Application in

Thanks in part to Nancy for passing on the suggestion, Tim applied for a Marine Electrician position with Nichols Brothers Boat Builders today. Lets all send hiring thoughts to whomever is reviewing those applications! It's amazing how much work it takes to update a resume and put in a job application - especially with a larger company that has a stack of forms to fill out. Also, coming up with references when his best boss of all time is his dad, who may not seem so impartial.

Painted downstairs!

Although we still have to wear shoes to leave our bedroom, the downstairs is painted! We hid out in our room reading books and staying busy on the computer most of the day while the guys were busy painting. At the end of the day, they brought us downstairs for a tour of their work.

Before and after in the Wet Room (between the house and the shop)

   

As they were showing us the house, the were also taking the plastic off the walls and doors. The only thing still covered in plastic is the floor, and Monday, that will be back to concrete as well.

Here's our fireplace in our beautifully painted bedroom. There are a few spots on the windowsill that were wet from condensation or maybe from being horizontal, which they are planning to come back and touch up on Monday. Also hopefully Monday, the shop needs sheetrock. Once that's done, Tim and I can get busy cleaning for the floor guys to come.

The color is a warm off-white. I like it.

Goals

Since Tilly arrived almost a month ago, I've been thinking, "when we can walk all the way to the speed sign four houses down with no problem, that will be the day" and today was that day! I won't say she walked much farther than that before getting distracted by the sights and smells and stopping and pulling and all the rest, but we made it ALL THAT WAY with no treat bribes and no puppy temper tantrums. We have come a long way from taking 10 minutes to get up the driveway. It's good to remember that things that become normal are actually great accomplishments. 

After many walks around the lake guessing which house might be Nancy and Butches and imagining them in each one, the truth has finally been relieved and it's not the houses I guessed. It is beautiful! There is already a garden bed, it's on the corner of the lake closest to our house, and it is right at the intersection of the higher loop and the road around the lake so when we go for our longer walks, we still end up at Nancy's. It looks like there are currently people there, so I decided to only snoop from a distance at 7:30am.

Tim and I unanimously agreed to vacate the house for the day while the painters were around. We were starting to feel a little cooped up in our one room, and would rather have access to food and bathrooms not behind multiple layers of painty plastic. I headed north with Tilly in the escort, and after a brief debate, Tim took the ferry south.

 Before we split up for the day, Tim equipped each of our cars with a little reminder on the dash. 

I stopped by a out-of-season campground to let Tilly run about, then continued north to Bellingham.

Tim headed to Seattle where our friends JJ and Jessie have just moved. They went for a long hike and out to dinner, and then Tim and I both ended up home about the same time.

This is my favorite intersection on the way towards I-5 following Highway 20 north from the Island. There are so many great place-names in the world! Aside from of course our very own Honeymoon Bay Road, Tim's favorite nearby street is "Sleeper Road" between Oak Harbor and the Deception Pass bridge - a long straight stretch with very little traffic.

My reason for heading to Bellingham other than to get out of the house, was to visit with some Juneau friends who've also recently moved down! Of course, I didn't get any pictures of my sister-in-law's sister, Kacey, or her husband Kaleb, but I took plenty of pictures of the little ones. They are about the same size and have similar habits of biting, peeing on the floor (naw, they're better than that!), putting everything they find in their mouths, crying when they don't get their way... At least mine I can put in her box when she's naughty or when I need some time without her. They have laws against that for human babies, though they aren't barred from the grocery store so they don't need to be left in the car.

There is an excellent park right next to their house with one of the coolest playgrounds I've ever seen; so many things that spin and slide and tip, things for climbing and balancing. Tilly was super and climbed up a little "climbing wall" and up the stairs, then rode the long slide all the way down. I got her to do it about three times, as well as climbing and balancing on everything else we could. She is fearless and brilliant.

Coming back over the Deception Pass bridge at sunset was stunning. We had to get out and walk around a little.

Back at the house,the ceiling in the dining room looks great.  

In the rest of the house, not a lot of progress has been made. The walls are still two-toned from the texturing and all ready for paint. Either painting takes longer than I thought, or some places still need to dry from the texturing. By the time we got home the crew was long gone so we'll have to wait until tomorrow to get the full story. At least they're painting and hopefully we will be spreading out soon!

Exploring Whidbey while paint dries.

While the crew was busy texturing our walls and Tim was up in Oak Harbor working on Joe's boat, I decided it was time to take my healthy, happy, energetic puppy out of the house.

Our first stop was the Earth Sanctuary; a 72-acre sanctuary for wildlife and for the spirit. The property has a labyrinth of trails, as well as a traditional labyrinth, medicine stones, prayer wheels, and other Tibetan and Buddhist spiritual symbols. I will definitely be taking future visitors here as a great spot in South Whidbey.

 We tried to find the Useless Bay public beach access with no luck, but did come across the public school's Outdoor Classroom! Unfortunately, like the Earth Sanctuary, the Outdoor Classroom also was a no dog zone. Eventually we will be tearing up the dog parks, but until then it is a challenge to find places without dogs where dogs are aloud. A bit of a paradox, but makes me appreciate our private beach at low tide.

Back at the house, the sprayers had done their work. They said tomorrow should be time to prime, then the next day they will be painting and we will be good to go, ready for the next step.

The downstairs is looking pretty good, covered in globs of something similar to that jet-puff marshmallow goo. If Tim and I can scrape up the last little patch of laminate flooring over the weekend, the flooring guys will be ready to get in here on Monday. Who knows, maybe we really will have a house by Tim's birthday! Otherwise it will be yogurt and cereal for his special dinner.

Upstairs is also sprayed, including the back bedrooms though I stopped taking pictures before I got that far. Our living space seems to get more and more packed in. The floor is sticky, so walking around outside our room isn't such an option and the goo makes it less appealing to sneak anything out from under the plastic in the kitchen. It looks like there are only three places on the island that deliver and they're all in Oak Harbor. Maybe we should start the magic school bus of evening meals; "We'll come to you!" We could cook and drive all at once to keep food hot and fresh all over South Whidbey. 

I don't know if I ever put finished pictures of my beautifully whitewashed barn, but here it is! The whitewash needs time to turn really white, so there wasn't much use in taking pictures right after anyways. I am looking forward to those baby chicks coming so I can whip up some nest boxes and roosts, pile shavings on the floor, and let my chickens settle in.

The yard is also lookin' good with greens growing up all over. By the time the chickens come, the yard should be pretty well established and hold up to scratching and pecking for a while.

The front gardens are also doing all right! My greenhouse has not been such a success. Watering the little plants in the greenhouse has turned out to be more of a challenge with a little wriggly puppy. The plant Grandpa brought back from Tennessee is doing alright, but the little baby plants are not near keeping up with the outdoor seeds I planted weeks later. Maybe in the spring my thumbs will be a little greener, but for now I am happy to leave it to Mother Nature's awesome skills.

 Baby greens and some mixed in something

 Lettuce baby greens

My favorite! The tomb thumb peas which should grow into nice little bushes of delicious snap peas.

Bubble closing in

I thought they had wrapped up the whole house in plastic yesterday but I underestimated how much plastic there could be. We are now living in a little bubble. There is our room, fairly full of everything we own, then the hall with plastic on the floor and plastic walling off either end so we can walk as far as the bathroom before hitting another wall of plastic, and we have the living room bulging with stuff. The entire rest of the house is all wrapped and taped into a painting zone. Even the washer and drier have been plasticed over. The guys think there will be painting happening tomorrow! Luckily the stairs to the shop are inside our bubble and there is no painting happening down there, so we can make our escape every two hours with Tilly. 

This morning, our family woke bright and early to be the first ones at the vet. Our vet felt Tilly's stomach which was met with happy affection instead of whimpers - good sign! And answered all our questions. Aside from hating her second shot, Tilly did great at the vet and was forgiving of the pain we inflicted on her. Because she was sick and got some anti-nausea and anti-infection shots, the vet felt it would be wise to hold off on her immunizations another week, which doesn't make too much difference as she won't be able to go out in doggy public until the end of the month anyways. Evidently there are also 16-week shots to look forward to and then a week or two after the shots for them to be in full effect. Delays, delays, our theme of the year! But we are glad to have a healthy happy pup and hope she will stay that way. Once the construction is over, I plan a thorough sweep of all things unsafe for puppy consumption.

Living in a bubble with a sick pup.

Construction update:

All the work we did while Mom and Dad were here to get the house ready for inhabitants has been undone. All those truck loads of furniture and such have been taken out of the individual rooms and piled wall to wall, 4 feet deep in the living room. When I was living in a dorm room at Cottey College, we had to move all our furniture a foot from the walls over break so they could spray for bugs; I was amazed how a little less room converted my nicely arranged furniture into a solid mass of stuff. There is a similar effect happening here, though we have a full dining room and three bedrooms worth of stuff in addition to everything we own. Tilly's dog food is in the far left corner of this picture behind all those mattresses, I was not planning ahead. Fortunately (sort of) she is sick so she gets chicken and rice instead, which is a little easier to get to, though our kitchen is also out of commission for the time being.

While the upstairs kitchen has been bubble wrapped, the downstairs kitchen is starting to shape up! It has a ceiling now at least. Our lead construction guy, George, had his dad down here spackling around our new light cans.

We moved as much stuff as possible out of the rooms, but some things were more trouble then they were worth to move. The remaining furniture got wrapped up in place to protect it.

All this prep before painting is a lot of work! They've been at it for days! Taping off everything that is not to be painted and getting the walls ready.

The large hole above our dining table that had been leaking since before my parents made an offer on the place is now fixed inside and out. and it looks like the insulators are all done as the holes they made have now been covered over with spackled patches.

 Our grand bedroom downstairs is already looking better than it did, with the floors and windows covered in plastic. Hopefully we really will be moving in soon.

That is all I know about the construction process at this point. I've been brushing up on my Spanish with the guys working on the place.

On another note, Tilly the puppy has been throwing up all day and we are worrying, though she still seems in a good enough mood. This morning was by far the lowest tide I have ever seen since moving here - our whole shipwreck was above the waterline with 10 feet or more of beach beyond. Tilly and I walked a long way down the beach past our neighbors houses to the south. There was a tiny blue starfish and a hereon that was beautifully graceful until it let out it's unbecoming squawk. Of course I forgot my camera as we walked through the fog, watching the reflections of the birds on the glassy water early in the morning. Tim went up to Oak Harbor to work and Tilly and I took the day to explore Coopville and find some trails and parks to explore.

Whitewash and puppy

All the walls are now whitewashed and some of the floor. I thought I'd show a comparison of the wonders of whitewash. The bottom half of the picture above is wet, freshly applied; the top half was from a few days ago. You can see how much it changes as it dries, setting up to be opaque and bright white. Some places turned more yellow and I am experimenting with a second coat in an area I used the thinner second batch on. Also, I made up some putty consistency lime to fill in all rat holes in the floor - we'll see if that keeps them out!

Isn't she the most beautiful puppy in all those fall leaves? She gets better every day, though I'm looking forward to her having her own room when we move downstairs. She does take a lot of watching!