Building The Love Shack

After fourteen months of finding one water problem after another, we at the Love Shack are no longer doing a Rain Dance praying for water.

I am more than pleased to say, that all the water problems have been corrected and after the price of a small car, we now have everything water, functioning at the Shack.

There are days in your life that stays with you. One of the most memorable was the day I called the water supply company to come in just after we had purchased the Love Shack. When he lifted the lid to the tank, the sides started to crumbled into the tank.

Don, the water man,  put a flash light on the water to see where the damage was. To my horror  there were unknown critters, bugs and some worm type creatures swimming in what was supposed to be the drinking water.

That was the beginning of the water trip to hell. Soon after it was, the water tank is so old that it had to be replaced. Which was followed by the holding tank lid had shifted, to the pipes under the house were missing and the pipes to the tanks have crumbled in the ground. And last but not least, the hot water tank doesn’t work.

There was one name that I don’t know what we would have done without, Jim, one busy contractor who knows water systems. He had to come back several times over the past fourteen months, to dig up the front yard and put in the new cistern. Then to  dig up the front yard to fix the lid to the holding tank. Then again, to dig up the pipes. I am happy to say, that Jim has made his final trip ( I pray) and has brought in the top soil and has leveled out the front yard.

 

 

Each time I pulled in the driveway for the last year, my first thought was, damn this place looks terrible. Being a contractors wife, I know that the start of all construction  starts with ugly to make beautiful. But this, was really ugly.

This past weekend, I pulled up to the cottage and got out of my car to do a happy dance. This is what I found.

 

 

Now that this water nightmare is over and the front in now level, we can go back to work on what should have happened this year. The plan was to gable the front and add windows and a front door. That is now going to happen in May of next year. The Warriors have locked in a date for us to all be at the cottage for that exciting project.

In the mean time, I was able to get my measuring wheel out and get my first draft on paper to start working on the design for the front.

This also allowed us to get back to work on other projects. That’s another post.

On the humors side, several neighbors stopped by to let us know how good the front yard looked. In other words, thank god they don’t have to look at that ugly site anymore.

Husband got out the seed and now we are doing another rain dance, one for actual rain to keep the seed wet and get the grass started before the birds eat all the seed.

We don’t regret buying the Love Shack, with all her extra work and cost, we love being there. It has become the weekend for husband and I. I am packed up and ready to go every Friday and now that I have water, I can actually stay at the Shack and come there from work or go to work from there.

That being said, I would give some advise for new cottage buyers.

Don’t buy a cottage if the water system is shut off for the winter. You need to see it working in the Spring before you make your offer. You need to see where the spring run off is going. If it’s in your tanks, that is very bad.

If you lift your lids and the tanks have anything but water in them, that is also very bad. You need to run the water, flush the toilets and check your hot water levels.

This being the first cottage we own and first cottage husband has worked on after twenty plus years of being in construction, these are things we did not know.

If one of these or many of these are not working, you can still buy the cottage, it is fixable, but it is expensive and very time-consuming. You should reflect that in your offer, because the owner already knows this.

Again, with all in all. We Love the Love Shack.