Did ya miss me?

On a crazy whim we left the year round warmth we are blessed with here in Hawaii and went to spend the holidays at our Never Rush Ranch.

Like I said, crazy...

We had a lot of wood from the trees that were chopped down last year, but the pieces were too big and we never thought we would be back here so soon and need it, so it sat.

Poor Hubby had to bear the cold and split and saw a bunch of wood to keep us warm.

Don't get me wrong, we have the oil furnace and it keeps the house perfectly warm, but you can't beat wood heat.

His efforts were TOTALLY worth it.

We had Hawaii Temps!!

I did get some work done at the house and we found some things that need some work....I'll be posting about that in the up coming weeks.

That's all for now,

Aloha a Hui Hou!!

Our Rooms Are Now Full

We never planned on a dining room.

Our table in the kitchen is enough for the two of us.

If, in the future, we entertain, it will be in the Summer months, were we can eat on the back lanai (your Hawaiian word for the day = porch).

So I was kind of surprised when hubby brought this listing on Craigslist to my attention

Real wood, chunky legs and unique wood work table top. We liked it and thought, for the time being we can put it in the wood room and at least have a place to invite our neighbors over for game night.

So it is now ours and standing in the wood room.

Phone pic - Thank you Peggy!

Don't you agree, it looks pretty good in there?

Can't wait to get my hands on it. Reupholstered the seats and see if there is anything else we might need to touch it up.

Oh and I did ask the lady that sold it if she has any info on the set. She told me it belonged to her aunt, who is in her 80's, and it was from the 30's or 40's. I'll be going over with a fine tooth comb to see if there are any stamps or labels that can tell us more.

There was a time when I wanted new, new, new....but now I am very happy to fill our home with history.

Aloha a Hui Hou!

My TV Hutch

As I mentioned, our carpenter flaked out on us and I have a few other tasks that I plan to/have to tackle. One of them is the hutch that we bought last year.

I wanted him to take the shelf out the top so we can put our TV and DVD player in there and then add folding doors so we can close it up when we aren't watching TV.

Just this week my blog friend Anne from DesignDreams by Anne posted bi-fold window coverings she made for her bathroom and it inspired me to tackle this project on my own. (I'm gonna be bugging you Anne!)

The last thing I wanted to do was to add a wood top to close up that ledge between the top and bottom parts of the hutch

Looks like I have a lot of projects in my future!

So our carpenter flaked out on us

I had big dreams for our wood room. We wanted a murphy bed for guests, a desk for my Hubby and a desk for me and lots of shelves for our every growing library of books. I was thinking of something like this.

I thought a bit more about the lay out.

 Finally I came to the conclusion that I would rather have the bed on the North facing wall.

When were were there, this past summer, the carpenter said he would make it for us. But somehow we  kept landing on the back burner. He kept mentioning that for the past couple of years his wife wanted a murphy bed for their office too and that if he built us one, he would have to make one for his wife too. I guess that's why he changed his mind on making ours.

It seems that all carpenters in the area are too busy to respond, so I've decided to tackle this myself. I'll make it bit by bit. I will finally buy the Kreg jig I've always wanted. I even found a plan for the murphy bed I want to make here. They also have a a bunch of other plans to make my drawings into reality.

Wish me luck, I'm on to a new hobby!

Aloha a Hui Hou!

Getting a Second Chance

When we visited the house last year we slept in the wood room....and I really, really liked the warm feeling of the room, so I got to thinking that I would want to add a bit of that feeling to the light bedroom, but just not as much.

I saw a wood wall in last years HGTV Green home and thought that might be just enough to get the feel I was looking for.

Just didn't want the openings because that is a spot screaming for dust and work. So I looked some more and found a few more ideas and am liking the thought of reclaimed wood.

Now our contractor and I are on the hunt for reclaimed wood. Hope we find something nice and that it has a nice story/bit of history that goes along with it.

Aloha a Hui Hou!

stack 'em high

I received the pictures of the yard and what a difference! From the first batch of photos I can see that they trimmed the "grass". The yard has more weeds than anything. I'll worry about grass when we live there. For now, keeping it short and tidy is enough.

cut down all the tumble weeds and cut the grass

This view is from the mailbox at the front of the drive way

This is the view from the front, looking to the back.

The pines and the birch are gone. Look at all the wood back there! 

and the grapevines are gone too!

Because of the ditch and the lack of a weed whacker we didn't clean out around the trees when we were there. They did a good job of it.

Here is another view of all the wood. What do you think Dad?

There was a lot of tumble weed growing right here - looks so much better.

 

This is the drive way, looks like 3 trees were removed. Might nave to take that one to the right down too. We'll see when we're there.

This looks so much tidier too

The trimmed the stuff in front of the shop too

This is the base of the irrigation ditch.

It looks like the county came, put a pipe in and covered it up. Makes us sad that we won't hear the water splashing when we sit under the trees out back.

TIMBER!

They're done!

Just got word from the neighbor that the dead trees have been chopped down and we have a nice stack of wood waiting for us. I guess they couldn't mulch the giant stumps so they wanted to burn them, but since it snowed it was too wet to ignite them. Maybe on another day.

Lisa, one of the contractors, said she will send me pictures soon. They are our life line to the house.

Fire and Water

There are some projects that we won't be able to do ourselves and the bathroom/plumbing is one of them. This week we have a contractor starting work on our very tiny, very PINK bathroom

It's going to be totally gutted and the only thing we are going to save is the medicine cabinet over the sink. I plan to sand prime and repaint the insides. Then I'll brush the metal frame so it will match the rest of the brushed nickle hardware that's going in. The shower will have black and white tile. There will be wood look ceramic tile on the floor. The rest of the bath will be half white bead board and the other half will be pale blue. Doing this long distance is a challenge. I've spent hours and hours on the computer looking for ideas that we can work off of to create the bathroom we dream of. So for now we're looking forward to seeing my Google searches turn into a bathroom. <==click "a bathroom" to see a drawing of what we hope the layout of the new bathroom will be.

Photo from Google Earth

Another thing that will happen this week is that they will be cutting down and stacking the 14 dead trees around the house.  They will also run the branches and the wood the county left behind when they cleared the irrigation ditch thru a chipper. Home grown mulch! Anyway, as you see, Google updated their satellite maps and you can really see the dead trees.

These are in the drive way. When we were there Roger tried to save them. Watered them every day, gave them spikes, but it didn't seem to help.

This is a small grove of trees, right at the base of the irrigation ditch. Same thing - Roger really worked hard to save them. They might not all need to go, but a couple do for sure

This shows the birch and a group of 5 or 6 pine trees that have to go. They were already dead, dead, dead when we were there. I love the look of the birch and am sad that it has to go

The silver lining is that we will have lots of wood for our first winter in Idaho. WooHoo!

As long as we are on the subject, a fireplace was on our wishlist, but it was one of the things we had to compromise on. After lots of looking I found the Vermont Bun Baker. Again it is a compromise, but a  good one. I wanted one that looked good and had soap stone around it to maintain the heat, maximizing the wood. Roger wanted something that he could cook with. I can't wait, but think we will have to wait till we live there to have it installed.

Aloha Hui Hou!