The Noisy Bird, the Tiny Closet and the Rodent of Unusual Size

Crazy title, I know, but it will all make sense later.  It has been over two weeks since I have had a chance to document any of the insanity, so I have a lot to tell.  I wish more of what I had to tell was about the progress we have made, but unfortunately, that has slowed to what would seem sluggish to a snail.  We work long, hard hours, yet when we are finished, we can barely tell anything has been done.  This is especially true of the flooring.  I know everyone was expecting to see pictures of the finished product, but I am still working on the living room.  The floor prep takes forever.  First, you have to make sure your subfloor is all in good condition.  If not, a little work with a circular saw is necessary to remove the bad piece and then cut a new piece to fit.  In one spot we had to nail new joists to the old ones to bring the floor up a little higher to match the piece next to it.  Once that it is all done, the floor must be scraped of all debris.  In our case there was a lot of joint compound and ceiling texture material that I had to scrape with a trowel.  When that was done, I had to countersink all of the nails, sweep, vacuum, then apply vinyl floor primer.  After that dries, flooring can finally be put down.  You'd think applying what are essentially giant stickers to the floor would be easy, but it just sucks the time, and some days the life, out of you.  Oh, my aching back!

We are living at Acacia Acres now, though we are far from moved.  We began staying here the night before the big blizzard.  Life is across between camping and being on vacation at an unfinished condo.  We were sleeping on air mattresses, but Monday we managed to get our king size mattress over here.  We are still on the floor, but at least it is a real mattress.  For those of you who watch the DIY Network and HGTV, we are a cross between three different shows: "Renovation Realities", "Family Under Construction" and "Design on a Dime".  If cameras were on us, I am sure it would be quite entertaining.  I actually think about that when things get tense or if I am frustrated with a situtation.  It makes me laugh to think what it would all look like on TV.

Since we are not going back and forth between houses, the kids are doing much better thinking of this as home - especially Zoe, who was really struggling.  She has loved stomping in all the big puddles, having picnics on the hillside and going on walks with the dogs.  Both kids are in awe of all the wildlife.  Yesterday we spent time doing something I would never have imagined - watching a beaver swim in our pond.  That's not exactly in our realm of experience.  It was cool though, in a world of short attention spans, that we could be entertained for nearly an hour just watching nature. 

Zach, Zoe and their friend, Clayton, watching the beaver do laps in the pond.



Can you find the beaver?

Another little piece of nature that has become a frequent visitor is the friendly neighborhood woodpecker.  The first day I heard him I kept thinking someone was at the door.  I felt like an idiot when I realized it was a bird!

I am disconcerted that it is not even spring and I was face to face with a rather large, black arachnid in the kitchen last night.  It had the audacity to be on my countertop.  I don't even want to think about what the spring and summer will bring...scorpions, wasps, snakes, more mice (though not if the snakes have their way), mosquitos by the swarm...who knew I was such a wuss?  We met another neighbor and he mentioned bobcats.  What????  He also asked if he could hunt on our land.  Apparently, he has hunted on it since he was a kid, with his dad and uncle.  Seemed like a really nice guy.  I told him sure, as long as he doesn't shoot the kids.  That is one things about living out here - everyone has a gun, and everyone knows how to use it.  That is one area where I fit right in!  It's funny, because in town if you hear a gunshot, you turn on the news to see what happened.  Out here it is just a daily occurance that you tune out after a while and don't even give a second thought.  One day I would wager I heard at least 100 rounds being shot!

I had hoped to post a lot of "after" pictures by this time, but there has not been enough of a change to waste the space on my memory card.  I have about 80 more square feet of flooring down, but nothing is complete.  I did finish the flooring in the master bath, but without the other improvements, it doesn't make for a good picture.  The second tier of the countertop is on, so I will include that, though still not evidence of any great progress.  As a matter of fact, as I write this, I am wondering how we managed to do so little in over 2 weeks.  I want to have a house warming cookout here in the spring to let those who are interested see the place, but at the rate we are going, the Mayan calendar will end before we are anywhere near finished. 




Tier two is almost complete.  We just need to do some filling and sanding, then I can do the countertop treatment.



Oh, we did make minscule progress in one other area - the tiny closet mentioned in my title.  We took the extra cabinets that we removed from the kitchen and put them on the back wall to provide some shelving.  However, that did not solve the problem of Scott's clothes smacking me in the face as I walk through the door.  That is what inspired the C.S. Lewis ripoff title that I originally chose for the blog. Walking into my closet reminds me of them pushing aside coats to walk through the wardrobe in Lewis' Narnia classic.   (I changed the title to the current one, which is more of a nod to "The Princess Bride", because some of my friends had their minds in the gutter.  You know who you are!)




My tiny closet.  You can see what I mean by having to walk through Scott's clothes.  They cover half the door.

 Despite all of the chaos, we still had all kinds of company this weekend.  It was Zach's birthday and he had a slumber party, so parents were here to pick up their kids. We also had a family party, so grandparents and great uncles were crammed around a card table and eating off of TV trays in an unfloored room.  Even in transition we put on a good spread!

I am ready to hit the ground running again tomorrow and will hopefully have more to show for my efforts this week.  Stay tuned for more photos.