But what time? It is beautiful up at the tiny house we call Myrtle.
We are still nine weeks away from winter (Winter is December 21) and we are already dipping to just above freezing for our low temperatures. We are having a cold fall but bounce back to the 80s after a near freeze and then cold again.
Charles and I have been pushing our bodies to finish Myrtle, we need to be able to stay there and not have to drive back and forth so much. It has been too much gasoline and wear on the car.
We do have electricity at our Myrtle but hope to get set up to be as off grid as we can be so we do not generate a lot of usage. We are keeping track with our Kilowatts used. Charles keeps a usage journal here at home and so we have a new book for what we use at Myrtles. It will all work out once we finish the little 200 square foot one level tiny house.
Pictured above I am washing dishes the old way on the kitchen table. We have a table and four chairs at Myrtles and I have two wash bowls and heat water on the outdoor stove.
We purchased a water tank to hold water just outside our door so that we do not have to fetch water as often.
We decided to bring up the bed and mattress and put it up to sleep and take it down to work. We hung the mirror because it was found in the old workshop when we cleaned it out and we were tired of moving it around trying to keep the mirror from breaking. We didn't have any other option except for camping cots but we found we are too old to do this kind of heavy work and sleep on a cot.
We are taking wash bowl baths as they did in the past. We heat the water on the camp stove but we will be cooking and heating with a wood fire at some point.
In the photo above is the old ceiling and at this time I took this picture we had the bead board walls up except above the windows. The cabinet to the right is on sliders and we have been using it to hold items we need and helpful for prepping food.
This photo above is the ceiling now and we have only one corner to finish, we ran out of boards. We will paint later.
So we started the floors, took the bed apart and shifted everything to the side. That gold padding is a underlay to go under the floor boards to control moisture in the floor.
Katherine was our inspector to make us do things right. This was very hard on the knees, especially for Charles because he was putting the boards in and I was laying them out. We had no idea how to do this floor but we just decided to lay it down and however it turned out this was they way it would be.
So we finished laying the floor. We have a lot of trim work to do, we have to face out the door and windows and corners, crown molding and baseboard molding.
Our trips back and forth were becoming difficult for all of us (doggies and bird) because we were keeping late hours and going up and back each day many days in a row. Now we are easing up a little since we can sleep over and get more done.
I took a walk on the property so I could try and capture the fog on the lake but the fog was letting up at this point. It is so very quiet up there, unlike the noisy area of the city that we live in.
I will enjoy this new place to go, a much slower pace and more simple. It does not feel this way at this time but it will.
A photo taken this week of our radish garden. We are starting to harvest the radishes. I am not sure which radish is my favorite.
We have had long talks driving back and forth and also a lot of laughter from our camping toilet adventures to new use of items from today that had some pretty intense mishaps. (Old way seems to always be the better option)
We did our first dump station clean out of our portable toilet tank. The process was not as bad as first thought, Charles went inside and asked the nice man if they will be open all winter and he said they will as long as everyone abides with keeping the faucet dripping during freezing weather. There is a dumping station that we can drive to to empty and clean out our camping toilet tank. This is used mostly for people traveling in RV's but also like ours too. We have an RV Holding tank even though we do not have a RV but that is back up if we need to wait longer to the dump and clean out station.
Our experience so far makes an old fashioned outhouse not as bad as I once thought they were. Now the story about the new female and male urinals. This plan was to not have to go outside at night since we do not have a indoor place to put a toilet. So we have a portable pop out toilet room outside.
Before we put the new floor down, I had a night time accident with my new modern fangled female urinal which is well designed except it has an inside cap and the male has an outside cap. Well, I was so sleepy and I could not see due to dim lighting, and the precarious way I was standing due to lumber on the floor, I forgot the cap was screwed down inside and quickly overflowed the lid and peed on my gown and the floor all the while pleading for Charles to get up and out of bed and find a towel as I was bunching up my warm long night gown to catch the mishap. I was pleading "Don't look". It was very chaotic and cold and once that situation was under control I had to make up some soapy water with my laundry bar and washing soda to wash down the subfloor and boards I was tripping over.
I ended up doing what I was trying to avoid and that was going outside in the dark to the temporary camping toilet among the wild animals in the woods. We can laugh about this now but at the moment is was not funny. Charles had said, well I didn't have any problem and I said, "Your not a female!". Had I not have been so tired before we collapsed into bed, I should have laid a towel beside the bed but I did not think about that. Lesson learn, try things out before using them at need and remove the cap before going to sleep.
We have put the girls through a lot but they have been well behaved. We kept shifting them around putting in the ceiling and floor and they slept most all of the next day after we got home. Next trip up we will take a nice warm rug for the floor. They do have a fenced in area now to run around and play and they are happy to be off leashes.
We are trying to be careful, Charles did fall off the ladder and had a hard landing, he hurt for awhile after that, one day he hammer his finger really hard, we both have had a lot of muscle pulls and pinched fingers and toes but hopefully we are over the hump now because most of the really big jobs are mostly done. We are still in a lot of pain everyday and wondering when this soreness will stop.
I remember a long time ago when my Grandparents, aunts and uncles were still with us and we would be together and the things we did with much laughter. Sometimes there were big projects and everyone brought a dish of food and we put it together and had a wonderful meal. People do this at Church today but I do not see it as often with families. We seem to be more isolated, not all but many.
I have learned through this tiny house adventure that I can still do more than I thought I could. Soon we will be at a point that we can start helping Madge and when we get things looking better up there then we can slow down and enjoy the time we have left together.
In my down time I have been writing down some knitting patterns because I really want to knit with this cooler weather. I actually have plans to sit down and knit this coming Saturday.
I wanted to let you all know where we are in this journey to getting Myrtle looking like a little house. Hopefully & soon, we can find a new normal. Grandma Donna
