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

Well it’s been an odd month.

Paul and I sat around for the last few weeks waiting for things to happen and they pretty much didn’t!

Our Christmas season was, of course, really quiet.  We only have each other to buy gifts for and, for budgetary reasons we pledged to be really rather “skinflinty” this year over gifts.  So P got a few surprises and I talked Paul out of some new jeans and yet another ring.  I am a “ringoholic” and unrepentingly so.  Actually I showed P a photo of this one and he insisted that I have it pronouncing it to be ME!   I don’t dare to count how many ring-baubles I have now; I am not a masochist and there would be guilt!   Suffice it to say we had an elegant breakfast and ate Chinese food out later.  If you don’t want to cook on big holidays some Asian eatery is always open, we have discovered.  And New Year’s Eve was wonderful in that, living in the boonies as we now do, we didn’t have to listen to firecrackers for many minutes at midnight. As a matter of fact P was in the sheets by 10 pm, making us truly old fogeys.   No excuses, we enjoy our fogeyness!

One of our dear readers asked –as the holidays and winter climate loomed, if the progress on the house would now “cease and desist” for a while. (Well those are my words not his, but you get my drift.)

Well the answer to that is yes, but not for those reasons.  It appears that the building trade needs to pay its bills just like the rest of us and they work through all weathers.  I had a conversation with a framer this week laying floor joists in the rain!  

Shortly after my last blog, and the photo of the concrete foundations being in place, (above) the next step is to lay joists, frame the floors and walls.  But first—The COUNTY must come and do an inspection.  As I may have gently implied (with a sledge hammer), the COUNTY get to do a lot of nitpicking when you build a house and every STEP in the building process undergoes an INSPECTION.  That’s not a big deal and we pass with flying colors as DtheB is recruiting teams who know what they’re doing.  HOWEVER as most counties are staffed with “civil servants” the “insteption” (sic) process is subject to every possible holiday and busy- ness.

So one of our reviews took nearly a week.  A week of lovely bright dry build-ready weather. Ugly face icon here......

 And then came Christmas and everybody shut down, between Dec 25^th and Jan 2^nd, except Asian eateries.

For the last inspection, floor joists, he came two hours early, (not finished)  and then the next day came late, keeping four men ticking on a clock for several hours.  Which costs $$ and makes for angry framers.  Grrrr!

So we have not achieved a great deal in several weeks. NO stunning photos of the house emerging from the mud.  Just floors.  Exciting huh?

See the joists under the foundation boards?
Actually I was on my way to the dentist when I took these photos and was wearing reasonable shoes.  I actually lost one of them in the mud taking these – and had to stop at the mighty central market and wash my shoes in the ladies room – I looked like a waif, (tall fat waif) out of "Oliver" in the meantime!

MEANWHILE back at the ranch the dreaded decision process continues: 

Are we putting bamboo floors in the walk-in closet—why not- it’s actually cheaper than the laminate going into the utility room under the washer/dryer. Well yes but more expensive to lay you know!  I am implying here that bamboo is our flooring of choice.  At least it’s real unlike most of these phonies that people put down these days.  As I am very prone to dropping things in the kitchen we are using cork flooring in there—good for tired old feet and bouncing pans!

----Evolutionary tale (or even tail):  Four or five years ago while vacationing in Vegas we saw a guy making paintings with spray cans.  Sounds klugey doesn’t it but they are very cool. I bought one in black and white and said…”if we ever get to build the FOLLY let’s make the powder room black and white.  And here we are-----

----While wandering around a flea market some months ago I said “I don’t want a damn cupboard in the powder room, I want something  “quirky.”  And one minute later we came across a guy who is making tables out of sewing machine bases.  KABOOM—an idea was born!

The powder room:  the quirkiest of the rooms in the Folly—is all black and white, (see!), apart from the floor, and has a Singer Sewing machine base instead of a cupboard, for the sink to sit on.

 Hmmm, we have a midnight chrome faucet, will that look odd with a white sink?  But will a black sink look odd which a white potty?  No, yes, maybe. Another trip to the hardware store to review the black chrome faucet against a black sink--- nope, it has to be a white sink. Another conundrum resolved.  NOTE:  The midnight chrome finish is just awesomely elegant and we might have put this stuff in the main bathroom except a) budget and b) we didn’t like the shower fittings.   Incidentally we acquired the sewing machine base on Ebay and it is now off being powder coated by some experts so that it will be all black, shiny and new.

(NO not with talcum powder—that’s different and for your naughty bits!)

We took a trip to the local department store to get a feeling for the colossal budget to drape all the windows. (OK—drapes =curtains folks!)  Each guest suite has a nice bay window which is frankly a beast to decorate.   ANNNNNNND....

Wait for it.............

Here it is! Well one of them anyway!  In between starting this and going mumble mumble, just floors, the framing fairies came and started building walls!   Take a look at the big framework that is lying on the floor with two guys measuring it up.   Bear this in mind for later.


 Meanwhile- bay windows mean three sets of drapes instead of one!   So we spent an hour pouring over samples and numbers for just one set of window panes.  I am determined not to live in a “goldfish bowl” even though the Folly is out in the wilds and surrounded by trees.  These days you can buy blinds which totally cut out the light, which we think is an option we want for our “light-phobic” guests who don’t wake at the crack of dawn. Cords or no cords, top down or bottom up only?  Nine decisions just for one window.  Blick!

Fortunately I procured lovely comforters (aka duvets people) for our guest rooms so I am now at least able to continue with color choices for drapes and carpet without hesitation.  Only a nut job goes through the process of choosing carpets when they don’t even have floors……..

What do you mean we only have two three foot windows in the family room—that’s not enough light? (One of the main problems of a house with a very large footprint is that it’s tough to get enough light into it—windows have to go into outside walls and we have rooms which don’t HAVE outside walls.) Urgent conversations take place with the framing dude who tells me it’s not too late to change that. More purple marks on the plan….

“ME:  What do you mean the shower is by the door in the upstairs bathroom?  You’ve got to be kidding!  I am NOT walking past a damn shower to get to a washbasin!    Perlease!  

HIM: Well it’s on the damn plan!!  Didn’t you look at the plan?????

It appears that I did not study the PLAN nearly closely enough after the final "architype"  produced it.  
This all came to pass in the local hardware store.   They dread us coming now.  More purple marks on the plan….

What colors are the walls going to be?  Jeez, would you leave me alone?  So now I have a houseful of color swatches and about a dozen versions of “white” to choose between for the ceilings.  Even the ceilings will be a challenge in the FOLLY as many of the main rooms have trayed ones. Intricate paintwork will be required.  “And when are you going to choose the molding for those?”  More surfing coming up on that!

One of our main difficulties is ordering things versus the project timescales.  My kitchen cupboards (designed with magnificent speed and skill by the mighty Angela who I have never met) go up in price in a week’s time. Pressure to order them now; but that means they’ll be here in a frillion boxes in six weeks and I’ve nowhere to put them!  Will the man-cave be up by then?  Framer dude says, “I can build that in a weekend.”  Oh yea but what about making it secure eh?  (Roof and a real up and over garage door.   Hmmm?)    DtheB has a boat-house sized garage and he is under threat from me to take it over for my impending deliveries.

The same problem exists with our heating system.  As I said in my last post we’re putting in a geo-thermal heating system.  That means digging lots of trenches, (as I a type I am going back to my Latin lessons and chanting, “down in a deep dark well sat an old cow munching a beanstalk”, and you wonder why I am so crazy? You have to learn this to understand VIRGIL you know.  You don't know this but I am well "edificated!)  Said trenches will contain pipes with a heat seeking liquid, (it’s warmer six feet down you know from the earth’s core,-- end of lesson) and all those pipes and a furnace will all get delivered shortly after ordering them.   That’s all fine and dandy so DtheB wants to get ON and dig the TRENCHES.

And we’re saying, “No no, not till we can fill them and cover them up otherwise neighborhood dogs and various frameworkers could fall in and never be seen again.  An encore chorus of nowhere to put all this paferanalia.

(That’s Paul’s word for it – he likes it and I am learning to like it also!)

I won’t bore you with more of this drivel….. you get the picture I am sure. It’s fun BUT I’m still cleaning house, doing laundry and fixing three meals a day, as Paul totes two to work daily, in order to make sure that he gets something to eat.  He is so focused at work (focussed—word won’t let me type focused with two ss’) that I swear he’d starve if food wasn’t sitting around saying “eat me, eat me”.  Speaking of which it’s 12:26 pm and time for me to eat breakfast! 

Walls will be starting to emerge tomorrow they tell me, along with daily invoices for nearly 40K’s worth of lumber!  (Well they did as you can see above.)

My framer warns me that my roof is going to be a pig….big house, colossal roof with a room in the eaves.  OK--- I am forewarned!  (More on this after discussions... back to the drawing board on the roof!)

We DID go to a fireplace shop and chose our fireplace.  I wasn't going to HAVE a fireplace at all as I never use them. ( I sold the Renton house having used my front room fireplace just twice in 28 years!) However, I figured that one day, when I want to sell this place and head to the old folks home, people would be disappointed if there wasn't one. It's called the "GREAT ROOM" for a reason.  It's big and frankly it needs a feature so a fireplace it will be.  Not wood, or logs or even imitation logs.  It's flames in glass....  I'm old but I love contemporary. I can not explain that!

In the interim we had a good old windstorm and trees fell at our lot-- one onto the joists. If there had been a house there it would have resulted in some mean damage to my roof even though it's not that FAT a tree!

STOP PRESS:  

 I drafted this two days ago and stopped by the lot yesterday. 
 We had long conversations with Rob the chief framer (who would cut me off from all further effort if he knew I had referred to him as a framing fairy, an ill-deserved term as you can see) .
Here he is at the spot which is destined to be our big deck and him saying-- you need to dig out more of this dirt as it's too high and the timbers will be touching it.  (Josh is the digging man, Rob doesn't have the union card for that-- just kidding.)





Do your remember that big wall that was being framed above?   Well up it went before we left with Paul's help-- he's the grey-haired one on the right.
Those are the windows in the guest bathrooms!



TRIVIA:
As you grow old it gets harder to remember things-- in particular WORDS and the things on your to-do list.  I don't like listening to dishwashers and in the little yellow house, it's in the kitchen which is right by my TV.  You know-- dishwashers and TV go so well together right? So we run it at night.  And I kept forgetting.......  and forgetting. So when it's time to run it these days when I go to bed it looks like this! 

GO AND TURN ON THE DISHWASHER!

Works like a charm!

In the meantime I keep practicing for a possible future career as a basket-ball player by lobbing my underwear across the room into the laundry basket. I rarely miss!

And so it goes!

Thanks for reading?

Maggie

Dilemmas, Decisions and Budgets!

Here I am again… alive and mostly well. 

We are now in a challenging phase of the birth of Cooper’s Folly.

Well it’s all been challenging but this stage is perhaps the most demanding. I’ll proceed to tell you why!

We’ve had a long time to plan the house and much of it was done long ago.

And now we’re up against the mirror looking at our own nostrils, we are realizing that there won’t be any MORE chances to change or have second thoughts.  For instance:

• I was shopping at a countertop installation literally five years ago and it was a bright sunny day. Outside the establishment was a huge slab of coral granite, reflecting the sunlight and  basking in its own beauty. It was literally breathtaking!   Personally I have never been a fan of granite for countertops mainly because of the really ugly materials people often choose.  I  had seen so many orangey big-patterned slabs in houses that I disliked them and  nicknamed them “tabby cat “ granite.

Yuk!

          But coral? Who knew granite came in such beautiful colors? Not me!

• So Paul and I started a granite marathon to review all that there was available.  There are at least a dozen large halls around the Seattle/Tacoma area which contain several hundred slabs of granite – a hall of slabs like a giant maze.  Paul christened them slabrynths.  (A typical example of his humor.. )  If you put me in a slabrynth I could pick out this coral granite from the front door.   I loved it!  

• And for four years I wanted it.

• And then one day—whoop!  I was over it… and figured out that I didn’t want it after all, and broke out in goose-bumps at the thought that I could have spent 8,000 little old Murrican dollars on 68 square feet of counter top and borped every time I looked at it.  I did eventually choose another one and I think it will be gorgeous. Hopefully I will continue to think so until I sell the place or die, whichever comes sooner!

Well multiply that dilemma by a factor of 1000 and you might begin to get a feel for the challenge we face on a daily basis.

To put together a home of this size and nature (it’s big and complicated) a MILLION (ok –lots) of decisions have to be made on what we like AND what we can also afford!

So for the last five years we’ve stood in Hardware stores and looked at faucets, (aka taps).  That work paid off well.  Our local hardware store gave us a nice 20% off coupon as a “welcome to the neighborhood” and had a limit of 200 dollar savings.  Within a week of moving here we went out and bought five toilets, umpteen sets of faucets,  lights, mirrors and granite tiles, earning our maximum discount.  You know that garage that is bursting at the seams?  Well it’s bursting even harder now and that stuff is all piled up by the back door of the garage leaving me JUST enough room to get to my freezer.  We also saw and bought four VERY  super deal shower sets which we might just hate when we install them.  But they have fancy jets for your belly-button so – impulse buy! (My doctor might be reading this so –er, sorry, navel!)   Four impulse buys!  If we end up NOT liking them we will not like them four times over.  (OK—two shower heads in the master bath, --no more saying “who’s showering first,” a ha-- and one in each of two guest rooms.)  FOUR! We don‘t muck about, we go for it!  So that piece of homework stuck with us and thank goodness. However, we weren’t at ALL prepared when it comes to the bathroom walls etc.

For two solid months recently we have hung out so much in our local hardware store tiling department that one of the sales-ladies is now hugging me when she sees me!

Every bathroom has:

Something on the floor; something on the walls of the shower, something on the floor of the shower, something around the tub at the bottom, something around the TOP of the tub deck, something along the wall under the window, a back-splash behind the vanity (or not) a counter top and yet more tile behind the toilet.  Every one of these areas need an edge or matching bullnose and a decorative accent.  And it must not look like a tiling sampler with somebody showing off how good they can lay tile.  (Trust me I’ve been in million dollar homes where this 

 is a big problem! Groan.)  That’s just one bathroom and I have five of them to do.  (OK, one   master, two guest rooms, one powder room and a small shower upstairs off the “we call it the entertainment room but who knows what the hell will eventually end up there, room”.)

This has been so challenging that Paul has been in a total state of confusion over it. I work in pictures in my head and that’s not data.  Paul needs DATA!  He’s a lovable techno-nerd!

We started by choosing the basic vanity units.  One has to have an anchor!  Then we haunted the bone yards at two local “slabrynths” until we found off-cuts of granite that we liked for each of the three major bathrooms. (Granite off-cuts are cheaper, see!) One we bought and moved.  SO—the counter-tops are chosen by me visiting with bits of cupboard and tile to make sure that it would all look beautimous when installed together.   But we had many conversations involving “master bathroom, red bathroom, vs brown bathroom or “guest one vs guest two,” until we were totally punchy!

Brown bathroom samples

Master Bathroom, pebbles on the shower floor and bubble blend at the top. Seemingly bright but lots of dark grey cabinets along one wall so colors and bubbles to brighten up the room. The whole room was designed around that dark grey tile with the vine in top left corner - -totally having a love affair with that!  (Who has a love affair with a tile fer goodness' sake? Answer-- someone who is OLD!)

  In the master bath we are using BUBBLE tiles and -(I am mistress of aesthetics, P is master of the engineering,) so I worked for weeks to get a special color blend to go with the shower floor.   We finally succeeded. The bubble tile folk are looking forward to making them for us. This is what bubble tiles look like but in different colors.

That's actually a cherry red cabinet piece and hence the RED bathroom title.  Fun pebble tiles about the room in various places.  For comfort a SLICED version on the shower floor.  

Eventually and not being totally blonde, I sat down and built a spreadsheet with 80 lines in it calling out the name, location, reference number and cost of every tile for every room.   And how many of them we would need and what they cost.  The tiling bill for materials is just over ten thou people!   But how nice and clean it will be eh?   Well maybe.  A couple of the selected tiles were "discontinued" or going out of stock for months-- so - we bought what we believe we needed and they TOO are sitting in boxes in the garage.  

SO that’s just the tiles!   

Next we began slaving over lights, having chosen the wrong ones and Alec Trician won't install them as he believes them to be a fire hazard!

We knew exactly where our kitchen cabinets were coming from for almost five years and then BOOM, I decided that there was too much work and too many boxes associated with that strategy and now some ace lady is reworking the cabinets so they come all ready made in boxes.  (And more $$ of course!)  I may have to sell my bears for money!

Nah... not the bears-- I'll have to hock some baubles or something?

I have been set for at least a year on my oven. THEN I discovered that some nice young man had given me bum information.  And I went back into the oven abyss again.   Save some money, buy the best? Can a fancy oven be serviced in the boondocks?   Buy the best?  What’s the difference between the five models of the oven I did choose blah blah blah!

What are the regulations on “circulating the air in the kitchen?”   Do I have to have one of those ugly air extractors hanging over my head in the kitchen or can I put in a downdraft behind the cooktops?  Or can I have a fan in ceiling?  If you make the WRONG decision here you can have the COUNTY come along and tell you that you can’t LIVE THERE! (You did read my piece on The COUNTY didn’t you?  They’re still at it!)

And WHICH cook-tops!  Induction or not induction.  (I bought a free-standing induction cook-top and worked with it for a year to help me make up my mind.  NOPE!  Not impressed but it’s great to boil water. We don’t do many boiled water meals as it happens.)

So one by one we struggle through research, cost benefit analyses and come to decisions on those millions of items. (Ok—lots.)

Now I am studying stone veneers for the front walls of the house and how much we need, can we apply it ourselves, and can we afford it. OH YES THAT QUESTION! Trust me the budget question comes up every day as each step of the process costs more than the estimate.

THE COUNTY told us that we need to install something called a FILTRATION trench. It’s installed.  The lovely JOSH from KAT TRAX has been dozering around the site for the last month, and has installed same. It was only 10,000 dollars. Such a deal for something I didn’t know I wanted but had to have anyway.  It might RAIN you know? It’s been raining on that dirt since the dawn of time but now it needs a special trench to “drain the rain” –really?

By now your eyeballs are sore and you are wishing I would tell you what the heck is going ON with the new house!!!!

Ok –

After Josh pulled down and trucked out five loads of trees, stumps and assorted lumber, he dug out the foundations—they had to be unlevel because the bedrock wasn’t.  Josh spotted that and sorted it.

Then DtheB organized the shape of the house to be punched into the lot and there it was—the house to be. I am perturbed saying – why is it so far to the left on the property?  Answer- a geothermal heating system. (Can we afford that? –NO! But clever P found a system that you can order and DIY on the internet. More on that complex story as it develops.)

 Suffice it to say that it’s a huge area of dirt that is as big as a football field and Paul is going to have to take care of it somehow. He THINKS he’s going to get a riding mower! That’s not in the bally budget either……. )

That rectangle of concrete is a free-standing garage for tools and storage known by me as "the man cave!"   That big rock is standing there to protect the well head which hides just behind it.

And then IN THE RAIN somebody came and poured concrete. (I didn’t know you could even DO that but apparently some concrete dude sticks his finger outside, says “how wet is it” applies a wet/dry figure to the mix and lets the rain/humidity complete the mix. Science is such a wonderful thing!)

So the foundations are poured and I’m able to stand, up to my pant legs in mud and say, there’s the kitchen, there’s the front door and stuff like that.  The septic system tank stands majesticaly waiting for Josh to sink in into the ground.  And I can’t wait to use the porta potty—ha!

Now P is asking me to choose the paint for the walls.

But do I want to paint all the walls or not?  NO… so choose something else!  Do you want it all textured or not? If not WHERE?

My head hurts.

By the way I have to continue the story of the Viking, (see the Poulsbo post.) Somebody has adorned the mighty Viking with a red and white hat and 4’ candy canes.  I think he feels incensed at being wussed-up in this way.  Where is your sense of reverence people!  (And yes I tried to take another photo and my camera had eaten its batteries again!)

The smiley faced cookies in the bakery have been replaced by cookies with equally big smiles and Santa Hats!  

And so it goes!

Thanks for reading?

Hugs

Maggie