our pool… and shack, originally uploaded by tlcphotos.

For the one of you who asked those of you who’ve been waiting, here’s our casita. Our little piece of the Yucatan. Our tiny sliver of paradise… Our slice of the dream… Our… well, you get my drift.
It was two years ago this month that we bought this crusty shack on a spit of sand little bit of tropical heaven.
We put in the pool the winter after we bought it knowing that the miscreants can sleep just about anywhere, but a pool would really make this a place they loved to be. The house could wait.
And it has waited. This is our second visit.

It has two rooms:  a large bedroom, where we all crash- three of us in a queen bed, one on a sofa and the other (daring Zip, middle child) likes the hammock- and a kitchen, where we eat, do school work and just hang out.
It works for a few weeks at a time and then, well… I can see how overcrowded rodents begin killing and eating their young….
We are discussing more seriously now what changes, expansion, renovation we need and want to make to the shack to make it a place that 1. We can stay in for extended periods of time, living, schooling, working comfortably; and 2. Family and friends can come and enjoy for vacations of their own. There’s also the possibility we might want to make it a rental when we or family and friends are not in it. Currently, in its present condition, none of these things are really possible.  We have begun making contact with the people who can help us make this happen.  The men who make magic with concrete!!
But for now, we enjoy… we plan… and I threaten the children with their imminent and dramatic demise every time they leave food ANYWHERE for the immediate and aggravating accumulation of bloody ants!!

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Aaaaahhhhhhhhhh……. the beauty and comfort, not to mention complete liveability, of a finished basement. After only eight-count ‘em: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7… ugh…, years, we have finally completed the perpetual, seeming never-ending, job of finishing the basement.

The finishing touch: cheap, nothing less than completely fake, laminate flooring. But, for those of you, like myself, who consider yourselves hardwood purists out there, let me assure you, it looks absolutely, remarkably, freaking fantastic- not to mention, complete!! The walls had been painted, the trims, mouldings, baseboards had all been installed, but the concrete floors remained all this time. With merely a coat of dark blue paint. And you know what… despite the lovely painted walls. Despite the lovely finishing carpentry. Despite being divvied up into tidy little rooms. It still felt very much the cold, concrete basement it was.

Until… the recent installation of our cheap, clearly fake, laminate flooring. It’s a revelation. It’s a total and amazing bloody reincarnation. Of what was previously just my basement. We have reclaimed a full 1000 square feet with this remarkable, albeit totally fake and pressboard, product.
Now it’s a place we will live. Amazing. Oh, and more amazing yet. I. That would be me. Myself. I did most of it- read: almost all of it- alone. Read: without husband.

It’s a surprisingly easy, practical…. downright magical, fix for what would otherwise be a cold, dreary, uninviting space.

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Today is one big day, alright. Firstly, the basement will be officially done… at least until we come up with the time and materials to really finish it. But it will seem pretty done. To us. And to our visitors. Who after eight years of hearing us talk about our small, cramped and painfully, soon to be eating our young as well as each other, inadequate cozy, little cottage house expected to be camping out on a plank floor in front of the pot-bellied stove, in our one room Rocky Mountain cabin.

OK, so they may have been close in their guess-timation of our lives here, but not anymore. The four of them, and their sudo-Uncle Andy, will get to inhabit the entire, now nearly finished, root-cellar basement. Which, let me tell you, now with flooring installed (almostly completely), does not feel like a root-cellar basement. Gulldurnit, it feels like a real part of the house, suitable for human children inhabitation and human adult inhabitation, alike.

So, it will be complete. But let it not go unsaid, for something like this I will continue to ensure gets said- repeatedly… over and over and over again, never ever to be forgotten… I will be completing this seemingly endless project myself.

Secondly, Filipes is taking the small people camping. With a neighbor and his own small people. In our new-to-us tent trailer. They will also be taking a tent. For neighbor. I believe Filipes will be manning the tent trailer and five, chile-weinie-marshmallow-chocolate-potato chip encrusted small people, himself, from his perch upon the convertible dining table/twin bed. Oh, God. I’m really sorry I will not be there…

NOT!

This will be a glorious time. Just me.

Just me and a pile of laminate. And the table and chop saws. And hopefully all of my fingers.

The dark imaginings have begun to take shape, seeping insidiously inside my squirrelly, compulsively over active little brain ever-cautious mind. I picture this night, the first alone in so many, many years… picture my peaceful WHOLE EVENING/NITE/MORNING ALONE ruined by the fact that a sawblade has chopped off most of the fingers of my right hand, save for my stubby, little thumb. And my WHOLE EVENING/NITE/MORNING ALONE is spent first, in shock; followed by bleeding to death, my life slowly draining from four dull-blade ravaged stumps, unable to get to the phone due to aforementioned shock; concluding with my perish-ment in the root-cellar new, clean and recently floored, oh-so-liveable downstairs space.

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Yes, it’s Saint Paddy’s Day. Yes, I completely forgot!

It was a busy weekend full of Nancy Green ski racing wind-up. I did have to bring the chips, after all.

We are, of course, also still preparing for second round of company. To arrive this Friday. It seems that preparing for guests has completely monopolized our lives this month. Why?

Because our cozy, little cottage house is no longer capable of storing our increasing collection of crap and has been reduced to a dumping ground of stuff. Work stuff. School stuff. Recreation stuff. Construction stuff. Hobby stuff. Kid stuff. Gardening stuff. Dog stuff. Food stuff. Laundry stuff. Never-ending and multiplying stuff.
GD STUFF!!!

And the basement, 1000 square feet of largely ignored useable space- grounds for dumping excepted, of course- has remained in varying stages of un-done/done. It is now time to get fully done. Painting. Flooring. Mouldings. Baseboards. Organize. Tidy. Clean. What better time, than when you are expecting guests. This is when, and only when, I am motivated enough to take this on. Why? Because…. I will not be judged.
Yes, we should probably, after eight years of perpetually moving and re-moving shit from room to room to room to room (rinse. repeat.), build a garage. And if I had the 50 grand to build a garage… I probably wouldn’t. The money would go immediately, without thought or hesitation, into creating a Mexi-home out of our little Mexi-shack and we would just flee this cozy, little cottage house altogether for the heat… sand, sea and surf- and no friggin’ stuff- of our little pile of sand along Mexico’s Gulf Coast!

Maybe instead of that afternoon snooze I took yesterday, I should have been preparing for this school week ahead. Then, as the responsible parent/teacher I am, would have known it was friggin’ St. Patrick’s Day. And created some nasty sweet treat of an appropriate shade of edible nauseating green.
Upon reflection however, and as I consider that after school this morning, I still have a room of laminate flooring to get down… unless an uncharacteristically productive hoard of cute little Leprechaun’s show up to lend a few tiny hands, St. Pat’s is gonna go pretty much unnoticed.

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Yeeee-haawww! There were three of us. Praise be to the Creative Energy Throughout. I don’t know what this job would have been with just one. But there were three of us.

Me. Myself. And I.

Husband? Contributed two measley piddly filler bits in the closet. Then the phone. A neighbor. All of a sudden stack of logs laying out in yard for past three years needed to be bucked. Today. Immediately. A mere three days before the arrival of HIS relations. He just had to “buck wood”. Today. Now. Hmmm-mmmmm….

Bucking wood? The equivalent of a blue haired koffee klatch. All afternoon. Instead of koffee: chainsaws and beer. Better have been beer….

I laid the laminate flooring throughout the basement.  It’s doooonnnnnnnnnne!!
Thanks to the invaluable assistance of Me and Myself, of course. They’re lifesavers, really.

They always come through when I need them.

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The Texas Cousins are coming! The Texas Cousins are coming!

And so… despite my efforts of last November in preparation for the American Out- I mean, In-Laws, all gung-ho, getting this house decontaminated and exterminated prepared, wanting to do everything from laminate floor the basement to replacing our kitchen island, I settled for taking from Peter (guest room) to give to Paul (future bedroom of Fidge). Essentially shuffling our perpetually accumulating and unused shit from one room to another.

So, we begin again. Except this time it involves the transitioning from our cozy, albeit undersized room up here, to a larger one, nearer the boys, down there. But first… laminate flooring must be installed. New moldings installed. Thorough clean up and reorganization as belongings are transitioned upstairs and down. Over and over again.

Between now, today… Tuesday. And Saturday.

I’ve known these people are coming since last October.

What the hell happened?

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I just took a perfect walk with the boys. We went looking for buds. And, guess what… find ‘em we did. Glorious… the last week of February, days of sunshine, clear blue skies and now the itty bitty signs of new life in our neighborhood foliage. Just glorious!! We walked with our Beast. Willow (lab/pit bull pup) tagged along. Uncharacteristically lazy, I might add. Anyways, down to the beach. We can still walk on the ice but I’m so totally paranoid, picturing myself, flat on my belly, shimmying out onto the ice to fish out a soggy child, or God for bid, dog…

This outing with the boys was icing on a pretty good day. We got the flooring down in the bedroom downstairs. HOO-RAH! It only took my laying 1/3 of it before discovering I was doing it so totally wrong-o! Thanks to husband that cleverly deduced that it clicks together for the benefit of home improvement retards… it shouldn’t be this hard. I refuse to share what I was doing wrong. I consider myself incredibly capable in the whole carpentry/home improvement thing and to publicly admit this error would surely damage a carefully, meticulously created rep, man!

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Nothing like temps of -25 degrees Celcius to welcome one back from a lovely trip ALONE to the west coast… nothing like the cold and the disaster that is a WAHD alone with kids all week… HA! HA! But it doesn’t matter because to liven my spirits in this bum-freezing cold, I have a great addition to my kitchen to enjoy (OK, after a lot of elbow grease).Thanks to the wonderful folks at Second Use in Seattle, Washington, I now have the perfect cabinet to complete my currently, completely inadequate kitchen island. I have been looking for something unique, functional, large or even in sections, and inexpensive for a couple of years now. I was just about to bite the freaking, less than cheap, less than interesting, bullet and settle for just buying some more matching IKEA cabinets to enlarge my island.

Until… Second Use. Here on this inauspicious, rainy, largely shitty, Pacific Northwest winter weekend in January, I found it… the perfect solution… for only $125 bucks! OK, so some of you may not see why I actually paid more than $25 for this, what may be now, a rather strangely green and beat up, unsightly item, but honestly, one must be in its presence to fully appreciate its utilitarian radiance. Take my word for it, its outstanding. GREAT! Perfect, even.

For those of you who do see the potential, in honour of WFMW, I encourage you to visit your local salvage store. Every larger city has one. Where furniture, woodwork, appliances, windows, doors, cabinetry, fixtures (plumbing and electric) and so much more are recovered or bought from renovation and demolition.

They are amazing places chock full of unique and unusual treasures for your home, office or garage at comparatively inexpensive prices. Sure, in all liklihood they require some, if not a lot, of TLC when you get it home… but from what I’ve seen other people do, its well worth it. And a conversation piece to boot.

In six weeks time, this one (already put to good use, as you can tell by the clutter) will be painted a ‘Burnt Cinnamon’ (thanks Benjamin Moore) and fully integrated into my kitchen island, under one whole new tiled countertop. It’s hard to see as it is in no real context in this shot, but it is about 7 feet long and two and a half or so feet deep. HUGE! I am so excited!

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Yesterday was a day like any other… OK, not really.  The kids were home from school with buses not running, we had four inches of wet, sticky snow, I was out of Cream-o … and six months of stress had come to an end. 

It was over.  The partnership had been signed away. HellHouse 2007 had come to a quiet close.  It didn’t spontaneously combust, exploding into a bazillion, tiny smithereens.  It wasn’t set ablaze by some crazy, n’er do well teenage arsonists. It didn’t wash down the valley in a freak, flash, rocky mountain flood. It didn’t get crushed by a lone, cottage-sized boulder hurtling down from the mountainside beyond.  None of my vivid and dramatic fantasies of summer manifest.  No, the lawyer’s office merely called and quietly stated that it was done, registered and money to be deposited in my account.

The most intense, emotionally and physically exhausting, uninspired and demoralizing undertaking of my life was finally, officially over. 

House Flip 2007.  From ignorance to… less ignorance.  What I learned:

• Afraid to be on roof.  Any roof.
• Drywall. SUCKS. Hire. Period. 
• Can use just about any tool.
• Despite it all, still like building things. 
• Capable of building more things.
• Project has to speak pretty damn loudly to me before I take that much time away from my family again.
• My home and family is sanctuary, oasis.
• Partnerships can be crazy, in fact, downright friggin’ freakish- must be thoroughly and thoughtfully considered. 
• Borrowing money, from other than bank, adds buttloads of stress. Also to be thoroughly and thoughtfully considered.
• Acting out of desperation only perpetuates desperation.
• Opportunities abound, there’s never, EVER, just one.
• Worry = complete waste of time and energy because… 
• Everything works out.  

We didn’t sell the house itself, but our half of it.  To the partners.  We didn’t make a whole helluva lot of cash-ola.  But we are Happy. Happy. Happy. To be out from under and done.  Out from under and done with not only our shirts, but a whole new perspective on how we want to live and earn our money.  Vision, creativity and inspiration.

Do it again?  Absolutely.  Differently.

While This Day wasn’t nearly the ecstatic, joy-apolooza I would have expected given the trauma that these past months had seen, we feel a quiet satisfaction in all we have learned.  Time and distance does heal all.  Strange, in it’s anti-climactic end, but we did manage to celebrate.  Food of course:  a fresh, homemade loaf of french bread and a big bowl of bubbly, runny cheese -OMG.  Heaven.  Topped off with a big, ol’ margeereeeta!

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