doors.  (Not to mention the front door and garage doors too.)  And of course I have to repack this house ready for moving.  I am woman, hear me roar. 

If I can I will post a few photos for you to look at – but even that takes time which I may not have.

AND I won’t be able to blog much or at ALL after we move as—all the big ISP providers here are TOTALLY NOT interested in providing us with Internet services. So we have to go wireless and with very limited date transfer.  THAT DISCOVERY caused me a couple of days of angst let me tell you as I do a TON of work on the web daily, finding and sourcing things for the house and right down to recipes often.

GRRRRR

And so it goes and will go and go and go until we fall over!

Post Script.  Well here we are on July 4^th and most of the above is true apart from a few nasties. The dry wall team keep disappearing and my promised completion day went by several times.  We had expected to have all the painting done by now and we’ve not started yet and don’t know when we will be able to.

It is enormously frustrating as the end date does not go back in relationship to the damn delays.

Meanwhile we have tried to be productive:  I spent three and a half hours in our local department store on Thursday with a big spreadsheet in my hand with all my window sizes.

Three hours that went like this:  This window is light blocking with double cell shades, this window is textured, 46.625 or is it 46.5?  Did I make a mistake as I entered all this data at 00:30!  By the end of this session my head was pounding but I saved 1000 dollars  on my shades so it was well worth it!

I painted the ugly grey electrical conduits on the side of the house...(if it moves salute it, if not paint it.)

I wanted to be sure that when the masonry went up, the pipes would blend nicely. I think I did a good job don't you?

Paul visited one of our local lumber factories and got a contractor’s rate on all our crown moulding and floor molding…  1200 feet of each and ALL of which has to be primed and painted by yours truly.  I bought a sprayer! SIGH.

Last week we FINALLY got around to making the template for our bubble frieze.... we're late doing this and will be unable to acquire the bubbles in time to tile the main bathroom-- so the "floating bubbles" (which would take too long to explain here) will have to be used in the main counter backsplash instead of the original plan. The bubbly folks are becoming famous and people are ordering bubbles by the bucket-full so we're at the back of the queue.

In the middle of ALL of this I got pneumonia and a nasty thing called Interstitial Cystitis.  (Remember how I said my kidneys were bugging me last time?  Well not actually but it feels like it.) So I went through some fun exercises that included cameras in fundamental orifices and a force-filled and emptied bladder. At the end of which the docs shrugged their shoulders and said, “some women suffer this way.”  Gee thanks!   After some VERY miserable and painful weeks I took myself to a homeopath who correctly diagnosed me as suffering from near Adrenal failure and has recommended supplements which support the glands and have made a difference.  For a while there I could not hold myself up on my own legs—pneumonia takes a devil of a time to fix and of course having really weak lungs from allergies I am coughing up portions of lung daily.  Hardly the state you want to be in to face the work we have to do! 

And I know this ceased to be a funny blog didn’t it?

So did my life actually.

Meanwhile please cross your proverbial fingers for me—the next few weeks are going to put us all to the test! The County has a million reasons for not letting one move in and they may not get to vote!

And so it goes! 

Thanks for reading

Maggie

Here starteth the next lesson. zzzzzzz

OMG--- five weeks have gone by since I dropped my all on this website.  It seems to have gone by so fast!

Well that’s probably because it’s been another long dramedy, every single day.

Whose  idea was it to build this silly house…. Er ---mine--- I’ve nobody but myself to blame!   Groan. 

The Viking continues to be humiliated with various decorations… it’s a never-ending parade.  (The Viking was featured in the blog about POULSBO here for those who are wondering what the heck I am talking about.

http://www.coopersfolly.blogspot.com/2013_10_01_archive.html

As I said he had a St. Patrick’s day green outfit. Then I noticed the other day that somebody had given him Bunny Ears and a bucket of eggs.  Taken at a stop-light so sorry it's not close!

This week he got done up in a Sombrero and colorful bandanas for Cinqo de Mayo.  I wonder which fairy comes along and does this?  But I don’t have time to find out!

My main preoccupation every day is all about getting this house completed by the end of July and how I can make cuts in the budget. You want to move into a house with doors?  No such luck. We’ll be installing those and all the finish carpentry for weeks after we move in. AND AFTER I prime and paint all of them.   I just ordered myself a little paint sprayer to facilitate this task.

So let’s get to the timeline:

It’s been ROUGH-IN month.  By which I mean basic plumbing, basic wiring, and basic heating/air conditioning.  Most of the components for each of these vital services have been installed.  The furnace was installed by the heating guys and looks for all the world like a big oven-ready meat loaf.

Some of the plumbing is in the wrong place and still has to be moved.  The master shower is a TWO PERSON kind of thing but not at the moment unless the butts are together… if you know what I mean. We only stated the requirement for this placement three times….. apparently that was NOT the charm. I don’t think the plumber guy is quite getting the concept of chummy showers?

We finally got the garage floor concreted so that we now have a surface to work on in there—except that we don’t have garage doors on yet, so nothing can be left behind.  And those can’t be done until the drywall goes in—(think plaster in the UK.)     And we can’t get any of THAT until the COUNTY comes along and inspects everything.  One guy for the plumbing, one guy for the heating and –you guessed it, another for the electrics!  Efficient eh?  Actually Mr COUNTY electrics was invited out one afternoon last week and he came in the morning before the work was complete.

  He was snarky and he left.   Well dude, why did you come early then?  Rearrange the following letters….. norom…

So for a while, all we could usefully do was stop by and sweep out the house. And pick up more piles of trash about the place.  We spend a LOT of cash at the county dump! You can see Paul loading up for our third rubble dump below.

 The workers do not differentiate between building trash, nail gun ends and their lunch time wrappings!  So every pile has to be sorted before it can be disseminated to the right place.  One Saturday we picked up all around the outside of the house, mostly in the Geothermal field and put this together… and then had to get a massage!  I am looking for people who need kindling wood.   My neighbors apparently do not!

We are saving some of the siding leftovers as the well head looks like "THE ALIEN" coming out of an earthy tummy… Paul intends to build me a “wishing well” contraption to cover it up.  We thought this more appropriate than a Dr Who telephone box!  (Sorry USA readers, who will not have the vaguest idea what I am talking about !)

See one here: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/119697302568187146/

A couple of weekends ago we went churning into Seattle to place the order for cabinetry.  We had a cool view of Seattle on the way perched up in the side of the ferry boat.

 I HAVE all the kitchen cupboards in the man cave but we are also putting cabinets in the guest baths (of course), the utility room and our own main bathroom.  We were taking advantage of a measurable discount at said cabinet outlet so we ordered them a tad early.  NOW of course they are pending delivery and I’ve nowhere to store them.   See what I mean about Dramedy?   We are promised some drywall at the front of the garage within the next few days and then the doors.  It is not surprising when building a  house that so much of the work must be done in ABC fashion and just don’t try to do E or F until you got the early initials sorted out.  I learned that you can’t put down flooring until the walls have been painted and dry for a week AND the wood itself, (in our case bamboo) has been allowed to breathe in its own spot for a similar amount of time. WHO KNEW!  The nice folk at the flooring company called me and offered me an even better deal. Another order of stuff (2500 square feet of bamboo) and nowhere to put it!   Well not yet anyway.

 (Can you hear the sound 10000 dollars makes as it flushes away? – Er make that closer to 20K by the time I get it nailed down. BIG sigh.)

LAST WEEK WAS SUNNY…. As in 86 degrees, don’t forget your sunblock fashion.

I had sorted out colors for the external aspects of the house and so I bought a gallon of each and went to work like crazy on the work to be done, painting all (?) window frames and ‘cutting in’ the siding paint.

Some qualifications:  Hyperbole alert!    There are 29 windows in my house and I’ve done six of them. All does not yet qualify!

You will see in this photo that I have begun the siding paintwork but left large patches to be done.

Not laziness or shortage of paint.  We painted the Renton house five years ago ourselves, (while we still had joints that function) and to do this we went out and bought a pro-paint sprayer.  It’s a chunky little thing which we call R3D3.  R2D2 is taken as that’s what I use to refer to my Dyson Vacuum cleaner!

Anyway, I am painting with a wide margin around the windows so that Mr P can come along behind me with his sprayer and go “Flart Flart” and fill in the holes.   This is a term that came to me as I went up and down a step ladder 200 times trying to get my white paint work done.  During this exercise I ended up with EAVES in the back of my neck and bare electrical wires poking my howserfather!  SO FUN!

I was also targeted (or should I say harassed) by a busy little bee who was convinced that I had pollen about me somewhere to be harvested.  No kidding.  When doing jobs like this you get to listen to the sounds of nature and one happy bird kept me company for hours going “wheeze” every 10 seconds or so. I thought birds were supposed to chirp?   Oh well. THIS took me four days to do.

As you can almost see from this photo, The guest side of the house is simply too tall for either of us to reach comfortably so I am in the process of farming out the high stuff.  An item that was ALSO not in the budget.  There are a LOT of those!

So from now on, when it‘s sunny and when I get my kidney function back I’ll be painting.   Currently I am dosing myself with antibiotics hoping that all that ails me is a simple infection which can be zapped!

So NOW for the BIG adventure.  What follows is somewhat documentary in nature.  It might be boring. If you know how to build and install a geothermal system – skip it. If you don’t I can save you quintumpty bucks so read on! 

When the furnace was delivered, it came with a Manifold, (Paul assures me that there is no matching PEDIFOLD) and a wonking great big roll of pipe. 

 Big stiff pipe.  In fact it was six rolls but who’s counting.   3600 feet of pipe.  Paul announced midweek, “we’re pipe bending this weekend.”  OK says I, with little to no knowledge of just exactly what that entailed. I was SOON to find out!

Paul built a table with rails on the side and squares marked out on it. This was to assist with folding up the pipe in completely even and regular sized loops.

We would make a loop and tie it firmly with bundle ties—I don’t KNOW what they call those in the UK but they’re plastic and you zip them up and they can’t be UNZIPPED EVER!  After making three loops the whole mess got pushed off the end of the table and we’d unwind some more pipe.  Paul made a carousel  device that rotated to assist with that.

So we folded and zipped and folded and zipped and so on until the curls wouldn’t shove any more so every three loops Magatha had to go and PULL THEM to get them off the table.
I was looking particularly elegant that day in a pair of Paul's jeans... his cookie tummy has grown to big for these, mine is close!

Eventually we had a set of loops that was long enough to fill a 75 foot trench.

We marked it’s position in the field and then we made five more!  About seven hours worth of folding and zipping. Then I went home and made dinner—I lie—I made it the day before and we nuked it!

We rolled them all up–like giant hamster wheels, and rolled them into the back forty field of the house.  Here is the sculpture field that resulted, with Buckley on guard.  Buckley belongs to my Framing fairy – Buckley is a world class thief and has stolen every doggy chew toy for miles around and presented them for my acknowledgement.   I bet the neighbors are pi$$ed!

While we were zipping and coiling pipes ROB the framing fairy and his foreman ELIAS came and finished the deck which they had framed earlier. I am delighted that this deck is NOT wood and will never need painting.  BIG WHOOP!  Miriam on the right is doing just the kind of work I prefer but must admit she'd just swept out the whole house for us.  More whoop!

  I am looking forward to British Tea on the deck.  Or maybe in the gazebo-- Paul has picked out a spot for that in the woods. 

Last week Paul took a day off work and the digging fairies came back to help us.  Jake and his cat (as in erpillar) and Mr Sandman.   The process by the way is: dig a blanking big hole, (six feet deep to be precise), lay sand down in the bottom of it, lay in the geothermal pipe and then bury it with your original dirt.  The sand acts as a cotton wool ball for the piping to lay on. So we needed a WHOLELOTTA sand!  

The sand delivery was totally fascinating—for the oddest reason. Mr Sandman arrived with a BIG DUMP truck and a TRAILER—with more sand.  In other words- a twofer load with less gasoline to burn.  He arrived, uncoupled his trailer about 150 yards away down the lane and dumped his sand with us.  THEN—stand by to be amazed, he backed down the lane and SUCKED HIS TRAILER into the back of his truck and then came and delivered the rest of the sand.   Just like somebody deciding to put the baby back where it came from!  (We all know a few parents who’d like to do that don’t we?)

 While I was painting I could hear Jake trundling backwards and forwards like a tank from WWII gathering sand to put in the holes.

I love this photo—it’s Jake measuring, is the trench is deep enough?   See the pole…Jake is standing next to it!  It’s deep enough!  
All in all we dug seven trenches in the form of a multiple Pi's—think 3.14159 – all the trenches coming into the big one across the top.  The leader pipes then got hauled by Paul into the garage through holes he DRILLED IN MY HOUSE and into the garage ready to connect to the unvarnished MANI-fold.  Apparently said device is in the man-cave somewhere. I wouldn’t know it from a – well almost anything! It could look like my kettle for all I know.

The pipes going into the first trench

The next step is for us to fill the pipes with glycol.  The liquid running through the pipes gets warm from being nearer the warm bit in the middle of earth.. no seriously!   That warmed fluid circulating through the (somethingorother including water heaters), means lots of savings on all hot water and heating.  I think my bank balance will be eased by this next winter... we shall see!

Paul swears he knows where to get a frillion gallons of glycol. He has prevented me from having a heart attack by not telling me how much that costs... also not in the bally budget!

I keep telling everybody, I’m the interior designer –leave off with all this talk about engineering for goodness’ sake, it gives me a headache!

So that’s about where we are. Paul is busying himself after dinner applying all the door handles and locks to our exterior doors so that next week we can LOCK THIS JOINT UP. And I will sleep better at nights. I understand that it is common for people with nasty addictions to come and steal electrical wiring for it’s copper content.   So far so good!

I just had a thought... everybody talks these days via Texting, Facebook, Twitter, PINTEREST etc etc.  They don't talk to one another any more. Why do they call it SOCIAL media?

Shouldn't it be called ANTI-social media?

AND SO IT GOES!

Thanks for reading

Magelred the Ever-ready.

Of shoes and ships and roofs and doors and free rhubarb!

April 1^st—and I have been in headless chicken mode for SOOOO long that my teeth ache.

So – ticking along from my last blog around Valentine’s day, as predicted the Easter pastel paradise has hit our lives.  The predicted bunnies and yellow chicks and tubs of tulips abound.  

HOWEVER I am not having so much difficulty resisting the fluffies this year. It would appear that Easter chicks and bunnies have been replaced with Duckbilled Platipussies (sic), frogs and Caterpillars!  

The Viking even had to endure being decked up in green for St. Patricks’s day.

What is the world coming to?  I mean who wants to cuddle a FROG? 

One of my recent pleasures is the fact that I purchased a new pressure cooker which has the capacity to smoke foods.  I am smoking everything (fish, sausage, bacon) at the moment and loving it.  However I smell like a kippered herring most of the time!

My world right now is not only full of “domestic goddessing”, but tons of frantic accounting,  a flushing toilet of a budget, and copious visits to the new house to advise on “how high the fireplace, where is the toilet located, where are the kitchen islands, “ etc etc etc.   I stood for four hours one chilly March afternoon talking about tiling shower floors and absolutely freezing my butt off!   (I have totally complicated the shower issue in the Folly by asking for NO steps into them—i.e .the floors are uninterrupted and wheelchair accessible.  Strangely this means that Rob the framing fairy has to cut holes in the floor he just built.)

But we survive. It’s only money.

Personally my recent history got a “happy blip” when I wandered over to the side of the lane approaching the house and got a cool surprise.

But let’s go back a week or so.  I like planters.  I like planters of all shapes and sizes and I like them to grow stuff in like MINT so that it cannot overtake my entire estate!  And of course daffodils etc.  When I left the Renton house I brought with me some spendy daffodil bulbs, so shortly after invading the little yellow house we bought planters to plant and sustain them for a season.  (The results are rather sad—looks more like bunches of green onions than daffodils in the main—they are sulking I think? See below.)

So knowing that I wanted a driveway edged with planters- and various fauna, recently while in Costco Paul picked up four more planters that are indestructible.. you know—clever resin, made to look like half barrels.  More stuff in the garage. 

Last weekend I was “helping” cut the long weeds at the side of the house (known as “the lawn” but actually 15” crabgrass.)   I wandered to the side of the lane to dump the results of my labor onto an already existing compost heap.  (The neighbor empties his noisy ride ’em cowboy mower on the side of the lane, and I have happily used the resulting rich stuff). And I saw something growing in the compost pile.  Strawberries and unbelievably—RHUBARB.  

Now I am NOT a green thumb gardener but I can grow certain flowers and I can manage rhubarb. Actually any fool can grow rhubarb!  (The lady who bought the Renton house had never heard of it.)

Anyhow—here—waiting for me to find them were busy baby rhubarb plants and I just bought several new planters!   BIG BIG WHOOP!

Needless to say within a few hours those plants were labeled Maggie’s and they are sending back love for their rescue by growing like the clappers! 

 I love rhubarb in crumbles, jams and just recently had some on top of a piece of salmon which was delish!

We came home one day to find a visitor behind the house, which was delightful. 

However,  I am not sure how I’m going to feel if this dude or one of his family come over to the Folly and eat the stuff I’m growing…. Hmm—that might result in venison for dinner!

So enough of the personal whim-wham.  You’re plodding through this to hear about “The Folly” so here goes on that.  Needless to say the interim since my last post has been filled with more drama but mostly not the heart–stopping kind—mostly.

So where were we?  Oh yes- -the roof trusses were being swung into place and installed.

That took about a week or so as it is a BIG mother of a roof as I had been warned.  And heavy;  yet again we increased the size of the pantry to accommodate the weight and size of it.  
Then a magic fairy came along and put skinny boards all over it.

Before I could shout "roof ahoy,"  a merry gang came along and ROOFED IT IN ONE DAY. It was amazing to watch.
.

In the meantime Paul and I go over frequently and sweep and mop (rain, rain, rain, before the roof) and blow it out with several fans. And sweep and pick up building crud,  and take load after load to the dump.  FUN?

Meanwhile we still did not have a completed “man cave” and my kitchen cabinets were loitering about in a warehouse close to where I used to live.  Weekly I would get a phone call saying- “Can I deliver those cabinets yet?”  And like a prisoner who is sentenced to a delivery, I appealed for an extension and got it for three weeks.

The man cave floor (destination for cabinets and appliances) had not been laid correctly and a concrete technician came out and fixed that.  FINALLY the garage door was applied, the doors were hung by Ivan and Paul went and installed the locks!  A space to store things!  (There ain’t none of that here!)

Aaah yes, appliances—I haven’t even mentioned those yet.  In dear old Washington state we have a jolly tax on purchases – called SALES tax and analogous to VAT in the UK.   (That’s Value Added Tax to you ‘murricans. I can legitimately be accused of speaking with a forked tongue. )  My appliances, (2 Italian ovens, two German cook-tops, and two fridges from New Zealand, we’re not patriots on this issue,) were going to rack me up a tidy sum of 1000 just in taxes. Ouch.    And then came the once a year sale. Buy it now and take delivery; put up or shut up.  So of course I needed the savings and ordered my gadgets.  So now I must take delivery of those too.

Oh and the nice folks who sell GEOTHERMAL systems said to Paul, “last one of the type you want!” So we had to order that as well.

NOW the Man Cave contains two rooms worth of cabinets, a kitchen’s worth of appliances AND a humping great big furnace!

The kitchen cabinets are tall enough that they would NOT go in the doorway.  Only a mouse can make his way around in there.  Hmmm—and the electrician has to get in there to do his thing. Next Month’s dramedy will be moving around fridges so he can. Sigh

And along came Ivan: Ivan seems to think I am quite a nice lady and calls me "Meggie."  That’s Russian for you know what.  Ivan, who is really not at all terrible, is from Belarus: I’m not sure what language he speaks –it sounds very Russian to me, (and he does speak good "murrican.).  He is proud of the fact that HE understands the Russian language but that Russians don’t understand HIS!  We have several chats about Crimea and the Ukraine and he has some very interesting insights about the US foreign policy as it relates to all the unrest in the world.  And I get a bit smarter about world politics. Sadly he has nothing to learn from me unless he wants to get in the kitchen with me and learn how to make great gravy.

Ivan – it turns out, is a master of many trades.  He is likely to lay most of our flooring, (bamboo) and is lusting after doing our tiling.  The tiles on the bathroom floor must be level with the shower floor, so that means sloping the bathroom floor “ever so slightly,” and definitely not a job for tiling rookies like us!  All the bathrooms will be tiled pretty much everywhere up to the elbows and the budget for the tiles alone would make your eyes water.  Yes we built another spreadsheet just to record them all and what they would cost.  Champagne taste, beer budget of course.

Meanwhile Ivan went to work on the man-cave and did the siding.  Note that he is putting in a cool "shingles" effect under the eaves. 

Amurricans build houses with wood, throw plywood over the sides and then clap more boards on the sides when they’re done.  It used to be cedar but now they use man-made stuff.  I came to think of the small garage as being the “practice house” and it looks like a miniature version of the whole. 

Then he went to work on the big one, doing not only the siding but framing all the windows too.

Ivan is the cute one on the left.

Incidentally, all that siding is “primed” but not painted. The same holds true for ALL the doors inside and outside the house.  I feel a ladder in my future and I will never want for a French manicure ever again—white paint will have to suffice for years.

Meanwhile inside, Rob the framing fairy, (who is endlessly giving me tips on ways to do things, and saying "great choice",) is working the ceilings.  In three rooms, (the 'parlor,' the TV room and the dining room,) the ceilings are FANCY.  The big room has small boxes cut into the ceiling, the TV room has lights in an overhang and the dining room (shown below), has two fancy slopes on the sides.  Here you can see what I am driveling about. (I hate that word without 2 LL s).

This picture also shows that the plumbing fairy came by-- you can see that the rough-in plumbing for my laundry equipment is now in place! 

Paul and I rented a UHAUL truck to go and collect the aforementioned front door.  The folks who sold it to us were too tight to deliver it for free, so we saved a buck and fetched it ourselves.  Ivan installed the front door and I am very happy with how it will look when we install the door furniture, aka handles!

The bottom half of the house is bare awaiting the guys from the stone company to come and lay their rock around two sides of the house.   We've been busy pouring over color swatches deciding which colors are going to perfectly integrate a big golden roof with the stones below.
(Did you know in Brit.-speak that is spelled COLOUR.) It's no wonder I am so bipolar!
In the sunlight the paint samples look way more similar than the actually are. The stones look very really but are actually concrete that is poured and colored! They're lying on a blankie so as not to scratch my sideboard! The dark brown "thing" at the top is actually a sill which tops off all the other stonework.  




By the way I am sympathetic, but I wonder why the wonderful citizens of the Southern windy states are so surprised when their houses blow away so frequently in turbulent times. WOODEN HOUSES PEOPLE!  I don’t know what current practices are in the UK, but last house I lived in there was made of BRICK with big old heavy metal roof tiles.  In high winds you might lose a tile or two but that’s mostly it!  There are a few things the Brits do rather better than the mighty USA; —cheese, bacon and houses.. and – wait for it—BEER!

I am so glad that I don’t tweet or do Facebook so you cannot abuse me now!

So I now have doors and windows;  the window process was interesting—shove the window in the hole and put tape around it!  Simple science!  The framing, care of Ivan, holds it all in place.

The plumber and electricians came and we had long walks-around in consultation. Paul made a model of the kitchen in paper patterns which he stuck to the floor. This was so that the plumber knew where to stick his sink pipes and so that I could realize that if I get ANY fatter I will be bruising myself on counters.  I may have over designed my glory hole—it looked so good on paper and in reality I have to be careful to ensure that I can open cupboard doors and fridges properly!  ULP!

Next comes the air conditioning and heating guy, the pouring of the garage floor and a bit of driveway AND the basic wiring.  All this has to be accomplished before the insulation guy comes along and punch his fluffy stuff between all the timbers in the walls.

This week I spent several hours watching the fireplace be uninstalled because it was in the wrong place and then put back. I took a photo but plainly I had been huffing some funny stuff and it's out of focus.  It’s one of those fancy things which burns gas in glass beads.   It burns Propane which I will not be able to afford but – big room, big wall – need fireplace!  And I don't know how a person of my particular vintage came to have such very contemporary taste!  I should be down the antique shop shouldn't I?  Odd that!

Rob the framer compliments me for riding the contractors for what I want.  He tells me over and over to “kick a$$.”  Little does he know that my Mother and her three daughters are direct descendants of Ghengis Khan!

And SOOO it goes!

Thanks for reading?

Meggie!

P.S.  I have one more scar from my recent surgery.  Paul has one on his face.  I have a few more from surgeries and  plenty of scars from childhood hazards.   He says if we get any more we'll look like a road map!

Drama month!

February: Nearly the end of it… February always seems to go so fast!  Duh—three less days.

Valentine’s day—not much of a celebration for us but I DID get a thrill from the invasion of  Teddy’s with hearts on their paws that arrived in grand array in the local store. Valentine and Easter are tough periods for me as I have copious amounts of hugging to do with all the cuddlies that are in the store—Valentine Bears and Easter bunnies are inevitable tussles for me.. I want one of everything!

But it has been a month full of dramas, mostly of our own making through lack of attention to detail. I hate dramas that I could have prevented by paying more attention!   But in a project like this, I guess it was bound to happen.

Drama !:    TILES

Drama 2:   THE FRONT DOOR

Drama 3:   THE ROOF

Drama 4:  CABINETS

I am not sure your nerves should be subjected to the jangling mine have had but—keep reading and you will see why I have a screwed-up adrenal system!

TILES:  In one of my blogs I showed some of the tiling plans that I had.  There have been several mini-tile dramas… and we have solved them so far by ordering up what we want for our bathrooms before the supplies ran out—we have several boxes of tiles packed into the shrinking garage space here.

HOWEVER, the MASTER bathroom plan evolved literally from one tiny tile.  Story follows:

• One day we were standing in a giant hardware store and I spotted a small tile, unusual and with which I instantly fell in deep like. You can’t see how nice it is in this photo.

It's the one in the top left corner,,,,,,,,,,,,

• It's a pewter-colored flat tile with a raised vine on it which is shiny. I have never seen a tile quite like this before
• I drove to a big tile store in Seattle to ensure its availability and was told that it was “specially made” for said giant hardware store and there were 50000 of them. Ok-that should be enough!
• But that was a year or so ago and – turns out—I am not the only one with affections for this tile!
• So we began a plan for the master bathroom which is – frankly – huge! I’ve seen smaller kitchens!
• We chose pewter cabinets, and found granite off-cuts for the counter top and planned all the rest of the master bathroom (including our bubbles) like a phoenix rising from the grey vine tile fire. Every time we checked on tiles, we patted and ensured the supply of the “grey vine tile.”
• Recently while shopping in giant hardware store, (you know we do that often), Paul spotted the grey tile on a discount tile rack.  Horrors!  There were only 12 left in the store. 
•  So we sprang into action assisted by the aforementioned lady who hands out hugs.  She checked ALL the stores in the chain to see who had supplies. They were almost all gone everywhere.   She found 20 or so at another local store and the only place with a decent quantity was 100 miles away.
• We snapped up all in town one and rushed over to town two who held another 20 for us. OK we need at least 70 and have 30.   Tasheena –hug supplier, sent her husband the next day, (after calls to the distant store) and he picked up all the remaining tiles.  How’s that for customer service!   Well we didn’t get those tiles cheap after we added in gas money but we now have 70 of them and that should be just enough. 
• Fingers crossed we don’t break any as they get installed. Here endeth the tile drama!

NOW for the Front Door drama. 

I’ve spent five years looking at the plan for this house in two dimensions.   I have always feared that once in three dimensions I was going to have second and third thoughts.   So far that isn’t happening thanks to a goodly amount of capability to visualize things.  But I didn’t concentrate on “THE FRONT DOOR.”  It was a tiny mark on a plan and I never asked—how big is that?  I had indeed debated, “double front door versus single front door with sidelights.”    I had stipulated that my choice was for a double front door, simply because if you want to get big stuff into the house, (like -   er  - furniture!), two doors really makes that easy!

So finally when DtheB says it’s time to order all the exterior doors we turn to the task of choosing those.

Oh my, the front door has been framed in at 5’ wide.  When we sit in hardware store and choose doors it turns out that almost ALL the doors we like are not made in that width. The USUAL size for door is 2’8” and 3’.  Ours must be 2’ 6” and fat chance you have of finding a nice one.  (We replaced the front door in the RENTON house and had the exact same problem so I am kicking my own bum because I should have been smarter on this topic!)  We run between hardware stores checking to see if others had better choices.   We finally find one we like, somewhat of a compromise but one that I can live with. Specially ordered it will take many more weeks than all the other doors which are now also arriving.  Here it is!  Well there WILL be two of them of course!

The ROOF DRAMA

I did say in an earlier post that Rob the Framer had warned me that our roof was going to be a “pig.”

As this house has a giant footprint, the roof of course is a similar monster in nature. A single room upstairs complicated the issue.

Many groups of people have worked on this beast: The architects, the folk who did the engineering drawings thereafter, and then the folk who plan all the trusses to build it. They too have an engineering department and are the “experts” at getting a roof completed.

Many discussions were had about an ugly bump in the roof, (still there I believe but viewable only from the back and I don’t care.)  THEN– do we need a hanger or do we NOT need a hanger?  What’s a hanger I asked?   Well turns out that’s a metal piece that is specially made, screwed to a wall and ceiling trusses sit in it!   Hmmm.   Doesn’t sound that stable to me!  

Engineers and framers argue and harangue over it.  Rob the framer wins with a pragmatic solution—he extends the pantry wall out by six inches and provides a sturdy framework for the roof to sit on—I get a bigger pantry so who am I to complain about that?  The engineers have to adjust drawings so that THE COUNTY have diagrams that match what’s built – more cash is required for said adjustment and we HAVE to pick up the document with said changes  IN PERSON!  The can’t use the mail!  WHAT!...   Well it’s close to where DtheB  lives so he gathers it up for us.  Here endeth the ROOF drama!

AND FINALLY – the never-ending Cabinet Drama.

We had always intended to use IKEA for our kitchen cabinets (and are doing in our laundry room). But we were totally daunted by the prospect of the giant unwrapping and assembly job that would have entailed.  (Ikea cabinets are totally modular and even a simple base cabinet has umpty- ump components all wrapped separately. Guess whose job unwrapping that lot was going to be!)

One day I was searching idly for ready-made cabinets online and came across a company that assembles them, ready to go, and which seemed to be a better quality than the ones we had planned to buy.  I sent my IKEA drawing to a nice lady at this company and WHIP—in twenty four hours she had decoded it and put into their planning tool and costed it all out.  It was only a few grand (about five) more.  We decided to go for it. Now making a long story short. 

• Many revisions of the plan to get it just right giving details of our planned ovens etc.
• Sale priced going up at the end of 2013 eeek!
• Must order by Jan 27^th to avoid price increase
• But I have nowhere to store them!
• We wait to last minute and cabinets are supposed to take six weeks to build
• After two and a half weeks we get notice that cabinets are shipping!  SHIZZLE!
• Urgent phone calls to customer service asking them to hold up the order
• Cabinets are supposed to be held at warehouse until negotiated date.
• This week we get a phone message to say that cabinets are sitting in Kent (near old home) warehouse.

THIS is where they have to be stored!

•  Kent warehouse says- no biggy – we’ll hang on to them until the man-cave is completed.  Sigh—why don’t people DO what they say they are going to do!  Personally I make that a life plan but seem to be rather unusual in that regard.

Well do you have a headache now? 

I am sure there are more dramas to come!

This weekend I sat down and put together a budget spreadsheet, (there are have been many !) to see what is left to do and whether the money bucket was deep enough to cover it.

My life savings/retirement fund are in deep jeopardy of being raided to complete Cooper’s Folly.  The guest rooms will be sadly empty for a while until we can get the main rooms in the house completed. In talks with the COUNTY I discover that I don’t have to hang the interior doors to get my residency permit for the beast.  As our contract for renting the little yellow house runs out at the end of July, we have to get a move on!   Much of the DIY aspects will take longer to do, so we have to use contractors to do work we’d like to do ourselves.  But I see a lot of painting and crown moulding  in my future! 

So now the progress on the house:

After the seemingly slow period over the end of December, the house seems to have proceeded like a freight train ever since, as you can see from the above photos. It has been a whirlwind of conferences, choosing stuff and ordering stuff.

In my last blog I showed a photo of Paul helping to erect one of the outside walls.  The rest of those and all the interior walls went up so fast it made my head spin.   Rob the Framer boss man and his team of three guys worked really efficiently.  It is so encouraging to me to hear him literally rave about our house design, as he builds monster houses for rich doctors and dentists all the time.  Happy Maggie.

I don’t go to the building site every day; usually about two times a week or when I am summoned to make decisions and give my input.

So it was just fortunate that I arrived one sunny day (we’ve had a lot of those this January amazingly enough) to see and stand well back from a giant truck with much of my roof on it’s back!

How would you like the job of standing on four bare walls and have somebody swing a load of roof trusses at you? Brrr, I shiver at the thought, but Elias the foreman seems to take it all in stride.

That truck came about ten days ago and since then the roof is on and mostly covered.  It was a simple task to choose the roof covering as I am as crazy about the aesthetics for the outside as I am the inside!

The house will have a modern shingle on the outside and masonry brick on two sides below the windows.  There is a cool company in Poulsbo who actually MAKE rock walls and I have spent some time dithering over the finish for that.  In the end I liked one style but a different set of colors.  The company are going to build a whole set for Cooper’s Folly in the color blend that I favor.. you can’t do better than that! This is a photo of the samples outside their factory

In the meantime the lovely Josh imported and finished all the things required for the septic system...you know the important business end of things.

 In these photos below you can see the tanks which hold the debris from toilets and the big field where all the liquid drains off leaving only ash behind.

  A septic system is carefully balanced with its own little ecosystem they tell me!

The only downside to all this is that you have to be careful with cleaning your house and doing laundry-- bleaches are a no-no and death to the bugs that do their work~!

(In case you're wondering there are companies you come and empty out the systems several times a year.)

The drain field- will eventually be a lawn. I am NOT mowing this thing!

So that’s about brought you all up to date.  

Each day brings a new activity to get excited about. Next week the real roofing task begins and then the siding on the walls with a modern composite that won’t deteriorate. Then we’ll have to paint that before the masonry task. Let’s hope the weather stays nice for that!

I’ve had a few personal health challenges to face during all of this.  Sad to say that as you grow older things start to go wrong and I got a lump where there shouldn’t be LUMPS!   But yesterday a talented lady surgeon went after it with a sharp knife and said lump is no more. 

Another drama –but one which didn’t jangle my nerves nearly as much as not finding grey vine tiles!

I have been having a grand time in my head and in my kitchen coming up with totally different ideas for super breakfasts.  By which I mean the notion of serving breakfast TAPAS style and in small plates instead of big ones full of fried potatoes.  This week I made a breakfast which looked somewhat like a Calfornia roll sushi dish but all made with breakfast foods.  So fun!  These are the things which keep me going!

AND:   Tired of being cooped up for the Winter, we went for a drive out into the country to visit a small local town—not so exciting as it sounds but we did enjoy seeing A RAM, a LLAMA and singing a chorus of RAMALAMA DING DONG!

And so it goes?

Thanks for reading!

Maggie