Where is Summer?

Well, I'm not sure if anyone is checking in on the blog these days - seems like summer is busy everywhere BUT HERE!!! Well, that's not really true, both Phil & I are busy, just not on the house.

Phil is working for the summer at Eagle Nook Resort in Barclay Sound - which means that he's not living at home for the summer. Check out this resort at: www.eaglenook.com. Sounds like he is having a great time & he's not only a nature guide for the guests, but the maintenance man for the resort. So, while we thought he'd get a change of pace, relax, have some fun, he's doing alot of the same chores he was doing right here!! ha, ha, ha.

I am working once again at Imperial Eagle Lodge here in Bamfield. Check out this charming B & B at: www.imperialeaglelodge.com. I'm having a great time working in the gardens & baking up a storm to get ready for our fisher folk who start to folk in next week.

It's been a slow start for many lodges around here - the cost of gas has really deterred many people from making long journeys & the weather has been just the pits!

Hopefully things will get really busy & we won't notice the lack of sunshine & warmer temperatures. I have the feeling we are in for a long & lovely fall this year.

Phil has the camera with him at Eagle Nook, so I'm unable to give you any updated photos of the house. My flower gardens are slow & small - although I do have 6 foot daisies. I've built a new flower bed & moved some of my potted plants into it - we shall see if it survives the winter water fall - the drainage around the house is something that needs to be addressed this fall - it flows down into the yard instead of along side the laneway (thanks to a huge hump of concrete....) & the new flower bed sits in a bit of a low spot....hmmmmm

Our new tenant downstairs (Kim) is very quiet - hardly know she's down there! It's nice having someone in the house - even if we never see each other - because I sometimes get freaked out being here all by myself. I'll be glad when Phil has another day off & is able to come home. While I love the house, it's just not the same without him here too. It's OUR house now.....

So, I hope everyone is having a great summer. I'm not sure if I'll be adding many posts during the next 2 months as work gets crazy & I get outside picking berries for my jams & jellies (if it would rain things would ripen better!!). But send an email any time & I'll tell you some funny stories!!

What did We Miss Showing You?

Okay - it's been a while since we were at our crazy-mad paced & frantic work schedule. Actually, this past week since we returned Claire & Joe to the airport has been rather slow & easy for the both of us. We had an appointment with the bank appraiser on Friday morning - he arrived at 8 am & left at 8:20 am. The bank has now termed our house 100%!!!! This means that we get our last draw of money - to pay off our line of credit & to start slamming a bit of money down on the last of our bills. (what? the last of our bills??!! That's hilarious - our bills will never end..!! Such is the life of a home owner...)

Anyway - I'm sure there's things we've done in the house that you've not seen, or stories we've not told.

So, I'm learning the art of container gardening. Heather gave me this lovely hanging basket - am starting to love the smell of these flowers whose name has escaped me...

The weather hasn't been so great lately so the boxes on the upper deck aren't growing as quickly as I had hoped. But I am learning the delicate art of water & fertilizer...

I have a darling greenhouse on the deck as well. I've got 2 tiny bean plants & some miniscule tomato plants (back row) & Dennis gave us some wonderful pepper plants. I hope that we get some flowers & some fruit. If I start earlier next year - or just buy the plants - I will get a harvest. This year I just want to see some flowers.



Well - here's what I'm really excited about - the yard has NO MORE JUNK OR BUILDING MATERIAL ON IT!!! As you can see, I have a wack of containers that I just moved down today - much easier to water them here than up at the greenhouse - I'm about 1 hose short.

So, what I want to do in this section of yard is to have another berry patch. I've got logan berries that will grow along a 'fence' of sorts, I've got some red currants that dearly need to be planted & I found someone in this town with gooseberries, so I've got cuttings that should be ready to plant next spring. I would also like to have a few raised beds in here as well. A lot of planning & appropriate use of space & figuring out the sun cycles...CAN'T WAIT!

Check this out - the upper deck is clear! Phil & Joe moved all the cedar wood that Phil wants to keep dry down to behind the house under some heavy plastic. What to do with this space? Since we don't have stairs going up to the back door at the back left of this photo, we don't use this space. I have ideas for keeping some plants up here as it gets wonderful west light & I can remember to water them on a regular basis.






Ok - this is going back to the middle of June. The kitchen floor had been painted, the kitchen cupboards went in & I REALLY wanted to get the dining room floor painted so that when the 2nd coat went on the kitchen, I could do the dining as well & have them be the same colour.





Here we go with the 2nd coat of paint & the coat of varathane. Looks marvelous...







Here's the dining room with furniture. The lights haven't been lowered or swung over the table yet - not too far - just about a foot or so over & about 2 feet lower. To do that, Phil needs the super scarey, rickety death ladder....








We had a bit of help from Mike Hughes for a few days with trim & casing of the windows & then again with starting the railing up to the loft. We have just the large rail installed & hopefully the spindles will go in before Phil leaves for summer work.



Phil & Mike - Mike sure does know his stuff & I wish we could get him back for some more finishing work...Please!!!









So, a few personal touches we are starting to add. These are some glass balls that are hung up in the front window. We were also given some stain glass pieces at the open house & need to figure out where to put them. I'm enjoying the uncluttered feel we have so I'm not bringing out a lot of my older pieces that I had all over the place in the old house.







This is the kitchen light - in the proper place finally & yes, we barely notice the caps in the ceiling where we had to cover up the original positions...






I LOVE my little propane cook stove. One day we will get it plumbed in & installed properly. Right now we use a little 2 burner hot plate jobber that doesn't get hot enough to boil water in under 30 minutes.... Our hood vent is almost complete too - just need to punch yet another hole into our wall to vent it & I'm very pleased that the shelf & bracket idea that I had has managed to work out well with both hood vents.

(as you can see, we need to invest in some garbage containers.... have gotten quite lazy & just use whatever box is not yet burnt....)




Have you seen this yet?









So, the deck clean up also involved the lower deck - all the extra wood went back behind the house (that garden will not be worked on this year at all....;(_









The upper deck has NO TOOLS!!! It's so wonderful to be able to sit outside & have a meal - even though we have some saw horses with a piece of plywood on top for our table....Outdoor furniture isn't high on our to-get list just yet....








Did I show you the fir landing & step up to the stairs to the loft? They are not yet finished - just a quick coat of varathane to protect it while we try to find the time to sand & varathane....They are quite lovely, eh?








This is me at 7:30 in the morning....
Ok - so, in the few days before the open house, we were crazy-crazy working & one thing was to get ALL the tools OUT OF OUR LIVING SPACE & that allowed me to finally work on the living room floor. Now the paint I originally purchased is NOT a proper floor paint, it was deck stain & of course I needed 2 coats instead of the 1 the paint pro told me & he only sold me 5 instead of the 6 I asked for....& I found out that if I didn't let the paint cure long enough inbetween coats, the paint would come out a different colour than the area beside it... So, Phil bought me some 'proper' floor paint but I had to put primer down first! How ridiculous to spend so much time on the floors....And guess what.....

The new floor paint is DIFFERENT!!! AND I have to put 2 coats on still!!! I really want to put down some varathane so that it 'matches' the dining/kichen floor...

I'll never win with the floor...

But funny-ha-ha story: Back to varathaning the kitchen/dining floor - meant that I had no access to the fridge or the upstairs unless I did some fancy maneovering over the half walls & around some posts....I had also varathaned the suite bathroom. What I did was painted myself out of access to the washroom & food. I didn't quite catch on to that until I was done around 9:30 pm when I had to go pee & I was starving... Managed to find some frozen sandwich meat in the deep freeze & then crawl over the half wall to get to the upstairs.... How silly - won't happen again!

This is the living room floor - all bare & empty.




This is the living room today with all the furniture - not really in the right place, we need to play around with it & we also need to find a TV stand - I'm trying to get Phil into something like a bakers stand or a plant stand like those Lee Valley has - black metal...






This is Claire & Joe arriving in the rain - soggy & exhausted. Of course, the rain stopped 45 minutes later after we had finished bringing in all the food & bags....





We are busy trying to finalize all the details in the suite.

I decided to hang some of the local art pieces I've got down there.

Here are a series of sea stars in the suite bathroom. I have finally purchased some bath linens for when we rent it in the summer, but forgot to take a photo with them set up...


Here's a sea slug photo that looks stunning in the suite living room. I love the floating frame idea....







Here's a water colour of a leafy-hornmouth snail also done by a local artist. It's a little small for the suite bedroom, but I'm sure I'll find a few other pieces to tie it all in.






Trusting Phil to make some design purchases is hard for me to do - but with the new shower curtains, he did great!!









This is in our bathroom upstairs - great colour & we aren't having issues with water leaking out around the liner over the short shower lip. It's so nice to have the curved shower rods - gives more space inside the shower.








Well, we are still working on the loft. I hacked up a shelf & figured out how to install & hang them so we can now hang up some clothes. There are a lot of boxes of books up here - might try to move up the book case sometime soon....Also need to find some of my curtain material that isn't quite so tacky....








Ok - we park our boat on a dock that is home to the last commercial fishing boats in town. Some days we stick it lucky & are given some fresh sea food. We got a HUGE grocery bag full of prawns & there were some monsters in the pile....ummm, can't wait to eat these in the dreary days of winter....if we can wait that long!

Open House Party!

Well, we had our Open House Party - worked our butts off for 2 whole days & made some magic happen. We now have a home vs a house that we live in amongst the tools. Here are a few pics from our day:















Proud & exhausted homeowners.

The mother-in-law, Claire, was a wonder with helping prepare the food platters, making 2 awesome punches & entertaining our guests. Mucho gracias!






Joe was also a wonder with working behind the scenes in keeping the platters full, cleaning up after our messy guests & helping with the chicken wings & oysters - ummmm, fresh oysters!!




Some of our guests included 'the old & the young' such as Bob McVie & baby Eli.





Dennis Morgan & Phil






Sweet Angel Eli - slept on the chair for about 1/2 hour!







Out on the deck in the glorious sun was Fay & Malcolm







Others included Michelle Lloyd, Malcolm, Owen Richards, Lars, Jim Levis & John Evans.





The deck was the happening place to be for most of the afternoon. Larry & Linda came to chat.




Heather Alexander brough over a most lovely hanging basket.



Rowan loved running around playing with the balloons & munching, munching, munching on the grapes or carrots & dip. He had a few tummy aches later on....
It was a great day to catch up with friends who we've not seen for a while - Sarah & Tash.






The food was simple but absolutely wonderful, especially the fresh oysters cooked in the oven....first of the season & I could have eaten more!



Of course, after all the food is done, out come the guitars for a bit of sing-song, rock-along & laugh with each other goodness. There were some great new songs & some tried & trust oldies. The accoustics were good in the living room, so we will be hosting music night more often, I'm sure!



ahhh, the end of the night. Tired but happy. Let's see what we can get done this next week so that we can tick off our list a few more important items....

How to Install a Closet Organizer

Today I am still working on moving us up from the suite to the upstairs....There are many, many, many trips up & down the stairs, but the end is in sight....til Phil comes home with Claire (his mom) & Joe; which should be in about 4 hours...!!

One thing I wanted to make sure was available for their visit, was a closet organizer in the suite bedroom. So, I took it upon myself to install it while Phil was away.

Seems simple enough. Looks easy enough. Shouldn't be all that hard or take all that long.






I started out with a blank wall. Just hoping that I didn't have to remove it ALL once I was finished because I decided not to cut down the wire shelves.....








Utter confusion for the first half hour while I read the instructions & looked at all the pieces. Really, now, come on! Gather your tools & let's get going!






Instructions in 3 languages - just in case you couldn't get it via English....The pictures were a bit helpful, but not in explaining what a #8 1" screw was....Still don't know!








But I was determined to do this without 'the man's' help. I found Phil's drill & all the bits & pieces that go with it & sort of guessed. Of course, making sure that all my lines were level & in the right spot was a HUGE part of it, but after the first hole drilled, it was kind of fun! Until I hit a stud...now what?!




I did make a phone call to Phil just to check on things before I started drilling or hunting down those mysterious #8 screws...& only proved to myself that I can't read a measuring tape. Ha, ha, ha.
But things went in easy enough & yes, I found out that they come out just as easy too. Had to reposition 3 of the 17 shelf anchors...which is not bad for just 'winging it'!



So, now the anchors are in & the shelves attached, just have to put in the side wall anchors & we are ready to go! Let's check the instructions before we go too much further....







Wow - my shelves look just like the picture in the instructions! I think I'm on the right track...Just have to fiddle around with the side anchors & the front supports & we should be done before tomorrow....







These are the finished shelves. I think they are positioned nicely. The instructions called for the top shelf to be at the top of the front leg supports, but that was way too high! No one would be able to reach up there & put anything on it! So I moved it all down a level just to be on the safe side.






Now we are ready for guests - and I even found some extra hangers! It's amazing how much 'stuff' we have packed in boxes that we've not been using for the last 6 months & not even noticed. Actually, that's probably a good thing. Now I can start the 'reduce, reuse & recycle' part of my plan for unpacking....which will take another year!

All we need are the sliding doors for the closet - definately a job I'm not doing on my own!

ps - this project only took me 3 hours....