Guests!

Our first overnight cottage guests arrived this past weekend. This is a pretty momentous development. It means the cottage is clean enough to be shared with friends.

They arrived when the lake was at its worst. When the wind blows up in the middle of the afternoon, the water can get pretty choppy. All weekend, this was as bad as it got.

Not such a great first impression.

At least it only got better from there.

Under pressure

Dad let us borrow his pressure washer to blast the outside of the cottage buildings.

I had no idea just how dirty they were until the grime started to wash away!

He washed Slanty. Still not spotlessly clean outside. It probably needs a good scrubbing on the siding to wash away years of bug poop.

He washed the back of the cottage.

He washed the side of the cottage.

Then he ran out of water because the pressure washer was using up water faster than our little pump and holding tank could pull it from the lake. I'm stuck with a half-washed side wall. 

We can finish it off later. Clean is good!!

Mouse poop

Augh!!

Mouse poop!

We foolishly forgot to empty the crumbs of food in the cat's food dish when we left the cottage two weekends ago. When we returned, the crumbs had all turned into mouse poop, like magic!

*sigh*

[adds 'mouse traps' to the shopping list]

Captain shaky hands

This is a photo of the moon hovering over the lake at night.

No really. It is.

It was taken by my dear spouse.

There's a reason I do almost all of the painting around the Lodge. 

It has to do with a certain sweetheart I like to call "Captain Shaky Hands".

Fortunately Captain Shaky Hands follows instructions well:

"Prop the camera on something and use the 2-second delay timer so you don't get shutter-button jiggle in your photo."

I'm glad he picked up the camera. Sometimes I'm so busy working on something inside that I miss out on photo-worthy scenes.

Some more photos of Slanty

We made a few more additions to Slanty before our guests arrived.

Starting with some slightly more appealing bedding (ya, the duvet cover and pillow cases are cast-offs from the house, but even unwanted bedding from home is still nicer than the carp that was at the cottage. My linen closet at home has never been happier!)

And we added a cute little light from the Mart of Wal that is NEW and as such is much less likely to start a fire than the scary one that used to be in that spot.

I also ditched the red curtains on this side of the bunky in favor of some white ones.  I'm a flimsy-curtain kinda gal. I hope you don't need a pitch-black room to sleep in, because you're S-O-L at the cottage if you do. Put a pillow over your head or something.

Someday soon I'd like to paint all of that paneling white, I think. Clean it up. Brighten it up.

I'm also planning to scavenge some ceiling tiles from the bathroom demo (more on that later) to fill in the gaps at the edge of this room.

Here's a view from a different angle. I'll probably need to get rid of that cuckoo clock, too. Cuckoo as in "crazy", not cuckoo as in "little bird leaps out and scares the pants off you every hour". I'm not THAT mean to my guests. (am I?)

And here's the super narrow back bedroom in that cabin. I thought I would replace the red curtains in here too, but when I put the duvet in with the yellow walls and the red in the curtains, it suddenly all ties together! Kismet! The cover is actually navy blue, red, and yellow. The flash just overexposed it a little.

Until we get out here with some paint and flooring, Slanty is pretty well done for the time being.

Door knob

The Captain put the finishing touches on our bedroom door handle at the cottage. Although the knob was in place (the door handle, not the husband) in recent hallway photos, the latching mechanism had not yet been installed.

It took him some short work with a 1" spade bit and a bit of chiselling. There was also considerable laughter at him when he walked out the very-breezy front door with a dustpan full of sawdust. (I still can't get all the wood pricklies out of the microsuede slipcovers. Even with the vacuum.). We're a supportive bunch. Really. If you can't laugh at your mistakes, we will.

After we suppressed our mirth and wiped away the tears, we could see that the door now latches closed. Huzzah!

Am I pushing too hard?

My parents are doing a lot of work at the cottage.

A. LOT.

Cleaning, fixing, painting, moving, cutting, lifting, more fixing, scheming, washing, supervising, thinking, dreaming, more fixing.

I worry that it's too much. That I'm being a terrible demanding mooch.  Especially when things like this happen.

That's Dad, napping on a chair pad on the porch. He does have a bed. There's even a comfy couch in the living room. He said he liked the breeze, the shade, and the sound of the water in that spot. *sigh*

Am I pushing everyone too hard?

Slanty!

With impending cottage guests, we needed to scramble to find extra room for bodies. The warm, living kind. The other kind I could just toss out back into the poison ivy patch.

ahaha.

Yes.

One of the bunkies needed to get tidied up, and quick. We picked Slanty. I really should get signs made to label these guys. Slanty: slanted roof. Peaky: peaked roof.

It's the most presentable to start with and it doesn't smell like an old shoe on a hot day (like Peaky does).

They've both been pressed into service as crap repositories for the last few months while we renovated the main cottage. We took the old chesterfield (sofa, couch) out of Slanty and wedged it into Peaky. The coffee table has moved temporarily into the main cottage since we didn't have one. It's only temporary as Dad has promised to make me a coffee table/trunk/blanket box for my birthday. ☺ ♥

Then I cleaned, cleaned, cleaned, cleaned. Look at all the shop cloths I went through wiping things down!

We set up the extra queen-sized bed that came out of the bunk room and generally spruced the place up.

We found a few treasures, comme toujours.

There's this splendiferous clock. (what is it with this cottage and the whacktacular clocks?!) It's got a moose. And some fish. And a net. And something... black... and something... brown? It also needs a battery because it's only correct twice a day.

Then, there's the always exciting "what's under the bed!?"
Answer: empty pop bottles, paper towels, paper plates, plastic cups, plastic cutlery, bottle caps, gum wrappers and... not one, not two, but THREE dirty socks! Ick.

But it's cleaned now to the point that it's habitable

There's a twin bed in the closet in-law suite back bedroom. There's the queen bed in the living-room front bedroom.

And there's a wee dresser, microwave, and a water cooler.

It's still got warts. There are tiles missing from one edge of the ceiling. There are still two kinds of carpet in there. I'm not sure how air-tight the windows are, but they'll do. I hope it's comfy enough for them!

Bathroom plans

I was going to finish the bathroom renovation during the week we had off in July. Really, I was. But we fell so far behind on a squadrillion other projects (that's a lot) that the bisected week was eaten up addressing them.

I'm still waffling a bit about what I'm going to do with the space.

It needs to be gutted, no question. The moldy subfloor, gold-flecked counter top, green sink, hand-made particle board cabinets, mis-matched panelling, narsty shower *shudder*. It just all has to go. This one room will be our biggest project to date. It will probably double the expense of all the other rooms combined and will take much longer than a weekend to complete.

It has me a little nervous. I've never attempted anything on this scale before. But, I have:

• handy Dad for moral support
• a library of Home Depot handyman books
• grunt labour in the form of the captain
• bunches of spiffy tools
• the option of paying someone to fix it if it's an epic failure

Here are the two floor plans I'm considering. Plan A:

And, you guessed it, Plan B:

Ignore the extreme sink. It's really 19" round, but the stupid software won't let me stretch the vanity without stretching the sink at the same time. Stu.Pid.

The shower stall won't have that weird angled corner-y bit, so ignore that too (again, stupid software only has one kind of shower stall).

The rectangle in front of the terlet is the hatch down to the holding tank for the composting toilet. FYI. It could probably move, but it has to be those dimensions to fit between the floor joists.

The room is 9'3" x 7'10" (ignore the misleading arrows on the drawing). The terlet can turn 90 degrees, but otherwise can't move, and the window can't move. If you want to submit your own drawings for this space, you have my email address. Go nuts!

Immaculate Cottage

The original MLS listing for the cottage was a tremendous work of fiction. Real-Estate agents should write novels in their downtime. Here's what our listing said:

Immaculate 3 Bedroom Cottage With Pine Cathedral Ceilings

Imm.... immaculate!? Shut up. What does "immaculate" mean to you? The OED says "Pure, spotless, faultless". I hope the listing agent has cataracts, because otherwise that one's just a flat-out lie.

3 bedrooms (accurate). 

Pine cathedral ceilings? Is soffit made out of pine? It looks like plastic from where I stand. The ceilings do slope, though, so we'll have to let her get away with "cathedral".

Newer Wood Stove

Ahh... sneaky. "newer" relative to what? or to whom? Newer than Neolithic? You betcha!

Eat-in Kitchen

She also could have listed "Eat-in living room" and I wouldn't have been able to justify docking her points.

Steel Roof

Full marks! But only on one of the buildings.

Two, Two-room Bunkies, One With Sauna

Ah... one of them has three rooms, all equally uninhabitable.

On A Beautiful Gently Sloping Private Lot Only Minutes To Mainland

Beautiful = clover, dandelions, and if you hit the long grass, abundant poison ivy.

Sloping = don't let your lawnmower get away from you or you'll be fishing it out of the lake.
Private = neighbors within spitting distance who are regularly trotting past your back door.

Only minutes to Mainland? Even if it took me 7 hours to get there it could still be counted in "minutes" (420 minutes, to be precise!), so not inaccurate per se. Do you suppose Realtors take classes in obfuscation?

Boat Access Only

True. Unless you have a float plane or a transmogrifier.

Deeded Parking Space At Marina

Ah.... No. Deeded parking in a grassy field off one of the side roads where you can store your trailer. Parking spot at the marina is only yours if you pay for the slip.
 

Boat Negotiable

No thanks

 

Incredible Value Only 75 Minutes From Gta.
Can I hit the GTA within 20 minutes of my home? If not, this is a stretch. (I'm a little thrilled that I don't actually know the answer to that. I live EAST of the city. Never closer.)

Listen To The Waves And Watch The Sunsets From A 32 X 6 Covered Balcony At Water`s Edge.
Ahhhh... now finally there is a grain of truth in all of this Realtor doublespeak. 

Sitting in the ♪ Rocking chairs ♫, listening to the waves, and enjoying the sunset directly in front of the cottage has become a bit of a 9 o'clock ritual at the cottage. You just have to train yourself not to notice the industrious spiders.

Guest room

Q: What could possibly be more satisfying than finishing the clean up and redecoration of a room at the cottage?

A: Having someone else clean it up and redecorate it for you!

That's exactly what happened for me over the Canada Day week/weekend. Due to dance competition scheduling [insert much gnashing of teeth] we were unable to enjoy Canada Day at the cottage but Mum and Dad headed up and got a few things sorted out without us. While Dad got the first few sections of his Verra Nice Dock™ installed, mom went to work clearing out, washing down, and painting the "Guest bedroom", which really, let's be honest, is their bedroom.

Here's what it used to look like:

Do you suppose that cowboy artwork is hung at gallery height? (maybe if you're a giant) And those Early Bordello curtains... Eeeeee. Sadly, the lamps were excluded from the sale of the cottage, so they weren't present when we took possession. Darn.

Mom and Dad found a few warts once they cleared the room out. The window sill was seriously off-square and the floor has a major ridge running across it where two sections of cottage (there were at least two additions to the original cottage) meet. Unfortunately, the ridge was hidden under the bed so we didn't know about it until all the furniture came out.

These are the moments I dread most -  the peeling back of layers before we can rebuild - because invariably there's an unexpected problem uncovered that results in considerably more work to fix. My teeth are ground down to stubs.

Dad has a grand plan to mend the floor (involved tearing out the subfloor, repairing the floor joists to lower that section of the ridge, and shimming up the other low spots). He's a brave man. I am so grateful to have his help, wisdom, experience, and courage on this renovation project. Without his knowledgeable consulting, we'd probably have turned a blind eye to some of the more daunting repairs and the place wouldn't look as good.

Barring the repairs to the floor, here's what the room looks like now:

There was one poor choice made with the paint in this room. I thought I would save Mom some painting time by having her use Behr (Home Depot) "1-coat" paint. It's supposed to be a primer and a paint in one. It's junk though. J-U-N-Q-U-E, Junk! The paint is too thin; even after two coats of paint (and a gallon can that is completely empty) the walls still aren't adequately covered. It's disappointing. In retrospect, I should've just stuck with the tried and true Benjamin Moore paint and the KILLZ primer. At least it's not that noticeable when the room is full of stuff. (anyone who comments on it gets handed a roller and a fresh can of paint - you've been warned!)

Dad built a pretty headboard for the bed (which we thought was a full, but discovered it's a queen - pity, because it crowds the room a bit) out of some lumber and some scrap nasty tree panelling from cottage. Mom had an old blue and white quilt and some lace curtains that were taking up closet space at home. And I hope you recognize the Fat-Man-at-the-Buffet pillows I made from cottage scraps. Don't they fit nicely in this room? Mom also donated a lovely framed picture of a ghost and his boat.

Mom recycled the dresser that was in that room and painted it the same blue that's in the quilt.

I gave them the scruffy old 6-paned window that's been sitting in my storage closet in the basement, and Dad put some new mirrors into the panes. They still need to paint the drawer handles black and install them and we still need to sort out the flooring for that room, but it's already looking so much better!

Cowabunga!

This. This right here my friends is the main reason we bought a cottage.

O.K. That and I really wanted a cottage for me so I wouldn't have to be "that moochy friend" and because I feel completely restored spending time near large bodies of water.

But really, this is why.

Dock

After Dad bought his big (lovely lovely) pontoon boat, he decided he needed to ameliorate the dock situation at the cottage. Many moons ago, the cottage had two docks, connected by a section of dock that ran along the shoreline forming a big U shape. But the older of the two sections rotted out and was removed by the former owners, leaving us with just one dock. (It's currently sitting in the wood pile next to the fire pit).

The way the prevailing winds blow at the cottage, you want to tie your boat up so that the wind is pushing it away from the dock. Less bashing and smashing, etc. With just the one dock and two boats, this was impossible.

While we were away at a dance competition, Mom and Dad stayed at the cottage and did some fix ups. Dad built himself a new dock while mom worked on their room (the guest room) THANK YOU!!

After the initial build, Dad decided the dock wasn't quite long enough, so later in the week he came out with a couple of prefabricated sections that the Captain helped him to install.

The water was a balmy 83C (sorry, when it comes to water temperatures I'll forever be stuck in the land of Fahrenheit) so they weren't exactly suffering.

The panels slid together like they were meant to go that way! So clever.

And now, the kids have another nice, long dock from which they can cowabunga into the water.

Cool

When the thermometer at the cottage shows things like this (yes, it says 30.7C inside the cottage at 7:23 p.m) it's probably a good time to think about testing the jalope air conditioner mounted on the side of the lodge. This was our situation on July 8th.

H          O            T.

The kind of day you let the kids have a swim right before bed.

You remember the air conditioner, don't you? No? Hmm. Maybe you've never been properly introduced.

Go ahead, take a good close-up look. I'll wait.

Did you catch the precarious perch it's resting on? It's made of chip board (rotten from the expelled condensation). Did you notice the power cord running down the outside wall  to an electrical outlet that was installed just under the edge of the cottage? Did you see the sturdy 1x2's that are holding it up? I've often joked that the former owners added a coat of paint to the supports just to shore it  up.

*sigh* I wish it were a joke.

I truly believe that if a bird had decided to land on it, it would've just crashed to the ground leaving a gaping hole in the wall.

When the captain climbed up the ladder to start assessing the situation he realized that one of the 1x2s isn't even doing anything. It's all wobbly. *facepalm* We (the royal we again) would need to build a new shelf.

Fortunately the unit still works - we needed to test that out before embarking on the build. The first step was to get the unit out of the window and rip out the old "support" (yes, the air quotes are essential here). He had some help with the heavy lifting. I'm no help at all in that department. Here's the Captain prying out the bits of trim that surrounded the air conditioner. Please note: I said surrounded, not "supported". Layer after layer of trim was tacked in around the shelf making it tough to remove.

The captain used some leftover shelves from the master bedroom closet demo to create the platform. That saw he's using is a little scary; there's no safety switch on it. Pull the trigger and it goes! It cuts, though. That is good. Gold star to the captain for wearing his safety glasses.

Once the shelf was cut to size and painted (to shore it up some ☺) he then cut the braces and a bit to attach to the wall out of a leftover length of 2x4 from Dad's dock build.

With some help from another cottage neighbour, he hefted the unit back into place and sealed around it with some of that fun yellow spray foam stuff.

Ideally it would've been a metal shelf that wouldn't rot, but I think this solution will probably outlive the air conditioner itself. Now we have A/C if we're desperate.

Razbleberries

Mmmmm. Raspberries.

We have black raspberries coming ripe at the cottage. The kids are in heaven!

Heck, I'm in heaven.

I'd be a bit happier if they weren't growing up in the middle of the deck though.

Chess

While cleaning out the guest room, we discovered a nifty little chess set. It's actually chess, checkers, backgammon, cribbage, cards, and some other game with dice that have face cards on 'em (anyone know what this is?) all in one handy little package.

The darling red-headed kid spent the latter half of the week begging any who drifted past to play a game with him. I'm a terrible chess player myself (I know how the pieces move, but there ends my strategizing).  The Captain is the exact opposite: very competitive and not super patient. I was bracing for tears. The red-head isn't known for being a good loser.

However, I was pleasantly surprised! They both played seriously (repeatedly) and, although he lost each time, the wee lad didn't pitch a fit and kept coming back for another game. I think he's growing up a little!
♥

The rest of the bedroom

Have I shown you the rest of the master bedroom yet? I don't think that I have.

Two more additions.

First the dresser. I cheaped out and painted the one that came with the cottage. It used to be brown, but now it's white. Yes, it smells suspiciously of cloves (former owner felt that cloves are to mice what garlic is to vampires), but enh, it's a dresser. I've put some dryer sheets into the drawers to fight off some of the cloveishness (again - my word. Don't like it? Tough beans).

Here's my red-headed helper reattaching the handles for me. I spray painted them green. Because I could. And because they couldn't get any uglier than they already were.

I also picked up and assembled  the pantry-cupboard cum linen closet that we bought from Canadian Tire. (Honestly, the captain and the princess did all the work)

Lastly, I painted and reattached the mirror onto the dresser, but it would appear I forgot to photograph that. Dangit.

Reflections

The living room has been eating at me.

Too much beige! Drowning in beige!

Hopefully some colourful pillows will help, as soon as I get around to making them. We have a big wall to cover behind the couch. Big.

A big, beige wall of beige. With a beige sofa in front of it. *Yawn*

I struggled with how to fill that space without breaking the bank.

I saw these funky mirrors at IKEA ($20 for two mirrors, 5 ft long):

And I thought... Ooooooo...

(I do that a lot. Right about when my schemer starts scheming.)

If I turned them so that they were mounted horizontally, they'd look like waves! Homage to the lake! But the space was big. I'd better get two packages (four mirrors in total).

We spent an hour figuring out the calculations to get the mounting brackets centred and levelled. Then we erased all the marks we had made on the wall because I screwed up. Then I screwed up a second time and the captain abandoned me.

Finally I called out "O.K. I've got it for sure this time!" and within fifteen minutes the brackets were attached to the wall and the mirrors were hung.

Whaddaya think?

They don't really do much to offset the beigeyness (new word, because I need it, and because I say so), but at least they break up the expanse of beige wall.

I definitely still need an injection of colour/texture into that half of the room.

I'm mildly unsure about the style of them. Are they too funky/modern for my cottagey cottage?

*ponder ponder*

Always open to suggestions. Leave comments below!

Be warned: I might listen to you! Just ask Gene, Paul, cat-faced-guy and whatshisname.