Cottage, Season 2

We have, so far, made the very most of having a cottage in 2013.

We started going up there almost as soon as the snow had melted, while the mosquitos were still thick in the air (in and out of the cottage!) and the trees were still trying to grow leaves. We were still far far from being able to go swimming – a misunderstanding with our water pump led me to peel off my pants and test the waters sometime in late May, and I can tell you, even the dog couldn’t swim in it. It was cuh-cuh cold. But we did have running water and a propane stove and lights and fridge and oh man did we have a lot of projects lined up for this year.

I am pleased to report that we have managed to accomplish much of what we set out to do in 2013. During our first chilly weekend I focused on giving Nora a place to sleep – a junior bed bought off of a friend - and had luckily found a giant Ikea bed net somewhere in our belongings, which was necessary due to the aforementioned mosquito infestation. Mom made up Nora’s curtains and I went to Ikea for some Jr. bedding and rugs to cover up the particleboard, and now Nora’s got a cute and cozy room that she can sleep and play in.

Next I built us a bed. We’d been sleeping on an old futon frame that we’d gotten in the Ikea scratch and dent ages ago, back when we were living like a couple of 28-year-olds in their first house. It was our tv couch and spare room, back in the day. Problem is, we were using it with a queen-size mattress (newly purchased) and the futon frame is really a double so the sides were floppy, and Nora rolled off of it more than once. I even rolled off of it a few times. Add to that the fact that a few bolts were missing from the central hinged section of the frame, and it was slightly sloped down to my side ….. we needed a bed. So I went under the cottage and found a bunch of wood, bought the queen-sized wooden slats at Ikea (yay Ikea, well-represented in our cottage), and built a bed. It is a solid bed. I moved the futon frame out of there but it lingered at the side of our room like an albatross, until this past weekend when I re-purposed it into a bench for the screen porch.

Add some more mom-made curtains (both sets of curtains made with the fabric I coveted oh so long ago and finally got over the winter), and the turquoise chair that set off my kitchen renovation, and the orange shelf that I started to paint LAST YEAR and only finished this spring, and the bedroom is dunzo.

I made it my life’s mission to finish off the screen porch this spring, somewhat during a timeframe when a screen porch would be necessary. While I didn’t manage to finish it while the bugs were at their peak, it sure is nice to sit out there and not worry in late summer evenings when the sun goes down and the air starts humming. I cannot tell you how much I have come to loathe mosquitos. Anyway, the porch was built in a kind of funky way that made it nearly impossible to fit the screens in but I am pleased to say it’s (mostly) done. There are still a few tiny gaps, but mosquitos are dumb, and they haven’t really found them yet. We ate our first dinner out on the screen porch this past very hot Saturday, just before this bench went in. We had tacos.

Here’s the other end of the screen porch, just for a full picture

There were a few more major projects that we needed to get done before our cottage is 100% usable. While our bathroom had a door and a flushable toilet, it did not have its sink or shower hooked up yet. I went through a few ideas for both; originally the sink was going to be an enamel farm bowl with a hole cut out of it. Then I gave up on that and bought the round kitchen sink from Ikea of about the same dimensions, and I bought a raw-edge (and raw top, sides, and bottom as it turns out) thick piece of pine from our wood guy and sanded the snot out of the top, cut it to size, varnished it, added some legs (with birch log spacers as the legs were too short) to make a vanity. I bought a slick Ikea tap, and finally this weekend my brother plumbed it all in. So now we can brush our teeth and wash our hands in the bathroom, instead of at the kitchen sink!

An the pièce de résistance: the shower stall. Originally I was looking for this stock tank:

And was going to get a hole cut into it, a curtain rod that went all around, and just use that as the shower stall/bathtub. Well, luckily I had a real hard time tracking down the exact right tank, and instead, we decided to make the best use of the space by putting in a corner shower basin – the most petite one we could find, since the room’s not that big. It’s white vinyl, which I wanted to avoid, but then I had a brain wave when it came time to decide what to put on the walls around the tub, and my mind fell on galvanized tin roofing. It’s relatively cheap, relatively easy to install (without all the snipping required to go around fixtures, windows, etc – it’s two pieces), and it has the same look and feel as the stock tank while keeping the walls totally waterproof. However, since the shower basin was intended for use with a glass wall, it has a very low lip, and I so we had to buy a shower head that rains straight down, rather than one that blows the water on a diagonal right at the shower curtain. I bought a nice little unit with a cost comparable to a standard shower head. My superhero little brother installed it all last week, and it is fabulous.

When he’s got some time he’s also going to make us a curved shower curtain rod with phalanges, to attach to either wall, and that gingham shower curtain will be hung up. I bought a stock tank quite similar to that original one, but for $40, and it fits right into the shower base and under the tap – it is Nora’s bathtub, my laundry tub, you name it.

Next up, I am working on (and when I say “I am working on”, I mean the team that includes my dad who is cutting the tiles, my friend who is supplying the tiles) tiling the bathroom floor. It’s a bit of a job but in the end, the tiles are free, and we will have a ceramic tile floor. Add a nice white bathmat (not an expensive one, I have a black dog) and it’ll be pretty freaking lovely when it’s all done.

The other big project is the loft. Last year the loft was there but it had no ladder and no railings, so it was this big space that we’d heard was stunning (from the builder) but we’d never used. We couldn’t get up there. So this year we bought a nifty set of wooden pull-down attic stairs (a unit that comes as one piece and is simple to install), put it in, and I am building railings out of pine and steel chicken fencing. The top railing’s still not on because I have to order some nice 2x6 pine, but you get the picture. Once we’ve finished the molding around the stair opening, we are going to install a hatch/trapdoor, so that when kids are upstairs and the ladder is down, they won’t fall down the hole. This is the one dog-free area in my entire world. We are going to get a really nice rug up there, and I’m gonna build another bed, and neither of them will ever be covered in black fur.

So we progress. Also done so far in 2013: a very tiny, very productive veggie garden (I basically stuck my seedlings right into a bag of compost, which took me about 3 minutes), the beginnings of a wee perennial garden (varying success, it is all sand), some shelving and a future cupboard for Nora’s room, some more steps down to the water, hubby has been clearing branches and burning all of our scrap, so we are developing a firepit area, and the hillside – once a sandy wasteland – is now a thickly-growing thatch of grasses and wildflowers and the trees we’ve been planting, and it’s full of frogs, bird nests, interesting bugs and garter snakes. Hubby also took out every screen in the cottage and added foam tape around it, as we learned early in the season that the bugs were getting around the screens and into the cottage. Relief.

And now that the nice hot weather is starting to hit, we are mostly finished our indoor projects, and will be able to relax a bit when the Austrians arrive next week. Next up: attaching our dock to land. It’s been three years. It’s time.

(This pic. is from last year, before the big windows went in and the grass and trees were planted.)

Spring Shakedown

Every spring I get itchy. I don’t think this is uncommon – I believe everyone starts to get a bit restless when the snow finally starts melting and exposing mess, and we have to start switching our wardrobes over to warmer garb. But this year is the first in awhile that I have gotten really hungry for change.

I guess last year we were busy building the cottage, and that took up a lot of my energies. In the end I’d planned that thing within an inch of my life and the whole process of building and moving into it seemed to take very little time or grief – two months at the most. All of my decorating and project making mojo went into the cottage last year so naturally our house was completely neglected. Worth it.

But this year I am seeing things with brand new eyes. I am looking at some of the spaces in my house as though for the very first time and letting myself get carried away by the decorating domino effect. I finally re-did an old chair I’d had in the basement forever and oh man is it nice. It’s gonna go in the corner of our room at the cottage because I’m not sure how sturdy it is to actually sit on. It was this ratty old silver-painted thing that I found in someone’s office at my old job, with a painted canvas seat that was falling off. I tore off and re-stuffed the seat in cool fabric and painted the chair in a deep turquoise colour, which meant I had to buy a 1-quart can of paint, since they no longer mix paint in smaller quantities. I have 7/8 of a can of paint left over in a gorgeous deep glossy turquoise so I started thinking to myself “what else can I paint?” My eye fell on these two shelves I’ve got in my dining area, painted gold from when I was in my red-and-gold Asian baroque phase, living at my folks’ house. My Opa made me these shelves, and they were originally pale blue, then gold, and now I am going to paint them turquoise. But this led me to recognize that the wall where the shelves are hung is covered in really aged (re: oranged) wood with mysterious stains on it that we never questioned, and wouldn’t turquoise shelves look much better on a crisp white wall? Which will require me to crack out the pry bar, drywall mud and primer. When I mentioned this to dear hubby he thought maybe a window should go in there as well but that’s too much even for me. Then I think I need a new clock on that wall, just to freshen it up and make it easier for Nora to learn to tell time, and while we’re at it, the curtains on the adjacent window are looking a bit tired – add some new curtains to the to-do list. My dining table hangs out in front of this soon-to-be white wall and it, too, is really old and tired and impossible to clean (got it at a yard sale about 12 years ago for $25), so as soon as the weather warms up, I am taking it outside on the deck, sanding it, and giving it a coat of shiny shiny white paint – only on the very top. I am leaving the rest of it wood. This way I will be able to see any mess on it and wipe it up appropriately and it will be more inviting in general. The room is going to look nice and fresh, but maybe that vintage metal flower chandelier over the table - the one I wanted so badly and paid way too much for on ebay 10 years ago and sometimes bang my forehead on rather dramatically – is a bit dustymusty for my crisp new dining area? Also dangerous, one of the lightbulbs is busted and hanging on by some kind of internal wire. I think the room would look smashing with a d.i.y light fixture made with coloured fabric cord and exposed leaded lightbulbs….. and the list goes on. If I follow this domino all the way to the end, the room will look absolutely fresh and fantastic and unrecognizable, but I fear poor hubby will have a heart attack from all the change.

Gonna stick to the shelves, the wall, and the table. And the curtains. Give the chandelier a good cleaning, fix the bulb, get new shades for it, and put it on notice. And while I’m at it, I might replace one or two of our dining chairs and lose the booster seat – Nora is big enough now that we don’t need that ugly thing hanging around for much longer.

Then when I was left to my own devices on Easter Monday (hubby had to work, I did not, very dangerous stuff), I turned my critical eye to the area around our woodstove. When you look at your house through the eyes of an imaginary stranger, the results can be shocking I tell you. What I saw embarrassed the hell out of me – the mantle is a wreck and appears to be falling off in one spot, the brickwork is atrocious and breaking up, and the wall where we dump our firewood is so damaged that you can almost see the back of the exterior siding through it. Drywall is useless stuff. No match for a log of well-aged maple thrown from 5 paces.

The biggest culprit in all of this mess is the jerk who built the mantle area in the first place. The whole wall around my woodstove – formerly a fireplace, as evidenced by the arch that still shows above my stove, grr – is done in brick but in a uniquely horrible style where the mortar was never smoothed off or chipped away, it just hangs out in blobs from between the bricks. This is incredibly stupid, as this zone is constantly bombarded with ash and wood dust, and this textured mortar is impossible to clean (unless I figure out a way to get a pressure washer going in my living room) so the whole thing is permanently dingy and gross.

So on Easter Monday, I casually went to the basement, got myself a sturdy chisel and a hammer, and started to investigate. One innocent “ting ting” turned, half an hour later, into a pile of rubble on my living room floor, dust everywhere. But dammit the mortar looks better. It’s not 100% - the bricks themselves are very rough and pockmarked and the mortar is obviously chipped, not smooth, and that damned arch will always be poking its head over my stove surround, and of course I naturally started right in the middle, at eye level, and did not finish – but it’s a visual improvement. Now I am toying with the idea of buying a bag of mortar and smoothing the bricks out a bit, and painting the whole thing glossy white. OR buying a bunch of really thin flagstone and just re-doing the entire thing, either by removing the bricks first or just going right over them. I am definitely going to find a beam and make a new mantle, and fix up that side wall that’s all mangled up – possibly foregoing drywall and putting in a solid piece of painted wood instead.

Add to all of this the desk that’s been on my back burner for awhile. I want to build myself a narrower desk for my back office, now that I am no longer accommodating an 8-cubic-foot computer monitor. All I have to fit on it is a laptop and a printer, so it will be about 18 inches wide and we will have more room in the office space for art projects and other fun stuff. I am building it out of the barn board that came off the office wall, so we will see.

I also have a few projects lined up for hubby that he doesn’t know about yet. He loves spring because trout fishing season starts, so I am hoping to get a bit of his time before then.

As much as I enjoy doing all of these things, when the rush of ideas hits me I get kind of stressed out. I go into panicky list-making mode and start worrying that I won’t have enough time. The glorious thing about it is, I am starting to be able to do more and more of this stuff with Nora around. She no longer naps during the day, which is hard in some ways but ok in others, because we don’t have to tiptoe around in the afternoons. I can crack out the power tools at will. And she’s kind of keen to help me, though I have to watch her around sharp stuff and things that permanently stain, like paint. She’s learning to use basic tools (she likes to pry nails out with the hammer, or try to) and is gaining an appreciation for fixing things up, and for her it’s totally normal for her to have a mama who fixes stuff. I think that sets a pretty neat example.

Now all I have to do is to remember to take before and after pictures!

Well hello there.

Let me first address the elephant in the room: it has been awhile since I’ve written. I don’t really know how to account for the time missing from my blog, only that I probably was not inspired to write about anything humdrum so I just stayed away altogether. What have I been doing with the past six months or so? Well, working, momming, daughtering, becoming an aunt, dealing with family illness, trying to keep my head above the water and my little family healthy. Nothing much to write about.


This past fall was a confusing time, for a bunch of reasons. But one thing that I will discuss is the funny way that once fall hit, and we locked up the cottage, I completely forgot about it. Like, put it completely out of my head. Once in a while I would think of it and go “huh, I have a total second house just sitting there by itself, under a thick blanket of snow.” Acknowledge the strangeness of that, and move on. But then January hit, and all of a sudden as though a switch was flipped in my brain, I started planning stuff for the cottage again. Pull-down loft stairs, a loft railing, a shower stall, a bed, decorating, it all started coming fast and furious and now I find it hard to focus on other things (well, mostly work. I find it hard to focus on work).

We had Christmas, and it was lovely, though Nora and I were sort of sick for the whole of December. There seems to be a plague going around our town, and my hope is that after that December, we will be in the clear for awhile. So far so good, fingers crossed. We got Nora some skis in the hopes that we could familiarize her with the only sport in which I have any proficiency, but when we put them on her she goes all limp like a purple sack of jello so we have a ways to go yet. The other day I put my own skis on and sailed down the tiny hill in our front yard, only the snow was pretty fast and I went pretty fast and ended up nearly running into the woods at the far end of the yard. Nora just sat there and looked at me like “what the hell are you doing?” as I huffed and puffed back towards the house, pole-less, in the deep snow. I don’t think I was selling it.

I keep putting off potty training and I don’t know why. Doctor, why do I put off potty training? Why, Gennyland, it’s probably because you don’t want to acknowledge that your baby’s growing up, especially since we’re not sure there are others in the cards. Yep, that’s probably it. I figure she’s more than ready, as once in a while I will come around the corner and she’ll stand there, looking at me accusingly, and say “No, don’t come in here! I’m pooping!” So fine, she’s allowed to grow up this little bit, but she’s never getting a cellphone. Compromises people!

She’s super hilarious these days. NOTE: if you are bored reading stories about peoples’ adorable toddlers, skip the next two paragraphs! She’ll be two and a half next month – 30 months – which means that (according to BabyCentre.com) she should “name a few body parts, some colors, and even a friend or two. Her memory and speaking ability work in tandem. Help out by expanding on what she says. If she says, "Dog sleep," you might say, "Yes, Spot is curled up and fast asleep in his doggie bed." She can't imitate your complex language patterns yet, but her brain is absorbing them.” Ummm, my kid corrects me. I think BabyCentre needs to update their sources because most toddlers I know can handle those basic tasks, and mine knows all the colours of the rainbow, can count to 12, recognize about 50% of the letters in the alphabet, names all her friends AND their parents, identifies her own written name, knows the street she lives on, all the members of our family and remembers who gave her that dress that she wouldn’t take off last summer. Also she pronounces the “I” in “again” which is the cutest thing ever, because neither my husband nor I do this. She picked it up from the daycare provider, who speaks proper english. She will say to us “read it agayn” And it makes me chuckle quietly.

She is super into penguins these days - goddamn Happy Feet, which I have seen 78 times. Though I do appreciate that my kid now knows “Boogie Wonderland” and Grandmaster Flash’s “the Message”. Hearing her say “don’t push me, cause I’m close.to.the.edge” kills me every time. I learned the hard way that a 2.5 year old kid is like a broken record, so if you introduce one movie to them, they will want to watch it over and over again until they have it completely memorized and can recite the lines over dinner each night. Once in a while she will turn to me out of the blue and, with a very mock-serious face, say “remember the Leopard Seal? Ooooh.” We put a moratorium on Happy Feet so we only watch it maybe once a week now, but we talk about it daily. Putting on her snowsuit (“got one flipper in!”) in the tub (plastic penguins are “Mumble” and “Gloria” even though one is a yellow wind-up and the other is a squirt toy, and I have to draw killer whales on the sides of the tub constantly. Black tub crayon doesn’t come out easily BTW), at Sunday dinner (mom and dad are kind of bored of hearing us repeat “Remember dumplings, I know where you live” but her giggles make it worthwhile. Also when she does her Schwarzeneggeresque “I’ll take you with ketchup” it is so genuinely funny). Part of me wants to blow her mind and buy Happy Feet 2 but the other, sane part of me really does not.

Nora is pretty excited these days because she has a new family member: her cousin Henry, who was born to my brother and his wife two weeks ago. Henry is a sweet babe, very chill, and Nora is pretty amazed that someone can be so small. She’s always telling me things like “Henry doesn’t have his words yet” and “Henry can’t jump yet.” Seeing her with Henry warms the cockles of my heart and makes me love her 15 times more, but somehow I think having a baby cousin she can visit weekly is somewhat different than having a baby in the house that she’d have to share me with. For now, my itch is scratched, especially now that Henry’s in the picture. I can hold a baby when I feel the urge. I can give him back to his momma when my attention is required elsewhere. My only disappointment is that I can’t foist my bins and bins of outgrown girl clothes on him.

So, now it is almost Forevuary. I started 3 bean seeds in a jar the other day, effectively kicking off gardening season 2013. Goals for this upcoming month are: go skiing at least once or twice, bring a giant load of old junk to the local old junk store, potty training, knitting hubby a sweater, fixing up my ‘office’ and building a desk, and maybe painting a dresser I’ve got for Nora’s cottage bedroom. Not a priority yet. The office space is sort of halfway there, but it has made me realize that we are such crazy paper hoarders. Also, a wee moral dilemma has presented itself: what to do with random photographs that are sent to us? Hubby’s cousin’s graduation photo, pictures of peoples’ kids from a few years back, family wedding photos… all of them are in a special pile with which I do not know what to do. I am leaning towards throwing them out. In this age of facebook and digital pictures, everything is available at any time anyway.

Now it is lunchtime. Good bye.