THE PLAN for the new kitchen was to have a big ole table. One that would easily hold family and friends for spontaneous or long planned meals together. My Loving Spouse went to fetch it.
Rough sawn lumber from across town…$129.00
He disappears into his workshop to begin the build.
If you think he doesn’t have the tools….think again.
My Loving Spouse can build anything, (although he says he is not taking orders for anymore tables). He builds the table base top.
…then sands it for a few days, and makes some legs.
It will be too big and heavy to move around, so we need to assemble it in the kitchen.
We haul all the pieces over, protect the floor and get busy.
Don’t you love the mallet My Loving Spouse also made? I know, Handy as Pockets!
A few whacks and taps…
…and then…tada…
‘Some people’ are so dramatic.
Perfect….except, don’t you find it a bit, how shall I say….brown? It is just not quite right. So I paint the pew… with 3 coats of paint.
…painted pew, oh be still my heart. I never did like that color brown. We get a few things up on the walls, make a few pillows and argue discuss, how much better black ladder back chairs would be.
For now, we’re home (thank you COVID-19), grateful and very blessed.
My Loving Spouse offered me a lovely list of outings for my birthday. Had I known then that outings would soon be curtailed due to the Corona virus, I might have answered differently. However, I didn’t and proceeded to ask for what I really wanted.
‘Can we just stay home and tile the back splash in the kitchen?’
Not just tile it, but invite some friends over who wanted to learn how to tile.
I felt a tad like Tom Sawyer, getting someone else to white wash the fence. My Loving Spouse explains about laying out your pattern and how to use the tile saw.
Then it is mastic and go! Fantastic progress made on day one. Our friends are eager students, always fun to be with and excited to see that tiling is not ‘rocket science’.
We finished one wall promising them any of our left over tile and the use of our tile saw anytime.
As I write this we are in quarantine as is our county. My Loving Spouse and I have so much to be grateful for. We have beautiful spring weather to enjoy, lots of space to enjoy it, plenty of work to do and we like being together.
We got back to work on our tiling project.
Leaning and stretching and muttering Bad British words when the tile spacers fall out.
Two days of straight tiling is a bit hard on your hands, your back and your shoulders…but, rewarding!
We were not sure that one bag of grout would be enough, but it was all we had. Whenever My Loving Spouse slopped some on the floor, I scooped it up with my fingers and crammed it into any holes I could find. We end up having just enough.
After a grout drying break, we gleefully begin polishing the tile, by rubbing the grout dust off. Happily cleaning up the mess we’ve made and watching the back splash come to life, just as we dreamed it would.
We are grinning from ear to ear.
We might be a tad in tile recovery mode today, but we know we are a formidable team.
a. when you have to sit next to your brother in church
b. when you end up accidentally sitting in ‘someone else’s‘ spot at church
c. when you buy a pew, so you can turn it into banquet seating
…and the answer is!!!!!
Pews for sale only $100, that came out of a Baptist church in Yakima. We had a plan..sort of. I mean, how hard could it be? Someone at My Loving Spouse’s work said, “It could not be done.” (Which only makes me want to prove him wrong!) Wrong, wrong, wrong! I now call him, “Jim Of Little Faith”.
Jim Of Little Faith was right about one thing, it was not easy.
‘We’ (which really means My Loving Spouse’) gets it cut where we want it. Now he must move one of the legs, so both lengths have two legs to sit on.
The biggest problem is that the wood was warped. We imagined some big old Baptist sitting in the same spot week after week, leaning back in that old pew really hard, and once the wood was cut everything relaxed!
Between the angle cut and keeping our ‘new’ banquet square, the whole project was quite a challenge.
We attach some padded pieces to the legs to prevent scratching the floor.
Then we wrestle the two pew pieces and screw in place the two seats. With the seats secure, we try once again to align the seat backs.
“Let’s just take a tad more off”, I say…
Then we pull and push and wrestle it again and hold it just right as we quickly get a few screws into the seat backs.
Ta da!
The corner is great! However, not all the legs are actually on the floor. I told you the wood was a bit warped. We put the pew in place and then screw the legs to the floor!
This ensures that all four legs stay where they are meant to be AND that in the next Hide n’ Seek game with THE Grands, the new very best hiding place actually stays in place.
A little sanding, a little wood puddy, a little varnish and the new seating is in place and ready for the table to be built.
We keep one set of the communion cup holders attached in the back, because….
…we are very, very blessed.
(Perhaps we will invite Jim of Little Faith over for some wine…)
THE kitchen remodel has nearly done us in. People ask us questions, expecting a creative response and …..blank….yep, we’ve got nothing.
Luckily for us we’ve got friends…and family to keep us encouraged.
…to say nothing of helping us caulk…and paint.
…and paint some more…
and then…paint some more, when the paint sold to us didn’t match the paint on the wall. Bad British Word. (You don’t even know how dejected this made me feel after spending my whole Saturday on it.) My Loving Spouse got it all straightened out and painted that part again!
Pieces have been coming together and we are delighted with each little bit.
I love the new stools! They work extremely well, which the guys celebrate getting the transmission back into Whoa Nelly with a “wee dram”. (Yep, that is another story…)
Speaking of ‘other stories’, wait until you see what we’ve got planned for the seating area….
I am struggling to find the words to explain the last 6 months. I have had this post rattling around in my head for weeks. I have tried to not write it, but at the end of the day, who is this blog really for? I don’t know. Someday these words may be the way my grandchildren or grandchildren’s children know me. Obviously, they will know I’ve made some mistakes (remember, the Fire Captain said it wasn’t my fault I caught that field on fire), but will they know that my most important job is to ‘love’.
When we moved to Ellensburg, we quickly found our church home. We love the congregation, a collection of caring/giving (jump in and help) kind of people. They put their love in action. We care about them and are grateful they are our friends.
Six months ago, we started hearing a message from the ‘top’, from the Pastor…one that said, that Homosexuals were less than… I quite literally could not believe my ears…and it broke my heart.
My dear Grandkids…this is what I believe… Jesus said, the most important commandments are Love God, Love Your Neighbor and Love Yourself.
I talked with trusted and wise friends who belonged to our church. I felt fairly powerless, so I bought a dozen copies of Everybody, Always (Becoming love in a world full of difficult people and setbacks) and started giving them away.
I emailed the Pastor multiple times in regards to his stance, hoping and searching for elements of love and grace. Each answer held not only less love, but more judgement and said in ways, that was quite clear he wanted us to leave.
There is no ‘Ya, but’ in ‘love your neighbor’. We are to love those who annoy us, who vote for the other party, who are unkind to our kids or cheat us etc. Many believe that Gay people are sinners, well look in the mirror, we all are sinners and ‘have fallen short’. The problem with being judgmental over any others is that most people then say, ‘Ya, but….you are…” and judge your sins as well.
Love is usually not talk, it is action. Guess what, that included this Pastor. I didn’t want to ‘love him’, I wanted to say, “Ya, but he doesn’t…” I needed to ‘walk my talk’, so, as we have for many years, we offered to let him store his trailer in our barn during the winter. I inquired how I could pray for him (and I actually do it).
Recently, sadly and with great grief, we knew had to leave our beloved church, because as much as we wanted to stay with these loving people, we did not feel comfortable being aligned with the beliefs from the top. How do we leave gracefully? Leaving is hard. Will we loose some friends? We do not know…
Where will we go? Will there be another place for us? We are both weary and sad. I do believe that when our time ‘comes’, we might be asked how well we loved, I do not believe we will be asked did you judge each other enough?
We continue with our kitchen remodel and it feels very much like eating an elephant…one small bite at a time (even though I’ve never actually eaten an elephant, nor would I want to).
It helps to be optimistic when taking on a project of this scope, but it is possible that our optimism has moved into self delusion. We plan 3 things to complete in one day and by the end of a 3 day week end, we’ve managed to complete half of them.
We install most of the base boards. This entails crawling on one’s knees, so I am elected to run the nail gun and the stud finder. There is a small spat about how I am using the stud finder, (ya that’s been a problem most of my life). We disagree over whether the problem is user error or instructor error…. Eventually, we get it done.
We get the cabinet installed over the refrigerator, which entails framing it out and having a shelf for it to sit on. Our newest phrase is…’we’ll caulk it’.
Each additional cabinet that goes into place means more storage! I get to put stuff away! My Loving Spouse is sure that this is mostly a plot to keep him confused about where things are.
I get to watch the back of his head, as we install nobs.
Black on white is beautiful and a bit tricky to get everything lined up.
Even the smallest steps bring joy!
My job is “Step and Fetch it”, trust me, I am well trained!
We install the long awaited cabinet, the one that I goofed up on ordering…again…progress.
Each step makes us happy, but the truth is, we are ready to be done! We’re almost there we just need to …
caulk, paint, install peninsula (which is in the family room), caulk, drywall, tile back splash, build the benches, build the table, build the steps and railing and ‘knees’, finish the window trims, the door to the broom closet, caulk, build the door jam, install toe kick….
Boxing day came with great anticipation. Faucet time! I am nominated since I have the smallest shoulders to crawl under the new sink.
This view only comes from underneath the sink, and I hook up my first sink ever! I am both proud of myself and understand why plumbers earn so much money.
My Loving Spouse gets his turn as well….unhooking up the old faucet. Yes, he has slightly more room than I did, but he also got wet.
We move the dishwasher, install the old sink into the new mud room and prepare….for ‘demo’ day.
I wake up, excited! I was dreaming. Some dream of Hawaii…I dream of demo!
This is the day, that we demolish the old kitchen. We’ve plans to remove all the lower cabinets and pull up the fir floor and sub floor.
A careful ‘whack-attack’ kind of day…
Pooh comes in to supervise.
Sometimes we get really smart, today was one of those days. We hired Young Buck for the day. He was a delightful worker. He worked hard, jumped in and worked along side us, really well. Not belonging to Team Offspring, we noticed he didn’t try to tell us, what we were doing ‘wrong’.
Have I told you, that Demo is my favorite?
The good news about working in the winter, is that you remember how cold it gets. We plan for insulation due to this reminder. Tomorrow’s plan is to insulate the floor, lay a new sub floor, level everything out and continue laying the engineered bamboo flooring.
“It came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags.” – Dr. Seuss’ How The Grinch Stole Christmas
This advent has been like no other…
There are lights on the house, because we don’t take them down and most of them are actually working. If remodel dust was a Christmas decoration, we’d be the most decorated house in town. However, it is not and we are not and it is weird.
Two halves do not always make a whole. We have half of a new kitchen and half of an old kitchen and the only ‘whole’ it is making is a whole lot of mess.
We are in the Christmas spirit, it just weirdly doesn’t look like it. We didn’t decorate and we do not have a tree. We’re excited about the gifts we’re making and the meals we are sharing…
…and to be completely honest, we also feel a tad old and a tad worn out. (I can hear Team Offspring, saying well you are old, you’re just not ancient yet.) We’re most excited about our Christmas break from school to pour some energy into this kitchen remodel. We’re hoping for more demo, more dust and great, great progress.
Hal is going to Finishing School. Finishing well is very important. We need to build him his own ‘room’. This room/corral needs to be in view of the rest of the herd, so he doesn’t feel lonely.
If you ever see a farm that is completely tidy with no old bits around, then they are very, very rich farmers. Everyone else keeps anything that might someday come in handy. Hence why on this balmy Saturday…
…we were building a corral with old fence gates, salvaged fence posts and bailing twine.
We dig a few posts…hydraulically, (after getting the tractor to start, Blue has a bad battery, so we cannot turn it off until we are completely done).
We gather up the old gates, while the herd looks on, wondering why they haven’t been fed.
Our new rooster, Russel Crow lets us know that it is well past dawn, even if it is a bit foggy.
We get ready for Hal to have his very own, water, hay and grain.
Isn’t it amazing what one can build with old gates and blue chain (baler twine)?
When Hal was born, my sweet sensitive son took one look at him and asked, “Can we eat him?”
The answer is finally…’almost’, we have to ‘finish’ him. This finishing is a process whereby Hal gets even more hay than normal and grain. The grain is a combo of sorts and will help his beef taste sweet and have the marbling we prefer. This is not an exact science (for us) and at the end of all of this, we will have approximately 500 pounds of beef, so getting it tasty is vital. We plan to sell half and keep half.
We head to the local feed store to buy our ‘grain’. The salesgirl starts to tell me about show steer feeds. I quickly say,
“I don’t care if he looks good, I just want him to taste good”.
“Oh, she says then you want the grain with corn and molasses.”
We also pick up our complimentary ‘Magic Reindeer Feed’ for THE Grands as well.
After living for most of my 50++ years in the suburbs of Southern California with pools and sidewalks, I am now living on a farm in the Pacific Northwest with animals and dirt…and having the time of my life! Change is good….and I am blessed.
Retirement brought the end of our time at Glory Farm and a move to Scotland, where we live in a historical small fishing village along the North Sea...To God Be The Glory
