Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Oh My God!

Here is a post you are highly unlikely to ever see from us again…. We took our first bath in the new house! Odd that we share this with you? Yes, of course it is. But what the heck, we are talking to family and friends here…. and don’t even think of photos of us….:)
Point is this: Don’t believe we had taken a bath in over a year. But this was more than a bath. It was like being at a resort! Candles, wine, bubbles, warm water, music, soft lights, an outside view of our trees and the sky just before dark, a bit of steam, and thou…. Believe it or not, it was just the way we planned it to be, only better. We recalled hours and hours of designing the master bath, and endless hours building the master bath, including the floor, stud walls, shower prep, window installation, bathtub framing, tiling, laundry chute, painting, applying finish on the wood, install and wire the speakers, etc., and now we believe it was worth every second. Deb’s first words said it all….”you know, we deserve this..” And, in our humble opinion, we did. We actually took 45 minutes and absolutely relaxed, and the relaxation lasted the remainder of the evening. It was like magic. We will do this again, and again…… The photo is just a snippet of the whole scene, leaving the rest to your imagination. But, we are beginning to wonder just how many photos we are going to post, because if you come out to see us, nothing will be a surprise. What a dilemma!

Friday, January 8, 2010

We Live Here.

Hello everyone. Thought this post would take us all “away” from home building for a moment to share a bit more about where we live. I mentioned earlier that we feel we have merely “existed” here for the past one and three quarter years and that we have really have not experience living in the “Bow Area” of Washington State. Enjoy a few pics we recently took. Deb and her parents and I drove a measly 25 minutes from our house to “Fir Island” to see some snow geese. Well, we saw a LOT of snow geese. A few thousand to be exact! Fantastic. The bird watching in this area is second to none especially for shorebirds/waterfowl and raptors. Our area is known for its wintering habitat for snow geese and whistler swans, and boasts of having the largest concentration of wintering bald eagles in the lower 48 states. In addition to our fantastic snow geese viewing we also saw about 8 bald eagles, a short-eared owl, and numerous ducks……all in about 20 minutes! Sure a great way to take advantage of the good weather and get our minds off of the house for a bit. Deb and I left the site saying to each other…”what a great place to live, heh?” We felt good inside.
PS... for you music buffs, the title of this post is the title of our favorite Pat Metheny Group CD, titled "We live here."

Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Happy New Year 2010

We left 2009 with the simple thought of “good riddance!” It was a very tough year, filled with hardship and heartache for all the reasons we covered throughout this blog. Sure, we had some sterling moments and those will be the ones we will concentrate on remembering.
Just before the New Year, Debbie’s parents Nancy and Bill arrived at the house for a visit. They love the house and have been immediately put to work (well, actually they offered to help) with a variety of jobs we are trying to get done. We hope to mix it up a bit with some recreation, but the weather and our lack of leave, will limit the extent we can do things.
We are working on our loft railings and just about have that finished up except for the trim boards. We needed an extra set of hands since we had to simultaneously install 9 rods while holding and securing the posts. The posts are again made of the wood from our spruce tree that we had milled and is just another opportunity to use the wood from that tree in our house. Chris cut the post (that I had milled back in June) to size since he has a much better saw than I do. Then Deb and I did some more cuts to size, drilled the holes, had the steel cut and powder coated to get us in the game. Then installation…. We really like the look.
Last, we managed to take a 2 hour ferry ride on Sunday when we had a brief break in the rain. The photo of Bill and I shows us enjoying some grilled oysters that we got from Samish Bay – which is part of what you see from our view.
Cheers and Happy New Year to all. We look forward to a great year!
LY, D2