A dirty job

You know what happens to your boat when you leave it tied up all summer in a swampy, algae-rich marina? You get a skungey boat.

skun'-dzee, adj. The state of being covered in skunge. Skunge-like.

First the captain took the pressure washer to it (borrowed from Handy Dad). No dice.

Then he picked up some marginally caustic hull cleaner/algicide. This stuff worked ticketyboo, but only when used full-strength.

It was a long afternoon spent scrubbing the boat, but it's clean as a whistle, now. If only we had some place to store it.

Lake photos

I'd like to share a few more shots of the lake with you before I slip into my winter posting schedule (i.e. not daily).

Morning calm

Gorgeous view!

The view in the marina

Diamonds on the water

As seen from the boat.

Good Bye, Hodge Podge Lodge! See you in the Spring!

The final day

This past weekend, the Captain, Handy Dad, and the red-head took one more trip out to the lodge to remove the final section of dock, close the curtain I left open (whoops), and take the boat out of the water. The princess and I were stuck at home for hours of dance practices (as we will be until May, sharp.)

First, they got That Damned Boat ™ out of the water and onto the boat trailer. (No photos. This is what happens when you leave the Captain in charge. No photos!)
Then, they took the pontoon over to the island and they loaded it up with all manner of crap intended for the dump or return to the Despot. Good bye, crap!

Next, they docked over at our nice neighbours' place, The Doug Store, so that they could remove the final bits of our dock.

Then they ate some hot soup. It was chilly.

Lastly, they set off for shore where they took a load to the dump (good bye, crap!), took some returns to the Despot (haha evil despot! Give me back some of my money!!) and ultimate brought That Damned Boat ™ back home.

*sniff* buh-bye lodge!

This is so depressing

I can't tell you how depressing this is. Closing up the cottage for the winter. I miss my weekend refuge! I miss the water.
The beds are stripped. The mattresses and linens are bagged up to keep the mousies/dust at bay.

The boat is loaded to overflowing. (Good thing Handy Dad took a bunch of our junk in his boat when he left before us or we would've definitely needed two trips to get it all across.)

The water is shut off and the lines are disconnected. The power is off. The cupboards are empty. The docks are out and the pedal boat is stashed away.

Goodbye Hodge Podge Lodge!

 Now, somehow, we have to figure out how to cram all of this stuff into the CR-V for the trip home.

I guess we just start with something and go from there.*

*we actually did get it all to fit, and no-one had to ride home on the roof.

Out, out damned dock!

We're really nearing the end of cottage season now. During Thanksgiving weekend the gentlemen set about removing one of our two docks. Since Handy Dad's was easiest to disassemble, they opted to leave that one for a later, colder visit.

This time they removed our dock. First the deck boards came out, then the captain donned his dapper hip waders and dismantled the dock sections in the water. He didn't find my phone, but I don't think he was looking particularly hard.

As they disassembled each section, the three men lugged the heavy, waterlogged dock sections to shore where they were stashed in all available nooks and crannies. Uncle B repeatedly got clonked in the head  in the process, but he was kind enough not to complain about it within earshot.

They also decided to remove one section of Handy Dad's dock (the part in the deepest water) to make it a bit easier for them to remove it when the come back later.

It's weird with one dock out of the water. The cottage looks nekkid.

365 days

It's hard to believe that one year ago today we paid our first visit to the lodge.

Although it was run-down, over-grown, and had suffered from years of neglect and disuse, I remember thinking to myself: "I can really see us here". When we  learned that another couple beat us to the punch and put an offer in on the place. our hopes were dashed. When that deal fell through and the cottage was ours for the taking, it was fate.

We knew then that it was going to take quite a bit of work to spruce the place up - although we maybe didn't realize just how much work it was going to be.  Holy smokes. Was it really that bad!?

After a long summer and a LOT of work, the interior of the cottage is mostly complete.

Next year we can focus on finishing touches inside, and start to tackle some of the outside projects like sprucing up the deck, reclaiming the gardens, possibly putting in a veggie patch, hanging a hammock... the list grows with each passing day.

With the lodge closed up for the season, I can think and scheme and dream and plan for the next 6 months. [rubs hands together schemily]

If we get even half the help that we had this year, we'll be in very good shape.

It was awesome to have everyone roll up their sleeves and pitch in.

And some of them did some really crappy jobs, like cutting the grass in the blistering heat, or scrubbing the plastic soffit "ceiling".

No matter the job, every little bit helped.

 And some might even have been having fun (the nerve!)

Some jobs were definitely bigger than others.

 And others, while small, were still immensely useful.

Without a legion of devoted friends and family, the lodge as we know it today would not exist.

So Cheers to you! Here's to another 365 with friends and family at the Lodge.

Vanity, part III: the vanity strikes back

While the captain was losing his mind trying to bore a hole into a shower tile, I decided to be productive and get a bit more trim installed in the bathroom.

Here's the half-wall by the sink:

I put the trim around the cap at the top of the wall and filled the crevices with my secret weapon (ALEX caulk). It's ready now for a coat of white paint.

I also installed the trim along the floor in front of the vanity. As always, it's good from far, but far from good. At least it looks better than exposed 2x4s.

I put some trim around the door frames, too.

I did manage to get grout on a few tiles this weekend and ran some silicone caulk to seal it up.
(thanks to Nicole the cat herder for her donated grout. I think we used a whole tablespoonful. I'm very pleased I didn't have to buy a whole box for that.)

I still need to put some trim on the walls surrounding the toity, and around the window. That one will require some creativity as the window casing isn't flush with the wall.

Another project for next year.

Friends

One of the things the kids love the most about the cottage is the one we knew nothing about when we purchased it almost a year ago.

At the cottage next door lived a 9-yr-old boy.

Over the course of the summer he has become a fast friend of theirs, and like a third child in our family.

For the kids, he has been their single greatest source of amusement. As an only child, I suspect he is sometimes overwhelmed by their noise and rambunctious behavior. The days when he doesn't want to come out to play are dark days indeed.

But more often than not, the three of them are inseparable. It will be a long six months without him.

Water closet

Because I promised no more posts about the bathroom... this is a post about our water closet.

*ahem*

When you were updated last, we had started the shower tiling and were about 1/3 of the way done the walls. This weekend we pushed through and finished the walls.

Day one had us starting the top half of the third wall, where all the knobs and spigots live. The captain managed to successfully bore a hole into a tile using our little tile boring bit. Boring tile bit. Bit boring tile.

He made a hole where the shower head will attach.

Then we started the lower tiles on the previously tiled walls, after which it looked something like this. Oddly, following the recommendation of The Book, the tiles are all suspended using masking tape. This works quite well. We used up quite a bit of tape, though.

Fast forward a day, once these walls have set, and we started work on the lower half of the final wall. What an exercise in frustration that one was. The captain started cutting the holes for the taps around 10 a.m.

By 1 p.m., he had partially cut a hole through a tile before he killed all battery-powered drills in the facility. He ended up mooching a corded drill from a neighbour. We are going to branded such terrible mooches on this island. MOOCHES.

And then.... distaster.

He said things like "Oh my goodness gracious, would you look at that!" and "Fiddle dee dee, that's disappointing."*

*No. Not really.

And then he got another tile.

It cracked at 3:30. I know this because a primal wail erupted outside the cottage and the red-headed kid turned to me and said, "I think dad broke another tile".

Awash in frustration, we decided the next-best plan would be to cut the tiles lengthwise with the tile cutter, bisecting the location of the hole, and use the tile nippers to notch out each half of the cut to form a circle. It wouldn't look as nice when all was said and done, but at this point we were out of options. The captain had completely given up and left me to the job of making holes in the tiles. I still have blisters on my left hand from the danged nippers.

So... full steam ahead, if a day behind schedule. We got the tiles on the bottom half of the wall after Thanksgiving dinner on Sunday. Again, they were held in place with tape. I think the mortar this time was a bit runnier than on previous walls because the tape attaching the first row of tiles to the top half of the wall kept getting pulled loose, and the tiles would start a slow descent to the bottom of the shower.

After repairing the world's slowest landslide several times, we gave up and used a lot more tape. A ridiculous amount of tape. But at least the tiles weren't shifting anymore.

With the wall tiles staying put, we started on the shower floor. I thought this would be a snap: smaller tiles would be easy to cut in the tile cutter, and the 12x12 sheets of tiles would make laying them fast.

This was only partly true. The tile cutter didn't work worth beans again, so we had to resort to cutting them all down to size with the tile nippers.

Here's an idea of how much cutting the captain got to do. These are the off-cut ceramic shards.

Had I known about this beforehand, I definitely would've spent the $50 for a wet saw. It's making me a little choked up knowing how much grief we endured because of those stupid tiles. Learn from me! Stick with the cheap little 4x4 or 3x6 tiles: they're WAY easier to cut and apply.

OK. So back to the floor. Things were going swimmingly with the first row of tiles, however once the floor started to slope because of the pitch we had engineered into it to allow the water to drain, things got gummy. The spacing of the tile sheets wasn't lining up, and we ended up having to cut apart the sheets and lay the tiles individually for almost half the shower. *sigh*. By this point it was well past midnight.

And we still needed to work on the curb. Here's the curb with the tiles set on it. I'm not super happy with how it turned out. I think it would've been better with a marble plate across the top, but that would've cost some big bucks. It's not perfect, but it will do. By the time this was wrapped up and we cleaned up the bathroom, it was 3 a.m. Yes, there's a 3 o'clock that happens in the morning. I was not pleased to become acquainted with it.

Because Monday was dedicated to packing up and closing the cottage, we weren't able to apply the grout as I had hoped. This makes me sad.

Here's the shower as we left it on Monday. It's not pretty. I'm hoping some like-coloured grout will make the slight irregularities in tile placement recede. (Isn't that a pleasant way of saying "hide my mistakes"?)

It's frustrating to be this close to finished and have to walk away from it for six months.

Arg.