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