The O-Zone

And I’ve gotten complaints. Sorry about that!  But this is what happened.

April went by sort of slowly while we waited for snow to melt, and talked about moving to the Olympic Peninsula, which I’d totally fallen in love with last year when we took a trip to the national park. Dan was ambivalent about it, and left it up to me to make up my mind.  One day I’d want to move and the next day I didn’t want to go anywhere. Pretty much that’s what I did all month long.

Then, the early part of May we planned a long weekend at our favorite birding spot at Malheur, and we finally decided to put our house on the market, figuring that it would take a couple of years to find a buyer. We listed it with a realtor on Thursday, and Friday drove to Malheur, not thinking about our house being on the market.  When we came home on Monday we had a phone message from the realtor asking us to give him a call to get some details ironed out on the listing agreement. We were tired so we didn’t call him back, and later that same day he called again.

Dan got the funniest look on his face. He covered up the phone and said, “We have an offer on the house, and the guy wants to know what is our best price.” I said we weren’t going to bid against ourselves, so we wanted full price since it was a very fair price. Dan passed along that message.

We didn’t sleep much that night because truly I hadn’t figured at all on what would happen next whenever we did get an offer, a couple of years down the road.

Tuesday afternoon the realtor called back and said we had an accepted offer at full price to review.  Much stress ensued.

Now we had to find a place to live, someplace an eight hour drive from home, each way.   And we were on the clock!  This pretty much consumed our time for the next month.

We made several trips to the Olympic Peninsula, and made offers on several places, which fell through for one reason or another, before we finally got an accepted offer in early June, and then we had to do all the packing and getting rid of extra things as we were going to be in a house a third smaller than our Curlew house.

In the middle of July we packed the birds and cat into travel cages and cat carrier, stuffed the car with everything it could hold, and hit the highway.  That was a very long eight hour drive.  I had tried for a month to teach the parrots to say “Are we there yet?”   Dan was not amused 🙂

And here we are. Remodeling again. Like Dan says, we’ve been remodeling houses for 20 years, why stop now!

First major project was to get a huge oak bar removed from the family room, which then meant replacing the tile floor underneath it with hardwood flooring to match the rest of the room.  That flooring is still unfinished, and awaiting the rest of the flooring being stripped and refinished.  Sheetrock was damaged and electrical work needed to be addressed.

Other minor projects were completed the first week or two we were here, including a thorough pest inspection and remediation, and replacing the old toilets and washer/dryer.

Next major chore was to replace the old smelly dark brown carpeting with hardwood flooring. That took about a month to accomplish, what with waiting for the flooring to arrive, and then moving everything out of the living room, and two downstairs bedrooms so the flooring guys had room to work. It took them two days, and it’s a vast improvement!!  Once they were done we could move things back into the downstairs rooms and set up a spare bedroom.

Second major project was to replace the front door and french doors out onto to the deck.  Another huge improvement.

Next and largest project was to replace the kitchen in its entirety. It took six weeks for the cabinets to arrive which they did on October 5th. That’s what we’ve been doing this last week.

The refrigerator is new, and everything else is what we were getting rid of, lock stock and barrel.

The family room with our two desks and the dining room table, and the pellet stove which we had installed to replace an old wood stove is in the corner.  You can see the unfinished floor where the bar was located.

We moved everything out of the kitchen/family room and into the living room, except the hutch which is simply too large to move.

Removing everything from the cabinets, and putting it back into boxes, plus the bird cages, and the living room was stuffed to the gills. Fortunately this only lasted a couple of days before we could put the birds back into the family room.

Monday October 8th the kitchen was removed.

Me and the cat hid while this was going on. They made a hell of a noise. The whole room felt way smaller without the kitchen cabinets. An obstacle illusion as Dan likes to say.

A side benefit was we were able to locate and block ingress and egress holes used by mice.  Yay!

The old cabinets are still sitting on our deck waiting for the Habitat for Humanity guys to come pick them up.

Friday the last nobs and pulls were installed on the cabinets, and a piece of plywood was laid on top of the cabinets so we have a work surface.

We had a piece of granite from the counter top we installed in our Bigfork, MT house, and we’re going to be have the same Blue Pearl granite here. We put this next to the electric range so I have a place to set hot pans.

The counter top guy was here on Thursday to make a template for the granite counter top, which will be installed in two weeks.

Without the overhead cabinets blocking the view, the kitchen is now open and feels much larger. We replaced dark oak cabinets with natural maple cabinets.  That’s the new french door.

The parrots are in a corner, next to the pantry cabinets.

The kitchen feels much larger now. Another illusion 🙂

We installed three pantry cabinets to replace the pantry room we had at our last house.  The holes under the cabinets are to provide airflow for  the air return vent in the floor under the cabinets.

Lots of storage space.

This coming Monday the 15th the floor refinishing guys are coming to strip the old finish off the floor and refinish it. That will take two to three days, so once again we have to move everything out of the kitchen and family room and into the living room. Only this time the boxes from the kitchen are no longer cluttering up the living room because this weekend we put everything away in the new cabinets and drawers. Yay!! I can actually find things now. There are still a few boxes in the garage yet to come in but no point until the floor is finished.

We’re hoping that the following week of the 22nd that a painter will show up and paint the kitchen, and then there’s just light fixtures to replace (also in the garage), before the counter top is installed later in the week. If he doesn’t show up, we’ll end of painting it ourselves.

If all goes according to plan by the end of October that room will be finished.

Then it’s just repainting the rest of the house, and replacing light fixtures as we go.

Next year we’ll tackle the outside of the house.

There are two really cool parts about being here. Being next to the national park, and the creek behind our place which is a wild life corridor for all sorts of animals to use from the mountains of the park down to salt water, is really neat.

And having Anna’s Hummingbirds coming to our feeder multiple times each day, and they’ll be here all winter. That is amazing!!

We’ve seen this bobcat several times so far. This time he and Mish stared at each other for a little bit, both their tails twitching back and forth before the bobcat wandered off back towards the creek. We obviously are in the midst of his territory.

Roughly twice the size of Mishkin, and a lot darker fur than the bobcats we saw in Curlew. Those were winter cats, though, so that might be the reason for the darker fur.

Here he is leaving the yard, with one ear back and listening to the house.

Lots of deer go through the yard, and our neighbors tell us that coyotes have a den at the end of our road which they’ve used for many years. Black bears will put in an appearance at some point, but no Elk. They are all either further east, or further west depending on which herd they belong to.

Enough deer are here that a fence around the garden will be required. We’ll figure out a garden this winter.

And on top of all of this I got very sick right after we moved here, and have been spending a lot of time visiting doctors.  So that is why I haven’t been writing lately.

Normally when the weather forecast calls for ‘x’ amount of snow, we get less than predicted. And we were actually hoping that pattern would hold true for the current weather forecast. Alas. And not a lack of snow!

The prediction was for a foot of snow this week.  Since our driveway is barely navigable as it is, we were hoping all the snow would go south of us.  No such luck.

Dan when it was barely light outside, walking on the crusty ice, in the new snow, using a broom to steady himself.  Look how far down the broom goes before it hits the ground!  He’s standing on two feet of snow and the snow from last night is what he’s wading through.

We had no internet this morning, and needed to brush the heavy wet snow off the dish.  Mish was standing next to me in the sunroom, looking out the windows and watching Dan wade through the snow.  Mish thought it looked wrong and he was growling at Dan, which made the parrots upset because the cat was upset.  Much excitement was had by all.

Nine inches of snow on the sidewalk which needs to be shoveled.

The heavy wet snow mostly slid off the greenhouse roof, and the snow on the sides of the building now reaches the roof.  You can just barely see the pallets of wood pellets next to the garage.  There is so much snow in and around, and on top of them.

And it is still snowing.

We are supposed to get another few inches today.

Dan says this is all my fault because I’ve always wanted to get snowed in.

I think I’ve achieved that ambition.  This is definitely the most snow we’ve been in since we lived up the North Fork in Montana, and got four feet of snow in 2 days.

News flash. It’s snowing again.

This could give us another 8 or 9 inches of snow, at this rate.

Ye gads.

Since last Saturday we’ve had a foot of new snow fall, and temperatures in way below zero range. The lowest we saw was -16F and then it warmed up to -14F. That gave us hope.

The week before we could actually see some bare sidewalk peaking out, and the snow was starting to settle and look soft.

But then our friend called us to say, “Guess what I saw?!”

A bluebird!!  Well, bluebirds are one of the earliest spring migrants, so even though we still had well over a foot of snow in our yard, we totally bought that they saw a bluebird.  And we got all excited to think spring was really on the way!

It wasn’t true.

Mother nature was not amused by jokes about bluebirds.  This is all Jack’s fault.

Spectacular sunset last night.

The whole sky was a pale gold, and in one corner where the sun was setting, it was a much deeper and more intense color.

The snow WAS melting, but then the temperatures went into the single digits overnight, and that put a screeching halt to any melting that was going on.  Nature was just letting us know that winter isn’t over, yet, and don’t let us forget who is in charge around here.

It just makes for somewhat boring pictures.

It has been a very snowy winter this year, but never a huge amount at any one time, just four inches here, five inches there, enough to lull us into a false sense of not needing to plow the driveway.  Again.

Got another four inches of snow again last night, after a few days of slightly above freezing and some melting and settling of the snow on the ground.  Definitely above two feet on the ground again.

Looking out the front door to the deer trail coming down the hill.  The snow has completely covered their trail.

The does are getting snarky with their fawns, grumbling about sharing the seeds that fall on the ground out of our feeders, courtesy of the picky chickadees who grab a seed and say, “Not that one,” “Not that one,” “Oh, this one is good.  Oops dropped it,” “Not that one,” “Not that one.”  Etc.  With a herd of at fifty chickadees, they go through a lot of seeds this way.

Looking at the trees behind the house, all covered with snow again. Lots of snow on the roof, and a snowy path which needs shoveling.

The heavy snows which had weighed down the plum tree, broke one of the major branches and it is now hanging loose on the left side of the tree, hanging by a strip of bark.  Dan trimmed part of it off that was blocking the sidewalk.

Looking southwest down the hill, more snowy trees and we’re in our usual fog bank.

Look how much snow is piled against the sides of the greenhouse. When the new batch falls off later today, it may reach the roofline.

Wednesday morning started off spectacularly with the lunar eclipse.  We got up in plenty of time to see it, a blood red full moon high in the sky, surrounded by stars.  And while Dan was watching it, a meteor went by the moon, just to add that something extra.  I wish our camera was good enough to capture just how beautiful it was, but it was too dark.  It wasn’t that cold, only about 20 degrees, and the snow was all sparkles around our feet.

The sky stayed clear throughout the entire eclipse.  Just so beautiful!!

I did manage to get a picture of the full moon as it was close to setting, only partially obscured by clouds which were low on the western horizon.

Not much in the way of sunny skies around here, which means the solar panels don’t have a lot of work today.  Right now they are completely covered with snow, in any event, so the fact it’s completely foggy/cloudy is somewhat irrelevant.

This is a pretty stout plum tree.

Last fall the plum tree held up several hundred pounds of rowdy black bear, and now it’s holding at least that much weight in accumulated snow flakes.

Conifer trees down the hill from our house are once again holding a lot of snow. Just last week it got warm enough to melt almost all the snow off the trees. It sure changes fast!

The snow storm on Thursday and Friday gave us an additional four inches of snow.  We have roughly two feet of snow on the ground at the moment.  Once it settles a bit, it won’t look like so much.  The warm weather last week during the day, and below freezing temperatures overnight, gave the snow a good firm crust and the red squirrels were enjoying it immensely as they could run as fast as they wanted, pretty much anywhere they wanted.  The deer weren’t having as much fun.  Their feet would hold up on top of the snow until they put all their weight on the foot, and then they would break through into deep snow.  The youngsters, in particular, were having a rough time getting around.  This new snowfall is going to make it even harder to move around quickly.

Ice from the eaves by the front door. The roof on the house and garage is holding a lot of snow.

Love the new roof!!  Snow stays put and doesn’t come crashing down scaring everybody in the house and making a mess on the sidewalks.

The snow piled up on the stove pipe on the garage looks funny. A top hat!  You can see it at the back of the garage, right hand side of the garage above the farthest right window.

We’ve only gone through two full pallets, plus a couple rows of bags on the third pallet of our wood pellets so far this winter.  This stove seems to be a lot more efficient than the wood stove, and much easier to deal with, except for the electric use aspect.  We definitely won’t need to buy more pellets for next winter – yay!

A lot of snow piled up on the edges of the sidewalk, and another inch of snow fell after Dan shoveled it yesterday.

The picture is kind of dark because there’s no sunshine.  Perhaps this afternoon, in which case we’ll have to go remove the snow from the solar panels.  Dan asked me who is this “we” I’m talking about. 🙂

Snowing today, and clear skies are promised for this afternoon.  That will be nice.  We’ll need to clear the solar panels and give them a chance to do some work.  Also the satellite dishes need to be brushed off.

Standing on the porch by the sunroom and looking down the hill.

I was trying to catch the snowflakes on the camera but they were a bit too small and falling too fast and thick.  That’s why it looks like it’s foggy – it’s just lots and lots of snowflakes.

We might go snowshoeing today, and walk in the woods.

Walking under conifer trees heavily laden with snow can be invigorating when the snow cascades down on top of your head.

And of course I never do anything to cause that to happen, like grabbing a branch when Dan is underneath it, and give it a little shake.

Looks like we’re going to have clear skies, like they are predicting, I’ll take the camera with us for more pictures later today.

Happy New Year!

Well, I guess that depends on what level of technology it is you’re talking about, so need to qualify this subject.

New technology is great, except when you rely on it. Fortunately we have contingency plans since you can really only count on new technology to fail when it most inconvenient.

First example. Our gas range using new technology and electronics has had the glow bar/ignitor in the oven portion fail intermittently over the last couple of months. This is exceedingly dangerous when it decides to fail in the middle of baking something, as a small amount of propane gas leaks into the oven, where it accumulates.   And depending on how long that situation continued, an explosion is unlikely but not impossible.  It’s just dangerous and stupid to keep fooling with it.    We called a repair man.

So while we wait for a new part to be procured and installed (two weeks and counting), our old technology wood cookstove is doing the baking for us. It’s way more fiddly, needing to check on the temperature in the oven frequently and adjust the amount of wood in the fire box.

An old-fashioned recipe – baked rice pudding. Delicious. This isn’t going to last long around here.

We would use the cookstove a lot more this winter had we had a good supply of firewood. Unfortunately the man who had been delivering firewood to us turned out to be fundamentally dishonest, or just an idiot. And seriously, it is really hard to tell the difference with that guy.

So we made the decision to focus on wood pellets and not try to find a new source of firewood this year.   All of which means we’ve been saving the small amount of firewood we did purchase in the fall for really cold weather, intending to use the cookstove to supplement our other sources of heat.   And this winter we are relying on our new technology wood pellet stove in the living room for our main heat source, but because we’re not idiots we also have two propane wall furnaces as a back up heat source. And we had the propane company bring us another large tank of propane to enable us to use them if we needed to.

Second example. The wood pellet stove we bought late last winter when we ran out of firewood, as a direct correlation to dealing with the ‘idiot,’ had an ignitor fail within the first month we had the stove installed.  No ignitor, no heat.

Ok…hmmmmmm, manufacturing mistakes can happen.

A new ignitor was installed promptly and everything has been going along swimmingly since then. Until the middle of last night when the ignitor failed again. Hmmmmmm. Sunday… how convenient.

So, propane heat to the rescue with the old technology cookstove providing some additional heat, and baking sweet potatoes at the same time. Maybe I’ll make some pizza too 🙂 or muffins for the parrots. They’d like that, little piggies that they are.

We’ll call the company who sold us the wood pellet stove tomorrow morning and hope they can bring us a new part post haste.  Propane wall heaters to the rescue until that happens.

On the plus side, the kitchen is nice and cozy and my laptop is portable 🙂

I finished a knitting project I started a couple of days ago. I bought beads last August when we were in Spokane doing something, planning on making a new knitted purchase. I hadn’t tried this particular color combination before and like it a lot.

Dan likes this one a lot, and wants me to keep it.  The fringe beads are a mixture of amethyst and crystals and sterling silver spacers.

So now I’m back to working on a vest I started a long time ago using yarn my friend Diana made. I am not using a pattern so I have to do some counting stitches and rows before I continue with the second side of the front. Having the two front pieces match is preferable. I love the colors of this yarn – they remind me of Terry’s feather colors.

This is one of many partially completed knitting projects I have on needles. I’ve decided to finish them before I start anything new.

We’ll see how long that resolution lasts.  Probably just until I see something shiny.

A Bald Eagle just flew by the house; the parrots told us about it.

Need to get this out of the house so I stop playing with it. I decided Santa needed a doll, so I made a princess doll from Frozen. Then I decided he needed a sack.

He is cute. I have to admit that.

Next he’ll need a sled and twelve tiny reindeer.

I need help!

Finally finished. Yay!

This one is my own design, using what I learned from all the other patterns.