Keeping Up With the Machine

The last 11 days have been a marathon of 10 hour working days. It is amazing to me that my body is so much less capable than it was even 4 years ago. Our contractor has started every day at 8 am, and we work alongside him until he leaves at 6:30 pm. He is a machine. I am not.

I am focused and stay steady at my work, but I hit a brick wall around 4:30 and that is when the crabby me bears her ugly head. My joints hurt, by back aches, my hands and shoulders are in pain, and by 6 pm I am literally dragging my body up the stairs.

Renovating an entire house in two months has been challenging to say the least. Early on the issue was working with “numb nuts” (our pet name for the contractor that literally did EVERYTHING wrong), and now the difficulty is keeping up with Jonathan from Calgary: our contractor is a machine. He is good. He is fast. He does not stop working for one second in a 10 hour day. I do not think he pees…and we are his “helpers” so we have to keep up. He has come a long way to help us out, and we have to lift, and bend and carry and clean and paint and sand until we are exhausted.

Our basement suite is almost done – I have a few minor decorative things to do this winter, but it is lovely and livable. The ensuite upstairs (which used to be our third bedroom) is nearly complete too: I just have to hang the light fixtures and paint. Our kitchen is totally torn apart right now and we are basically living in a hell hole. There is no sink, no stove. Cardboard is taped on the floor, but somehow the drywall dust always finds a way under it to be ground into the new flooring. There is sawdust on our dishes giving new meaning to the words dirty dishes!

I woke up at 3am - again - last night, unable to sleep and when I tried to go to the couch to drink some sleepy-time tea I almost killed myself on a table saw, only to recover and sit down on a stack of wall tile piled on the couch. Pizza and bagged salad is on the menu more often than I like to admit. Stephane is overwhelmed by the chaos but he is plugging on, trying to hide his misery. He works hard and his body is in revolt – unused to hard physical labour and long days.



I am writing this in the bathtub -the only part of our home that is not torn apart: It was that or sit on the toilet, so the hot water was an easy choice. The tub is my refuge. It is where I soak my weary bones in the morning - to limber up for my long day - and where I eat my supper at night, while soaking my wearing bones again. By Wednesday next week I will be soaking in my new, beautiful deep, luxurious bathtub. For now though, my BBQ’d smokey is on the edge of the tub beside my laptop, laying unappetizing beside my pickle. Another wonderful meal. Another exhausting day.

Sad Relief

Today we cancelled our five month reservation at our favorite place in Bucerias. We had talked about cancelling, but just kept stalling on actually doing it in the hopes that our reno would be done in time and we could still head south for the winter - but that is just not going to happen. So while it was sad to cancel, it also brought some relief, for now we do not have to panic when things are delayed, or rush about like chickens with our heads cut off to try to complete things in time. We still have to go to Puerto Vallarta to collect the things we had stored at Los Arroyos Verdes this spring, and to use a couple weeks at a resort in Punta Mita on our favorite beach (see pic) that we had already paid for.



So October 12-26 we will be fly down, fall exhausted on the bed - stare at the ocean, the Sierra Madre mountains, and the twinkling lghts of puerto Vallarta for two weeks in a state of sheer oblivion, and then come home and carry on - wishing we had not let go of our other five months of paradise.... Hopefully by December the basement suite will be ready to rent out, and if we are lucky, we can sneak away for awhile in January and/or February. After singing at Medici's a couple weeks ago we were approached by a couple who recently moved to Oliver. They loved our music, and said, "Hey, we have a 2 bedroom place on the beach in Panama where we go every winter. We would love to have you come down and sing at our local bar there. You can come down and stay with us for free!" Panama is the only country in Central America I have not been to, so maybe we will take them up on their offer!

Since we are staying home this winter, we have decided we will sign up for the local pickle ball and take in as many charity and music and food events as possible. We are going to get together with our friends that don't go south and play crib once a month, and hopefully our house will be in grand shape to host a bunch of dinner parties. The one thing we really missed while travelling was our friends and community, so we have a renewed sense of appreciation for all that Oliver has to offer, and want to take in as much in as possible.

Today is a busy day: we have to drive to Penticton to pick up a cargo van, go pick up a mid century table I bought, bring it home, unload it, then drive to Omak Washington to pick up some LED lights I cannot get in Canada, then to Oroville Washington to pick up my stove (so excited to use it), then to the farm store to pick up the galvanized steel watering troughs I am going to use as raised garden beds. They wanted $450 each at the Oliver farm store and 30 miles south in Washington they are $89.99. Price gauging I think - Cannot be all tariffs. My Mandalay bathtub and black stainless steel fridge also arrive today. Then tomorrow we have to drive to Kelowna to pick up the vanities for the bathrooms and a bifold door - I had to find a used, solid core door that I could cut because my contractor screwed up my rough opening, making it to small fr the bifold doors I already had - and they could not be cut because they are hollow. You gotta love Facebook Marketplace - lots of used things to buy for good prices. The door was free and I even got a good quality dishwasher for $50.

On Sunday the drywall guy will finish and then Stephane and I have only three days to paint the entire basement (walls and ceilings) and build an entire kitchen worth of cabinets. I do not know how I will manage - but I must as our guy from Calgary arrives on Wednesday to complete the reno. I used to be able to paint all day and into the night without taking a break. I remember once when I was 7.5 months pregnant I got up in the morning, got the kids off to school, popped off all the baseboards, pushed back all the furniture, painted the entire house, put the baseboards and furniture back all before the kids got home from school. Those were the good old days.

Now I drag my ass out of bed at 7, after being awake half the night ruminating about hood fans, drink two coffee, work all day at whatever it is I am working on that day, and by 2pm I feel like I have hit a brick wall. It is all I can do to scrape up enough energy to cook - in fact, most of the time I don't and Steph does it. Neither one of us is sleeping well - and it is taking its toll. We are trying hard to keep the mess out of our main living space, and maintain some semblance of order and calm - but it is near impossible. The mess is stressful, as is being weeks behind schedule, and operating on a few hours of sleep each night compounds it all.

Renovating houses is certainly less fun than it used to be. I LOVE the design part, and I love sourcing and buying materials although that part really stresses Stephane out. We have spent in excess of $40,000 in the past couple of weeks, and when he sees the money flying out the door without any visible progress he gets heart palpitations. I am not worried about the money. It is a cost of sales - so to speak. It is money I have to spend to make money. For me it is the hard physical work that seems so much harder than it used to. Moving drywall, shoveling gravel, carrying wood, climbing ladders, painting walls - I just don't seem to have the capacity to do as much, and each morning when I wake up I hurt all over and have to slide in to a hot bath before I can even bend enough to get dressed! When this reno is all over there will be joyous relief and some serious contemplation as to whether or not we will ever do this again.

Working to Distraction

When things go wrong now, I just giggle. We have had so many mishaps with this reno that I now find it kind of funny. Last week I wrote about my encounter with the Home Depot people...well not two minutes after I got off the phone with them – resolving the missing $2000 U.S. dollar issue - I got a call from Wayfair. The conversation went something like this:

“Hello, Mrs. Adolph, my name is Lilly and I am your Wayfair case manager.”
“Really? I have a case manager?”
“Well, yes, you see, we seem to have lost your bathtub.”
(Now before you think - go buy another one, they are a dime a dozen at Home Depot and you have a $2000 U.S. gift card! – you must know I bought a very special, very expensive pedestal tub that has its drain in a weird place…and the plumber has already plumbed the drain into the ceiling downstairs which has now been drywalled and mudded, so there is likely not another tub that will fit exactly, and I do not want to rip up my newly laid floor.)
“What do you mean you lost my bathtub?”
“We do not know where it is, er, it seems to have disappeared from our system. I am here to help you find another suitable tub.”
“Oh, well, I have already looked at 16,452 bathtubs on your website and this was the only one I liked. Can’t you send me another one?
“Well, that was the last one. We can refund you the $600 right away.”
“My tub was $1600 – not $600.”
“Are you sure? It says right here, skirted 30 inch Phoenix…$600.”
“Oh THAT tub! I already got THAT tub. It is installed in my basement!”
“Oh.”
“I am waiting for the Mandalay tub to arrive.”
“Oh, well, I have already refunded you the $600. Hmmmm. Well, you seem like an honest person, don’t spend the $600, and in a month I will take it back, after you receive the other tub.”

The conversation was elongated and a little weirder, but you get the point.

The next day, our dear friend Rod came to help us pull out some trees with his truck. (We are so lucky to have so many good friends here!). We needed to move them because they are where we will be building a new deck. When the roots of the tree came up, they brought with it the irrigation system, so now we have to redo that. Well, if I have to dig up the yard to redo the irritation system (that is what we call it), then I might as well do some xeriscaping and landscaping. More money - more work.

I fired my contractor on Friday so I have some time before the guy from Calgary arrives, so I might as well do some yard work! How could I not giggle at all this?

So today the bobcat showed up and yanked out the remaining 6 cedar trees, and leveled the area a bit so I could get to work moving dirt, laying landscaping fabric, and designing a new low water front yard.

As I mentioned last week, one thing seems to lead to another in this “money pit” of a house, and I have lost all hope of a) staying anywhere close to my $90,000 budget, and b) going south on October 12. I refuse to cancel my flights or accommodations until the last minute because I just MIGHT make it, and I would be terribly disappointed if I pulled off this miracle and then had nowhere to go!

On a very positive note, the smoke has cleared away and the endless blue skies are back and it has warmed up significantly. Perfect weather for digging and raking!

This past week we had two very special social events to celebrate the life of our friend Gidd. On Sunday about 40 of us gathered outdoors to eat, drink, and at 4:20 “toke” – for Gidd was a pot smoker, and it had to be done in his honour!

I did not indulge – as I prefer to have control of all my faculties, but I took some great photos! Tonight we will go to yet another gather – in our old backyard! The people we sold our house to are part of our Oliver gang now, and we are all getting together to have burgers and beer.

Losing a dear friend last week has made us all evaluate our priorities. Could I be next? Might I wake up next week to find my dear husband has died in his sleep? How terribly shocking it must be for my friend to lose her spouse this way. In a way, it is a blessing for he did not suffer, but for my girlfriend, she has had no time to prepare for such a loss.

Some say you can never prepare for the loss of a loved one – but I do not agree. When my grandma had cancer, she “hung on” for two years and suffered, and by the time she died we were all “grieved out.” We were glad she died – finally she was out of her misery! A sudden death is unexpected, and those left behind are left numb and in shock.

Talking about death may seem morbid, but at our age, it is important to think about it – at least a bit. Are you prepared for an unexpected loss? Have you a will? Do you know where all your spouse’s important papers are? What are their wishes? I have done all of this – I am always uber prepared for everything, so of course I have already filed away step by step instructions for my kids and partner should I experience a sudden and untimely demise. Morbid? Maybe, but I just think it prudent.

This afternoon I was on my way to the landscaping material place just outside of town. In my reverie, I drove right by it. I turned around, and headed back, and believe it or not, I drove right past it again! I feel like my brain is so full it will explode! I am so busy that I spend every moment rerunning lists in my head. Distracted driving. Very dangerous. They should outlaw renovating!