Building The Love Shack

As I drove to the cottage with the windows down listening to the radio, I couldn’t think of a better way to start off Cottage Season. Mother Nature had decided to give us a 25 Degree Celsius day to open up the cottage with.

On the drive my mind was on the email I had gotten from one of my co-cottagers telling me that my Crocus were up and the colors were beautiful.

When I arrive, they were, waiting to greet me. Then I went to check on my gardens. After doing the full circle of the house and stopping at each garden, I was happy to report all the shrubs and trees were doing well and some of the other plants were starting to pop their heads out of the ground.

Romeo and Juliette couldn’t have been happier to be at the cottage. For them to be able to have the doors open and go from one deck to the next was a big bonus. They enjoyed taking in the view of their favorite place while the humans unloaded the weekends snacks and goodies. Their other favorite thing.

Soon enough we had the cars unloaded and the opening process started at the Love Shack. Husband got the water turned on and off the guys went to pull up the floor at the Warriors Cottage.

With two sets of extra hands to help me, the grocery’s were put away after the frig got a good cleaning. The beds had their linens and the back deck got a good sweeping to remove the Winters leaf droppings.

We had no mouse droppings this year for the first time in six years which meant we didn’t have to pullout the drawers and rewash all the sliver wear or wash any dish towels. This saved us time allowing the girls and I to put lunch in the oven and sit and chat for a while.

After a bit of relaxing, I took the Claria and Christina over to the Warriors Cottage to check on the guys, which really meant, remind them when lunch time was.

After our quick visit I took the girls for a walk to tour the Point that the cottage is on.

This was Christina’s first time staying at the cottage and Claria’s first time meeting us. As we walked, I gave them the history of the area and a brief back ground of how I know the area. As we checked out the beach and walked the pathways we saw some of other cottagers who were also up to open. We waved as we walked by and then later stopped to talk to my fellow gardener about this years vegetable gardens before we returned to the house.

Soon after we returned the men’s showed up and we had our first lunch on the deck of the season. It was nice to sit back and listen to the conversations and to hear the much needed laughter after this long historical Winter.

The sun couldn’t have been kinder and the beer was cold. With the friends presents, we were having a perfect day.

After lunch Claria and John went to work on the putting the new barbaque together, while Christina and I went back to organizing, when I got a call from Husband. It wasn’t the usually, “Honey when you get a minute could you come over”, instead, it was “I need you to come over.” I went out to the deck and shared the phone call with the others, then the four of us went over to see what had happened.

And there it was… Oh God! Not water damage! Not again! What is it with us and the water damage…

Whom ever had put the roof on the house, had done it wrong. They never removed the old layers leaving six layers of roofing shingles and then put a metal roof on top of it. If that wasn’t a nightmare enough, they never did the ending of the metal roof correctly.

Because of this, for many years, the water had run down the roof, straight into the wall, damaging the roof, the wall, the flooring and the ceiling. The simple little let’s repair the flooring and put in the piping and the new appliances, has now turned into let’s gut the whole thing and rebuild the kitchen.

Thankfully, it’s only one third of the kitchen that has damage, but its still a major job, which Nelson has so graciously volunteer to come and spend the next month of weekends to help get done, and Johnny has promised to come back to give us a hand on his free weekends.

I’m a relieved to say that Julie and Gary took the whole thing in stride with no upset. As you can probably guess, that was one phone call I was not looking forward to making.

The process to start is already in play with the dumpster and materials arriving to meet me on Friday at the cottage. This, I will just refer to as the miracle as getting materials during Covid has been hard enough, but now that we are in lock down or as they call it “stay at home orders”, it’s even worse.

I would say at this point, someone was watching over us as one, we found the materials and two, this is a big one, it could have been much worse. If we would have finished the new kitchen and then more water got absorbed, the new kitchen appliance could have come crashing down in the middle of the night through the floor.

This unexpected discover put the construction on hold, forcing us to go back and sit on the deck and have a few beers. It also turned out to be the perfect time to try out the new barbeque that Johnny and Claria had spent a couple of hours putting together.

Dinner on the deck was lovely. But as the sun went down it started getting chilly and in the house we headed to enjoy the heat from the Cast Iron Stove and have dessert.

This is of course where I give the big shout out to the girls’ who not only baked the desserts, but they also did all the dishes. These are my kind of house guests. Maybe next time Claria is up we can get a picture of her as she certainly earned her Warrior status on her first day.

By Ten PM there were sleepy eyes and not long after there was snoring coming from both the humans and the fur babies. After all was settled in, I laid on the couch watching the last of the movie having that little bit of quiet time to myself. Not longer after, I went to bed to join in on the snoring harmony.

We really couldn’t have asked for a better way to start off Cottage Season, except for the water problem of course. But as Jodi said when I told her about it, “at least we are experienced at it and know what to do”. I’m not sure if having experience at it is a good thing or not. But we certainly have it.

Well its Cottage Season, or as we call it Cottage Building Season. We are up and running and doing it a month early. Now you can’t beat that.