Building The Love Shack

Saturday morning we loaded up one trailer, two SUV’s and a truck, and headed to the lake. As we pulled out of the driveway with the vehicles, I laughed and said to Husband “My god, we have a Convoy.”

When you first start to travel to the cottage you can easily get lost on the back county roads and in some places you loose your internet because of poor reception so it’s important to stay together. With that in mind, Husband drove leading the Convoy and I kept an eye to make sure no one missed a turn.

Johnny is familiar with the trip having done it many times, so we put him last and we kept Nelson and Christina in the middle to guide their way. Once we arrived the fourth vehicle joined in our Convoy, our new neighbor and friend.

The first stop was the Warrior Cottage with three full vehicles and one trailer to unload. It was a little chilly that morning as we were unloading, and we were all looking forward to sitting down at the Love Shack where we knew the heat from the Cast Iron Stove would feel good.

Once the barbeques, smoker, lawn mowers, boxes from Amazon, Christmas gifts, chimenea, and many others items that filled up my sunporch, my neighbors back patio and our dining room got unloaded to their new homes, we were able to sit down, get warmed up, and start making the plans for the construction over the next few months.

We started with the Warriors Cottage, making the big decisions to expended our original plans. The Warriors Cottage, as it has been decided is getting a whole new kitchen. The floor feels spongy when I stand on it, so everything has to come out to replace the subfloor. Since we have to redo the plumbing to add water for the new washer and dryer and fix the bad pumping installation, Husband decide we should change the piping system to their bathroom, after all we already changing ninety percent of the piping, so we might as well go all the way.

The kitchen cupboards have to come out to take the floor out, so they will also be getting rearrange. Once the subfloor goes in, the new flooring that we picked out for them will be put in and we can put back the cupboards in a different arrangement and install the stove, frig, wash and dryer and this will make room for a microwave. We are leaving the painting of the cupboards and walls for Julie and Gary when they come up. This project, we will be starting early April.

In the mean-time, we have to get our neighbors water system put in first. He’ll be moving back into his cottage in the next eight days and water is required to do this.

His present project is to get the place ready for the guys to come and help him install his new system. The water tanks has to come off the floor to allow for proper drainage and cupboards have to me emptied and opened up to allow for proper placement of the new plumbing before they can add in the new pipes and re-install the pumping system.

The guys are hoping to get this project started this weekend in case there are any issue leaving them next weekend to follow up. Not that we are expecting any issues, after all there is never a problem working on old plumbing in an old cottage right!

We are planning to open our cottage by Mid-April this year which is much earlier than we usually do. Taking into considerations two additional cottages needing work this year it makes more since to stay at the cottage than to drive back and forth. We are hoping to complete both the Warriors Cottage and our neighbors in six weekends. Having four more sets of male hands to help with the construction is going to go a long ways.

Christina has volunteered herself to deal with Rain and Mud Season at the cottage, and to help me get the cottage cleaned up from the Winter shutdown. She has also offered to help me cook and to feed those extra hands who are going to be working. She got a little glimpse of what feeding the working team would be like with breakfast for seven, five humans and two fur babies before we left for the cottages and then again for lunch when we got back.

By Christina and I starting early to get the Love Shack in order, while the guys are getting the other cottages ready, I can have the Love Shack at full function and stocked up before the switch over to start working on her.

Our Lady is last on the list to get started on this Season but that’s ok, as I need to try and get all the items to finish up the enclosed porch before we can start on it. The measurements have been taken for the doors, ceiling fan and lights, and the furniture, but Covid is still making somethings challenging to get, which is why I started the early shopping.

It’s funny for me now, but a month ago I was laying in my sick bed, bored out of my mind and now one month later, we’re back to shopping for not one but two cottages, driving up to unload the shopping items and organizing the Spring Construction. I’m also busy painting and finishing up the birdhouse to be hung in three to four weeks and the seeds have been planted for the new garden, so I’m babysitting new seedlings.

Thanks to the vaccine becoming available and most of us working as Essential Service, we have been getting vaccinated to be able to spend the Summer together. This surely has given a lift in our spirits and has been the fastest year since we bought the Love Shack to book up and fill up our weekends up there.

I think if nothing else Covid has taught us how important our time with each other means to all of us, and we are hoping to never have to make the choice not to see each other again.

Last year we missed some very special days, but this Summer we’re planning to make up for it. I have learned that we have some big dates coming up including a 25th Wedding Anniversary for some close friends who will be spending that weekend with us at the cottage.

I’m officially cleared to return to work on Sunday and I can’t tell you how happy I am about that. Hail to those who have been home from work this past year. I do not know how you did it. I felt like a house prisoners’ the whole time and missed the faces and voices of my co-staff.

This past few months home have reconfirmed for me that going back to school was a the right choice for me as I Know For Sure when I retire from Nursing, I can not sit home and do retirement. I’ll always need to keep busy and I’ll always need something that challenges me.

On that note, I did write my exam for the first course ten days after surgery while passing kidney stones. Many times in that painful hour and half I thought I was going to lay my head down on the computer or just give up and go back to bed. But some how, I managed to Ace that exam which I was sure I failed and am now halfway into my second course.

If I can stay steady, I should be able to graduate at the end of this year. That’s about eights months sooner than expected making my at least partial retirement from Nursing at Age Sixty. That sentence has two things in it that I can’t believe I’m saying when referring to myself, Retirement and Age Sixty.

I am happy to say that we are feeling much more hopeful about 2021 then we did about 2020. It does promise to bring some happy times ahead. As we start working along at the cottage I will have more pictures to share with you and will have pictures of Christina, Nelson, Ellie and Earl who all need to be added to the Warrior Page. In the mean time, Nelson and Christina are with Johnny in the first picture on this blog.

I would now like to end this blog in some humor:

So, being closer to Sixty now then Fifty, I have now gotten grey hairs. I suggested to my son that I might just let it all go natural and let the grey come in where it is and if I’m all grey, then so it be.

His reaction was priceless. First he made this face of shock. I don’t think he has ever consider the fact that I am getting grey. But next was his answer. He asked me not to do that because he was not ready for me to be grey yet.

Dear Son, I ‘m not ready for the fact that I am greying. I am barely ready for the fact that my first born will be thirty-eight next month or even that our little Juliette will be three in few weeks.

Where did the time go? Hell if I know, but some where along the way we started building the Love Shack and as it turns out, Season Six is going to one of our best ones, Grey Hair and all.

One last note to our Warrior friends from Minnesota. The rumors is some of their family is now reading our blog. Would you kindly encourage Gary and Julie to find a name for that cottage of theirs. I can’t keep calling it the Warriors Cottage, especially now that some of the other Warriors are starting to think, it might be a good place for a Summer home too. Nothing makes me happier than to say that. To have the group retire together is better than any retirement plan we ever dreamed of.

As I sign off, I expect we may be having a few more Convoys this Season. And Yeah… It’s finally Spring…And it’s really the best time of the year… And so let Cottage Season begin…