On Saturday I stayed home to write but Eric and Veronica went into Boulter to get some work done on the house.

Eric managed to frame the bathroom walls, closet walls and hallway walls right up until the nail gun bounced and sent one flying through his finger, out the other side and into the next finger. In true Eric fashion he bandaged it up so it wouldn’t bleed everywhere and got back to work.

The trouble with 3″ spikes going through your finger when it’s coming out of a pressurized nail gun is that it has a tendancy to crush bone. The nails are also coated in a glue that heats up as it passes through the gun for better adhesion. Hot glue and adhesion in 2×6 framing is good – hot glue and adhesion inside of flesh is not.

Later in the evening Eric went into Emergency and in the morning went back for X-Rays. Sure enough – splintered the bone. One splint and a tetanus shot later he was back in Boulter building stairs.

Sunday it was far too windy to be balancing on a 40′ ladder with large sheets of Tyvek in your arms and a splinted, broken finger – so Eric built stairs from the main floor to the top floor and laid out the front hall’s closet.

It always amazes me what he can get done in a day.

While he worked upstairs I cleaned out the basement (we have to move into it in a few weeks) and sanded down an old cast iron tub Veronica and I had picked up dirt cheap at the ReStore. The ReStore is a product of Habitat for Humanity. They sell everything of possible value to the public at super discount prices – new and old.

Some friends of mine had been down the week before and purchased a massive galley kitchen, brand new, with those lovely turny cupboards (can’t think of a better word right now) for under $1,000. It was an overstock or floor model kitchen that a company couldn’t sell (or didn’t have room for anymore).

Veronica and I found piles of stuff there – doors, countertops, ceramic tiles, lighting fixtures, submersion pumps, toilets – the list doesn’t end. Not all of it was worthy of floor space, some items were well beyond repair and others were of too small a quantity to do anything with. Imagine a Salvation Army or Goodwill for builders and you might be able to picture it.

As for that old tub – it is truly an antique but it has been well taken care of. I bleached it out, sanded off the rim, touched up the paint and it looks like new. I just need to give the outside and the claw feet a paint and we’re good to go.

We’ll keep it in the basement bathroom for now. The heated floor will help keep the cast iron warm so not too much heat will be lost to the tub while we fill it up.

Today I hid out in the house – doing research for my upcoming book alternating with sweeping up sawdust – and had time to layout the kitchen between tasks.

No doubt Eric would have preferred I helped him outdoors – even just to hold the 40′ ladder or pass TyVek up to him through some secondary hole – but the black flies were so thick I’d just run screaming into the house, basement, truck (whichever was closest) after 3 minutes outdoors.

I did manage to get my snapdragons planted though. After all, this girl knows her priorities!

Speaking of priorities…back to the kitchen layout. This has been something that has eaten away at me since the very first discussions on layout and design of the house. Cathedral ceilings (so beautiful) do not deserve to be chopped off by the eye by a leveled-top bunch of upper cabinets that have no personality. They are there only for function (bah! who cares about function!) and only because that’s what everyone else has!

I tire of that lack of creativity. There is actually a long list of alternatives to upper cupboards, that will meet your needs and look hot to boot. Mostly, they won’t make your log home kitchen look like every other picture in a magazine or neighbor down the road for miles to come.

Back on track – you can tell it is getting late at night, the end of a long weekend, I can’t hold a thought…

With off-cut chunks of sheeting and chipboard and plywood today I laid out my kitchen. This little rectangle is the fridge, this triangle the stove (it will be angled in the corner), and these five pieces stacked haphazardly will be the island…

I then paced back and forth between the three. The island will hold the sink and will also provide a visual stop from the living room. Pretending to cook a meal I walked to the fridge, washed my vegetables in the sink, returned to the stove to cook them, decided that was a pain so designed a counter area between fridge and stove…well you get the drift. Once I had all the pieces and place and cooked and entertained 10 people (in my mind remember) I started taking measurements and layout out the plan on paper.

Then I got hungry…

I’ve decided to start playing house for real with just an island. Later (after we get some other orders of business out of the way), I’ll build my cupboards.

The center area of the island will have a concrete counter top with a sink built in (also concrete). These are awesome, if you don’t believe me I’ll show you the book and the magazines that are coming out with these rugged, innovative and personalized counter tops. Veronica and I are going to embed LED lights in them so they twinkle throughout the depth of the counter top, day or night.

On a higher tier, of wood (perhaps butcherblock, but that’s Eric idea – personally I think it’s too much work for so much normal) there were be a lunch counter on the dining room and on the living room side. Two people on either side if we so choose.

And yes, I did ‘pretend-sit’ in every ’spot’ imagining what the scenery would be from each vantage point as well as whether or not I could see the TV from here.

(Priorities right?)

Since we have less than two weeks to move in, we’re going strong now trying to get a few items in order with the log home build. The most immediate concern is hydro.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love camping and I don’t mind roughing it (some) but I don’t like living in a home, while working on building that home, and not having running water for more than a day’s time.

This discomfort escalates when you consider it is black fly season here. The minute they bite, your skin starts to crawl and you just feel dirty. Of course they’re biting inside as well as out…we still have holes where windows are supposed to be!

Here’s the skinny on Hydro One, Ontario…what a fiasco!

Two weeks ago the Hydro guy came out. A sweet and charming fellow who said all the right things to make a girl think getting hooked up wouldn’t be a problem. Bah! Nothing but false promises and downright shenanigans.

1.) He said, “Everything looks good here. Just get ESA (Electrical Safety Authority) approval on the buried wire and panel and we’ll be back to hook you up with a new transformer.”

A call to ESA netted a $500 charge for three necessary inspections. (1) Pre hookup. (2) Wiring (3) I forget already.

When ESA did come out, we were told that (a) our pole was too short and (b) our pole was too old.

Now I’m wondering why the hell didn’t the cute and charming Hydro One guy know that?

Poles can’t be more than 10 years old for new transformers. Our pole definitely was stamped 1984. Hmmm, 2009-1984, not hard for me to do the math, is it for you?

In the end this wasted the ESA guy’s time (our shanty isn’t exactly on the beaten path) and got us all off on the wrong foot. Fortunately our ESA guy is an old timer who knows the ropes and Hydro shenanigans and takes it all in stride.

2.) Hydro One said: “Within 4-5 days you’ll receive a package in the mail stating what you need to do and what we’ll be doing.” Ten days later, we had to go into the Hydro office, find someone friendly (a chore in itself) and get them to tell us what was required. One week later (now 2 1/2 weeks late, the package has still not arrived in the mail).

Phone calls and messages and waiting on the daily mail. Eventually having to spend close to $2,000 to get a new freakin’ pole in (thankfully we have good techs nearby who understand our plight and had the pole up in a few days time)…

Now here’s the joy with the new pole…it’s installed, in, ready for hookup…ESA just has to come and look at and approve it.

Except ESA needs to see a permit in the system for a pole before they’ll come look.

Did you know you have to have a permit to put in a freakin pole on your property?

Our permit had been submitted by fax but then it sat on some government-unionized worker’s desk day-after-day while we waited for it to be entered into the system.

All the while our deadline grows nearer – and my fear of bugs and no baths is growing…

When Suzie Secretary finally got to it, our ESA inspector came right out and approved us for hook up. I’m starting to like this Ed Goulet guy.

What is it they say about building a house? It takes $50,000 more than budget and every step takes twice as long to complete.

Tomorrow I’ll let you know how my conversation with Hydro One goes – they’ll probably tell me that the approval from ESA hasn’t been entered in their system yet! Geesh.

On a personal note, the more I work through this crap, the more I think about creating an Ontario Advocacy for People Who Have Lived Through A House Fire.

Honestly, it would be nice if someone stepped up here – it has been a year of exhaustion and red tape in one form or another. Maybe someday I could help someone else with their government and insurance beauracracy and hoops.

People seem to think that we are loaded because “it’s an insurance job”, they also seem to think that I don’t work because I’m available to take calls during the day. That’s simply not the case for everyone and certainly not the case for us. We were seriously under-insured which is why we have to build our own home, on our own sweaty backs. As for my work, take a look at some of the posts here…quite often they are written at 4:00 am – the end of my work day that often starts at 9 a.m.

If it wasn’t for companies like Freymond Lumber, Eager Beaver Excavation, Kawartha Credit Union (Bancroft Branch), ICF Solutions, Lynval Construction – personally Dave and Lucille Burke, Wayne and Rhonda and Brittany Minnie and many, many others in the community, we’d be homeless for a long time yet. Big hugs and thanks to all these people and companies – I’ll be paying it forward, some day, some way.

I’m old enough to remember Toronto’s Eaton Center being constructed. In fact, back then we used to roller skate all weekend long, in marathons every long summer weekend, for Muscular Distrophy and camp on the sidewalks adjacent to the lot where the Eaton Center would one day be. (That’s going back a few years!)

Yesterday brought me back to those days and nights on the streets of Toronto as I worked away quietly in the log home we’re building.

As I was a downtown girl back then, not only did I watch the massive shopping mall being built, I also worked in one of the first restaurants (still there today I might add) that opened there for quite a few years – Mr. Greenjeans. The Eaton Center was my home back then. I did all my shopping, earning, eating and socializing under that glass ceiling for 5 years or more.

Having traded it all in 15 years ago for greener pastures the ceiling above me now is bare rafters, but the animals within are similar. See what I mean?

A couple of barn swallows have decided to take up residence in our house. I find this terribly amusing, but neither Eric nor Veronica do! Eric can be fussy and Veronica is not a lover a birds – and yes I do know that this isn’t healthy (shells and droppings and the like).

The Eaton Center also had birds in their rafters. Flying about from tree to tree on the top floor so most people don’t notice them until something catches their attention in the corner of their eye.

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We are taking this humanely as possible. Eric is working on deconstructing the nest as well as closing off any open windows and loft patio doors. We have caught them at this early enough that they still have plenty of time to find a new home to roost in.