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.
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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!