Aug 8-9: Waiting and Refocusing

We’re excited by all of you who checked out our site over the weekend – thanks for tuning in! And special thanks to our friends here in Sitka who have been feeding us the last couple of days. Life savers!

Well, now that all the demolition is done, it’s obviously time to start reassembling. We’re definitely feeling the urgency! A little backstory: Matthew’s dad was planning to be here for three weeks this month and we were looking forward to having him be our project manager. The two of us are capable of an awful lot, but there are definitely a few things where we need some guidance (to say nothing of extra hands and humor!). At the last minute (probably after hearing that Sitka was experiencing the highest-per-capita level of COVID in the entire country last month!) he decided it wasn’t the best idea to travel across the country and risk exposure to the virus. Completely understandable, but we miss you, Jim!!

In his absence, we’ve called in some reinforcements to mentor us on patching walls, repairing rot, helping with the wall re-plastering, and tiling. It’s a relief to know we’ll have some help … but those folks are a little busy for the next couple of days. Besides, our priority task right now is to work on smoothing out that wall texture. Yesterday and today we started this process, and although it was a crazy amount of work, we feel that we see the path forward. And it will be a MAJOR improvement! However, we bought out the local supply of our preferred brand of paint remover and had to call on our friend in Juneau to buy out Home Depot’s supply. It should arrive via air cargo on Tuesday morning.

And so, we found ourselves in a holding pattern this afternoon on the green house. Fortunately, since we’re also moving out of our house at the end of the month, there’s plenty of other stuff to do! We refocused our energy today on packing up more of our personal belongings.

Here’s a few photos of the last couple of days.

Green House Progress: Aug 1-6

Six days down, 25 to go!

Green House: “Before” (Aug 1)

Here’s what we’re starting with in the green house. We have 31 days to turn this around!

Purple House: upstairs reno (July 19-23)

After living in this space for 13 years, we finally improved the loft area by clearing out the old chimney and laying a new floor.