the one year anniversary

Today marks the one year anniversary of taking ownership of this property, and it also marks the one year anniversary of us living in a motorhome. We did not actual sell our other home until later into September last year, but we stayed here in our motorhome.

I guess there were moments in the past that we thought we might be in the house by now, but we are now looking at potential “realistic” dates like the end of October. The house will not be fully completed when we move in, but we are hoping it WILL be completed in the next year, rather than just prior to selling, as has been our custom with previous houses.

So the floor…. We had a stressful week wondering what meant what. We watered the floor many times and day and even many times during night, but still a few cracks formed. So we watered MORE. .. THEN we noticed large scratches forming all over the floor, apparently from the hose we were hauling several times a day to keep the floor “moist”. We then learned that we were trying to keep the concrete cool, vs wet. There is apparently a chemical reaction going on in there that happens faster in the heat and we wanted it to happen more slowly to prevent cracks. So we got a few small cracks leading out from the corners of the boards we had put there for our eventual placement of the rocks. I was SOOOO relieved when the main builder came to inspect. I felt it was sort of like the surgeon coming to remove the bandages to see how the surgery had gone. He looked cautiously at the cracks and all of the scratches and watched my reaction closely. I watched HIS reaction closely.

I asked…. “can something be done about all of the scratches?” He seemed relieved. “Oh yes all of the scratches will come out with the polishing” He reiterated that he never promised “no cracks” I verified that I did not expect “no cracks”. So all is good. He looked VERY relieved. So we went on to talk of things like corrugated metal ceilings and other “interesting things”.

MEANWHILE the roofers were installing the roof. I remember back when we lived in Chilliwack in a newer subdivision with lots of building going on. I made a point of keeping my kids inside when the roofers were there because of the “language”. Things have not changed a bit, except that I no longer take offence to the “language”, in fact oft times use it myself.

The roof is not at all what I thought it would look like, but I guess we chose the colour. I guess living at (almost) the top of a hill who cares what it looks like. Apparently 90 – 95 % of it is recycled (even better). AND the “standing seam” is apparently a seamless roof.

So I guess with the longer runs of the roofing, the standing seam is higher, and I guess this is a long run. Crowded LARGE driveway, the roofers took up most of the space.

The back part of the house appears a bit tattered….but we have several times covered the windows and doors at the back to keep storm rains out…. and then to keep the sun out. I am sure one day it shall be lovely.

Ken has helped to complete the perimeter drain that drains the water around the house, usually into a street drain, but in our case, we had to dig a very large hole…..10 feet down, and fill it with drain rock and run the drains into that hole. Ken is tamping down the ground around the house after that.

In the midst of this, we have had to harvest a lot of our potatoes, because we got invaded with Potato bugs. The bug invades the leaves, but not the potato, and only certain potatoes. So we harvested the red potatoes and were pretty thrilled with the crop.

Tucker is such a trooper, just works hard along with us on every job we do.

AND we have started getting ready to plant the garlic in the fall. Our “garden” is full of rocks, and so we had a rock picking week….. and devised a way to save our backs. Dumping loads of dirt through our bike trailer on the back of the jeep. It was great fun.