There really hasn’t been a lot
going on to report about. Our weather this winter, while not severe in terms of
snowfall, has been just a bitch temperature-wise, basically keeping us indoors.
Day after day seems to start in minus temps only to reach the teens. This
finally may be changing so that Marc has the ability to try and finish the huge
gate he is building for our new driveway. He is building it so heavy he’s not
even sure how he’s going to lift it to transport; it’ll weigh about 260 pounds!
Fortunately, between the Dodge and the Freightliner he has two hand crank cable
hoists to help out.
We continue to mess around with the house plan. We visited Menard’s, which sells the cabinets I want, to get their take on fabricating a kitchen but came away disappointed after several hours. We cannot seem to make the island work and I just am not satisfied with the overall look of the kitchen either. We have purchased the cooktop and double wall ovens so we have exact measurements on those items and we plan to use our current refrigerator. Even though it's premature on pricing, we also didn’t like the quoted figure on that either—enough to choke a horse.
That gave Marc pause to consider
whether he might be able to build what we want. Other than a few hundred
dollars on materials we have nothing to lose for him to give it a go by trying
to build both the box frame and doors for a bathroom vanity. Since I am leaning
toward painted cabinets, we can likely get by with a less expensive grade of
wood. To give us more room in the mud/mechanical room of the house, we are
foregoing a whole bath in the master and cutting that down to a half bath,
something we have now and which works fine for us. The vanity in there is not
large so a good one to start with. Here’s what we have now, which he’ll try and
duplicate, other than I want plain flat panel Shaker style doors.
Another task Marc has in front of him as it gets a little warmer, is to fabricate and install a hand rail system for the steep stairs currently existing on the bluff, leading to the boardwalk. Young people must have owned this before! I’d feel as though I was taking my life in my hands to try them in the ice and snow as they now sit. When we visited, we bushwhacked on foot down the side of the hill to water’s edge rather than using those treacherous steps!
I’m continuing to help out at the Humane Society and we just finished up an online auction which was very successful in our fundraising efforts. Another one will be coming up which is more specific to the art quilts and just quilts in general. I donated everything I had made to this point: the art quilts, the jewelry, and fabric baskets. My share of the first auction amounted to over $300 for them and I’m hopeful the next auction does as well. I don’t plan to pursue making anything else until late fall or we are finished with our build. It will be a sad day when I have to say goodbye to helping this shelter out!
