Busy week at work, and life goes on. Some weeks are better than others. Had a Fall Poker Walk at work which was lots of fun walking through the City’s beautiful cemetery with all the vibrant fall colors. Getting out and exercising in the brisk fall weather. Loved that part. Drove back to the office, unloaded the bottled water, and took it in the office. Somewhere between my car and my office I lost my keys. That was on Wednesday, Halloween, and many trick or treat kids walking through the parking lot. I locked the doors so they had to have been in my hand on the way to the elevator. Searched and searched, and just can’t figure out where I lost them. Now for some sticker shock, it will costs me about $60 to replace just the car key. Something about a chip inside. Ugh.
Friday, up at 5:30 and ready to head to work. Drive about 400 feet and realize the car just doesn’t sound or feel right (a girl thing), so I do a u-turn and head home. It is just breaking dawn and I can’t really see outside, but by touch I realized I have a flat tire, passenger rear. Back into the house and call the van to tell them I won’t be riding this morning, then a call to work to tell them I will be a little bit late. Sleepy Lynn wakes up hearing me talking on the phone, and gets enlisted to change the tire. We talk about putting on the spare, but decide to put one of the winter stud tires on instead. Have to take the tire and drop it off at the Les Schwab to get it fixed. Too focused on getting to work, with no coffee running through my veins yet, I’m not thinking too logically. Should have loaded-up the other three studs in the car and get them changed out as it is November. Didn’t think of that until I drove into the tire store. Ugh, that means I have to take the other three in on Monday to get them all changed out. What a way to finish out a week. Still no keys.
Here is the work we got done this weekend. Lynn put in a new mail box. One that is mounted on a railroad-tie, and he just dares the snow plow to knock this one over!! Then he had to replace a fence post that our lovely horse, April, leaned against and broke. Gotta love the animals. Especially, the big furry ones. Work never ends on 7 acres. That’s two things checked off the list. The repair on the 3rd post continues. Have 3 sides glued up, one more side and we move to the Bondo stage. Beautiful weekend, but doesn’t look like it will last, after all it IS November in the great northwest.
Now for some reflecting. We are looking at 1999-2000. Have the floor joists and pony walls in with OSB flooring on the first floor. Winter arrives and we lay down black plastic to protect the floor. Doesn’t work!!! We have created a nightmare. We spend the winter and spring using shop brooms to sweep the water off the floor, and burn up one shop vac sucking the water off the floor. Lynn just sees the dollar signs with reference to loosing that floor. Finally, the spring rains have let up and the dry summer begins. We strip off the plastic and try to let it dry out. Our summers get really dry so we hoped that would save the floor.
Lynn starts taking time-off from the hardware store to work on the house. He is framing the front walls to the house with all the angles of the bays. He loves this part of the job, and he is good at it. But, alas, he puts a nail through the meaty part of his left palm. Luckily, he didn’t nail himself to the floor or the wall, but none the less, it hurt and required a trip to the emergency room to have it removed. No bones were hit, so that was a good thing.
Then came the winds, unusually strong, and as they say in The 3 Little Pigs, it huffed and it puffed and it “blew the little house down.”
Getting ready to put the walls back up, he was walking on the floor and realized that there were some spongy spots. Hmm, that is not good. His remedy, buy some more OSB flooring and lay it right on top. The bottom was dry, at least we thought so. Know where this is going? Unbelievable. We put down more flooring, get walls up with Troy’s help. Lynn’s son. He works on it through the winter and gets the first floor done. Gets the 2 iron claw-foot tubs lifted onto the 2nd floor with the aid of the infamous bucket truck now we are ready for the 2nd floor walls. In the spring Troy has to go back to the road paving job in California. By this time we are into probably 2000 or 2001. Lynn decides he will get a local contractor to frame the rest of the walls on the second floor and frame the roof. The walls were sheeted and house wrap, and we installed most of the 44 windows.
The roof is complicated and high off the ground. The house is still unprotected from the elements and more water seeps through the 2nd floor down to the first floor. Then in 2001, we finally hire a roofing company, Palmer Roofing, to roof the entire house. They were awesome and took about 3-4 days and $11,000, and the roof was done.
We have a house wrapped and roofed and what is next on the agenda? We are going into 2002. More surprises to come.
Stay tuned for more reflections.
Annie, the reluctant carpenter.
15yearsandcountingdream 