Kingfisher Cove

Why Do 4-Day Weeks Last So Long?

Brain’s pretty much fried, so I’m opting for a bulleted stream of consciousness.

• Every commute, whether heading to work or heading home from work, I find myself behind a vehicle with a brake light burned out. Every. Single. Commute.
• Tonight’s commute? I was behind five (count ‘em, FIVE) different cars with a burned-out brake light. Including a blue VW Bug like my old one.
• So tired of crappy weather. I’m still reeling from my disappointment of our Memorial Day Weekend washout.
• Headed home at 10:30 a.m. on Monday. Because, what was the point of sitting inside the camping trailer and (once again) peering out at pouring rain?
• We did stop at Home Depot and looked at stuff. Got some solid ideas for tile, outdoor lighting, flooring for the glass studio and pantry, carpet for the bedrooms. Left the dogs and cat in the truck snoozing while the rain poured. They didn’t seem to mind a bit. No “attitude” when we climbed back in the truck. Mojo just continued to zzzzzzzzz.
• I look so forward to retirement when putting all my (weather) eggs in one basket won’t be an issue anymore. “It’s raining this weekend? Well, it’s supposed to improve by Wednesday so we can take a beach walk then!”
• Now? Wednesday means Day Jail. (Although Wednesday was crappy, too. But it was a hypothetical example).
• Of course I’m thankful we don’t get tornadoes here. But then, I wouldn’t live in a place where that was an issue. Period.
• There are times (like now) when I’d sure rather be somewhere with sunshine. Anywhere. With sunshine.
• Not much to report on the Harstine house. The framers were *supposedly* due back to work on our place today after a full week of working on another job. They claim they will be done with all the framing on our house by June 10th.
• John made a bonsai run down there yesterday (and then right back again) to meet with the door guy to do a walkthrough. Exterior doors are on order! (Interior doors are picked out, but we won’t need to order them for a while).
• DOORS ARE EXPENSIVE!
• Currently reading Dean Koontz’ latest “Odd Thomas” book (“Deeply Odd”). It’s gooood! (I lurve Odd Thomas!)
• Yay! Michele Bachmann isn’t running for re-election for Congress! As Andy Borowitz says, “The House will have a higher collective IQ come 2014.” (Actually, I’m sure there are plenty of idiots in line to replace her. But they can’t possibly be as batshit crazy as she is…right?)
• I’m sure Faux News will hire her. Or maybe she and Palin will run together for President. SNORT.
• I got some high-level kudos at work today for that billable project I worked on last week (that kept me late at the office last Thursday). Apparently the client was quite impressed! (And it could potentially lead to a much bigger project…)
• It’s a busy week, catching up on all the stuff I had to say “no” to these past couple of weeks. Too brain dead to keep up with my Words With Friends games. (Played that a lot over the 4-day wet weekend).
• Laundry! We’re heading back down to Harstine tomorrow night and I’ve had to do a mountain of laundry tonight to catch up!
• And now…back to my book.
• And laundry.

This Pretty Much Sums Up the Weekend

And this even more so!

Poor John has been working down in the open-air rain house all day long, including throughout that gullywasher.

The upside to all of this? It’s not windy. (Very thankful about that). And it’s not overly cold. Also, the birds are going nuts! They are everywhere and singing their hearts out! They obviously really like the rain.

[Each time I’ve replayed this video, the weenies explode in barking fits, you know, because they hear a “dog barking.”]

o_O

Finally!

The (extra) long weekend is here! I wondered if it would ever come, especially Thursday when I was still at the office after 6:30. (It was a hellacious week…)

So, we didn’t arrive to Harstine until 10 pm (in the rain and pitch dark). And then having to navigate around stacks of lumber (in the rain and pitch dark) to find our way to the trailer. We were a little miffed to learn that the framers didn’t work Thursday or today. And what a mess! Construction sites are understandably chaotic, but jeeze. These guys are total slobs. Water bottles, lunch remnants, wood scraps, lumber wrapping, nails by the gazillions, you name it. Every-damned-where. You’ll get glimpses in many of my photos.

And I’ve got some!

We drove into Shelton this morning to see the “door guy” and we’ve pretty much selected the doors we want for the interior; the French doors; and also the exterior shop, garage-to-landing, and “box” (wine cellar, huh) doors. The exterior entrance door and also the door off the kitchen to the small deck we’ll probably get through Home Depot. We found some we like there at a good price (that we’ll have to paint ourselves, but that’s OK).

Here are a couple of pictures of the entry door. It comes white, but we’ll paint it probably a rich brown (not tan like the one on the left):

The thought is that we could make our own stained glass panels eventually, and I’d really like to do that! But, we may well be satisfied with these. We both like the design a lot.

This was on our way back:

Heh heh.

I love how lush the roadway is right now down to our property. (It should be. We’ve had an awful lot of rain.):

You can see how gloomy and threatening it looks. A few brief sunbreaks here and there, but a number of gullywashers, too.

As you can see, they didn’t get the garage roof trusses up. (The bright side of that is the view isn’t hindered from the camping trailer yet!)

Here’s a view from the back of the house (we consider the “front” as the waterside): [remember to click to embiggen…]

That’s what it looks like from the top of the driveway.

And here’s an idea of how cluttered the driveway/path is:

Getting down to the house site is a challenge! (Unless you’re a cat).

Garage doors!

And here are some interior shots:

This (above) is actually peering through the wall frame of my glass studio! It was so much fun to stand in there and get a clear idea of where the kilns will go, peer out the nice big window toward the water. It will also have a door to the deck! Squeeeeeeee!

(Above) Looking from the dining/living room open area toward the entrance (glass studio, guest bedroom, and guest bath on the left). Straight ahead is the “mud room” that will be closed off with a door (with a utility sink, etc.) that then opens into John’s shop, which is that dark door you see in the distance. I’m excited about the entryway. It won’t be quite that wide as the coat closet still needs to be framed in on the left side, but it’ll have some pizazz! Sooooo much different from what we have now, which is pretty pathetic and hard to explain.

(Above) I’m standing in the dining room peering at John and our neighbor, Brock, chatting down by the living room windows (they’ll be French doors that open to the deck).

Here (above) I’m standing in the living room and looking through the kitchen to the wall of the master bathroom and pantry/laundry room. There will also be a pocket door to the bedroom, but the framers haven’t cut it out yet.

Below is a similar view, but I turned slightly toward the dining room window:

Look at the deck! You can see John’s rounding design coming to life!

OK, so I got a little artsy. The sun peaked out for a moment and with all the roof trusses and lovely lumber everywhere, it just sort of called for it!

Pretty cool!

It was a little disturbing all the rainwater all over the floors. I suppose it’s a good sign that everything is level! But there were a LOT of puddles everywhere.

And they reflect the wood framing quite well!

Steamer clams for din-din tonight! Better get busy!

Garage Walls and Can It Please Be Thursday?

Truth be known, I’m really not READY for it to be Thursday because I have a hellacious deadline that day and I’m feeling totally unprepared for it. I kept being waylaid with dire demands for a project interview (I’d done the proposal) that required making display boards and handouts and presentation assistance that have taken huge chunks of time away from THIS deadline. Thankfully the presentation was today so I won’t be waylaid with it anymore. This deadline is a little different because it’s actually “billable” work, instead of the dastardly “overhead” that typically defines Marketing, but it’s still a drop-dead deadline and it’s still full of non-responsive/non-communicative angst and idiocy. (How the HELL do buildings ever get built?)

I have multiple Words With Friends games going on my iPhone/iPad and I can’t keep up with them this week! My brain is DONE/TOAST come the end of the work day!

But, come the end of the Thursday work day, I will be dancing. (I hope! Jeeze, this deadline has me nervous!) We’ll be heading down to Harstine with all the critters in tow (pretty sure Mojo will catch the bus since the weather is supposed to be sucky) for a FOUR-DAY WEEKEND! I am so ready for this. It doesn’t sound like we’ll be having nice weather, but at this point I don’t care much. (Much). (Actually, I could be bitter. Seems like all the nice weather-days fall during the work-week). Sigh.

John took off today and headed down to Harstine yesterday after work. It was pretty late last night until he sent me some photos, and then he sent some more today – pretty dramatic! One of the things I’d been sort of dreading has happened – the garage walls are now up. I dreaded it only because I knew that they would obstruct the water view from the trailer deck. Silly, I know, but one of those *changes* that stab the heart.

Here we go with the current progress! (click to embiggen!)

First, the back side of the house from the neighbors’ driveway:

And here are the garage walls! You can even see the cut-outs for the garage doors! Whoohoo!

And looky here – the roof trusses for the garage! (This is what I think will obstruct the water view from the trailer deck):

They should be up by the time we get there Thursday night, although how in the HELL they’ll get them up there, I have no idea! (This is NOT an easy house to build!)

John continues to work on the deck and this weekend his goal is to complete the stairs alongside the “back” of the house down to the entry. That will NOT be a fun or easy job. At all.

Put a Fork in Me

I actually had two days this week that weren’t bubbling over with dire emergencies. But alas. Those two days sure didn’t last long.

On this Friday night, I am beat. Just feeling too old to be trying like mad to keep all the balls in the air without dropping one. And then dealing with total idiots on the road. HANG UP YOUR DAMNED PHONE AND DRIVE! (It’s the law, after all). THE SPEED LIMIT IS 45 MPH, WHY ARE YOU GOING 25 MPH? (When there is the opportunity to actually drive the speed limit, I really WANT to drive the speed limit!) And then spending the bulk of my to-and-from commutes at less than 5 mph.

So weary of mass humanity.

John has to work this weekend so no Harstine. He did take yesterday off and headed down Wednesday afternoon. Mostly he worked on the deck, but once again it was a really good thing he happened to be there because he caught yet another error the framers made. (They framed the guest bathroom way too big that encroached into the guest bedroom that was then way too small). It all got fixed yesterday, but slowed things down somewhat. Jeeze.

Here is where we are as of yesterday afternoon:

Here’s how John described it on Facebook:

“Arrived yesterday just in time to get totally soaked. The front (waterside) roof joists are up, end walls are up and more internal walls are going in. Only the two main internal shear walls (kitchen & living room) and some closets remain to be framed. Awaiting delivery of the poles that support the deck roofs and once they're here the living/dining roofs will have their joists installed as well. Garage framing should begin the first of next week. I spent the day installing more front deck joists and the front deck framing is about 2/3 complete.”

Nate actually commented on John’s post: “This is…insane!” (He obviously hasn’t been keeping up on the progress).

I am sooooo looking forward to NEXT weekend, which is Memorial Day. We’re taking Friday off, too. Four-day weekend, wooohoo!! It has been a helluva long haul since our last holiday…which was New Years.

Nate sent me flowers at work for Mother’s Day! They’ve rocked my desk all week long (but I’ll have to toss them come Monday – they’re on the tired side now).

Besides mountains of laundry (again…), I’m going to take a stab at tidying up my “glass studio” this weekend. My problem has been having too many supplies and not enough places to put it all! But I ordered some storage containers – several plastic tubs with lids about the size of a shoe box for scrap glass, and also this:

It’ll be really handy for all of the small stuff, like jewelry components. Now I just need to figure out where to PUT the storage containers…

Hoping to actually work on some glass projects, too!

But mostly I’m looking forward to sleeping in.

Gettin’ There

An interesting comparison!

It must be quite a feeling for John to see his vision of the house after all these years starting to come to fruition. (Yup, he designed it, and then had an architectural designer make his design construction-worthy).

Views from the Water!

How cool is this? One of our Harstine neighbors sent these to John this evening! (Heh, they were originally 45mb each! Probably could have wallpapered a room with these as a mural!) I resized them into something a little more manageable.

Be sure to click to enlarge to get the full effect!

 

We haven’t been able to get down to the beach (without risking our lives due to the uber-steep grade plus obstructing construction debris), so these are a brand new perspective for us!

A Couple of Videos and Deck Progress

Here is a quick (about 35 seconds) video of the inside of the Harstine house, featuring Peanut! It also shows John’s progress on the main deck!

Unrelated, here is another short video I took earlier this week at work when I took a walk across the pedestrian bridge next to our office building. (I wish I’d taken it in landscape mode, but I wasn’t thinking!) It was such a gorgeous day, and I just love this trumpet guy. He was out there daily all through December playing Christmas music – often in very cold weather! (He also played one time when me and a couple of co-workers had lunch out that included our CEO, who wondered where the police were since this guy was disturbing the peace…)

I also took some shots of John’s deck progress! I gotta tell ya, he put me through it at one point.

First, it’s starting to look like a deck!

But here’s my issue.

See how precarious it is? It’s over the business part of the gully. I mean, that deck is really high off the ground.

And what did I catch him doing? Walking along the beam taking measurements with his measuring tape. Walking along that beam.

Yeah. That one.

A Whole Helluva Lot of Lumber!

After a relatively UNstressful work-week (the first one I’ve had since, oh, maybe November?), we are back to Harstine for Mother’s Day weekend. It’s also been a stretch of very nice weather (87° on Monday!), which is due to come to an end this evening. Back to rain. We actually kind of need it! The ground here at Harstine (all slope, all the time) is marbley and treacherous! It needs some dampness to compact it, with the emphasis on “some.” Once it starts raining around here, it forgets how to stop.

The progress on the house is utterly fascinating. Some roof trusses are now up, and some of the rooms are starting to take shape. Take a look! (Embiggen!) (Tired of being reminded yet?) ;o)

This (above) is taken from the camping trailer deck. They’ve got the clerestory up, which will translate into a row of windows that spans the length of the house. No skylights, but we’ll have plenty of natural light!

Below shows part of the clerestory up close:

I took this one (above) from the garage floor and it gives some perspective of the ceiling height. (John’s working on the entryway landing deck). Here’s another human (and weenie dog) perspective below:

I just LOVE this view from the dining room:

This might be where we put the birdfeeders! (Depends on how easy they’ll be to access – this is the backside of the gully. Also, we don’t want them to be bait for the cat!)

Then, directly across from the dining room is the view from the living room:

Yes, there will be some trees obstructing the view, and we are not supposed to touch them, aside from reasonable de-limbing. But that’s OK, really. It’ll also help filter some of the afternoon summer sun (heat!) that will bake that side of the house, since it faces west. (Should be some lovely sunsets through those windows!) Actually, those will be French doors that open onto the deck. Below is what the deck currently looks like, and John will start working on it soon. But look how high off the ground it is! Not sure if the picture totally captures the woozy feeling in my stomach when I look down!

All of the LUMBER! It boggles the mind! And a lot more to come!

~~~~~

In other news, someone had posted this on Facebook the other day, which I promptly re-posted (so that Nate might take note):

It cracked me up! And since Nate never came through on Christmas, I knew that my nose would be quite out of joint if he also skipped Mother’s Day.

He texted me at work yesterday, I realize now to “fish.” He wanted to know if I was at work (duh), then we chatted for a while. (He still doesn’t know anything about his new assignment and/or being able to take leave). Then suddenly I got a message from the receptionist that I had a package! I ran up to get it and it was a box from “Flowers Dot Com!” I texted Nate: “HEY! Just received a box of flowers! Might this be from you?? Opening the box…”

He replied, “Hmmm…”

They’re so pretty!

And great timing! It was fun to be texting with him when they arrived! Then I saw this on my phone:

I love that kid.

You Guys. We’ve Got WALLS!!

When we arrived at Harstine late yesterday afternoon*, my eyes were in for a treat! (as usual, embiggen!) (*I met my work deadline and was able to get out of there a little bit early, although traffic SUCKED on the drive down).

That peaky wall? That’s the living room! It’ll have French doors that open out to the deck. It makes me swoon! It looks so dramatic!

Below you can see the foundation for the deck. John’s planning to start working on it this (glorious!) weekend (which makes me nervous because it’s very high off the ground there):

Here, you can see all of the walls that are up so far, and directly across from the “dramatic” wall is an identical dramatic wall that still needs to be tilted up. That will be the dining area, and that swath between the dining area and living room will be high-ceiling.

It was so fun walking around on the floor and seeing where everything will be—the kitchen! The master and guest bedrooms and bathrooms! The glass studio! THE FRONT DOOR. The dogs had a ball clicking around on a significant flat surface (so unusual here), and even Mojo was fascinated.

He was also “upset,” I think. He spent some time underneath the house (amongst those poles) and along the perimeters meeeeeeoooooooowing. Forlornly. I believe he’s rather confused. (So many changes just since the last time he was here). However, he handled his first ride in the new truck just fine! John stuck him in and he immediately headed to the back seat and curled up like he’s always done in the Durango. Slept the whole way. He didn’t show any sign that things were “amiss” until we arrived and he was a little confused about how to get out of the truck. (The truck rides really nice and is roomier than the Durango, but I sure wish it had floor boards. It is high off the ground and difficult for moi to climb inside!) Mojo was out gallivanting all night long, so I’m sure he’s come to terms now with all the changes.

Not everything is going hunky-dory. A window in the kitchen is off-center. Turns out it was an error in the plans. We’re hoping to get that remedied. And then a huge load of lumber and beams was delivered at the neighbors', which is OK during the week but special instructions to have the lumber moved down to the work site for the weekend (so the neighbors can have access) wasn’t adhered to. Then, it turns out that the lumber load is incorrect anyway and has to be picked up and replaced! Gah!

(There’s the ol’ camping trailer up in the nose-bleed section. And you can see what will be the entrance door there on the right. Eventually stained glass panels in those sidelights!)

~~~~~

John’s mom informed us that the New England style hotdog buns are available at Fred Meyer, and John picked up a package yesterday! We had grilled brats for dinner last night, and it was simple, fun, and oh-so-nummy! I’m so excited about the availability of those hot dog buns! Lobster rolls!

Tonight, we’re invited to the neighbors’ for dinner. (Thankfully they aren’t angry with us about that errant lumber load…)