Happy anniversary/birthday, Tiny!

Those Sunday nights in September, while R stayed on Lummi the whole time, I was grudgingly dropped off at the ferry, to begin the work week Monday morning. Thursday nights couldn't come soon enough, and before I knew it, I was back for the weekend of Sept. 17th. R realized that that very day was the six-year anniversary of Annabelle coming into her life. And since she'd thought Annabelle was about a year old when she got her, we decided to combine the anniversary and her 7th birthday. We got in some good work during the day, and then got down to celebrating, and most importantly, Tiny's birthday dinner treat.

She knows something's up!

Big ones for us, and a wee one for her!

Wait...

Wait...

Good girl, Tiny!

Ferry Dry Dock 2009

Sept. 10th marked the first day of R's three-week vacation. It also marked the first day of the Lummi Island car ferry's annual dry dock period, which lasts, you guessed it, three weeks. We giggled a good long time about it, and then decided a little dry dock wasn't going to stop us, no sirree! This is what it looked like that first weekend on the passenger-only ferry:

The first day, D and J were anchored nearby off Clark Island, and came over for a visit on their runabout. With the sun out, the water shimmering, and four bikes for four girls, the island begged for a little exploration, and after a sweet, seven-mile loop and a toast to the magic of Lummi, D and J said goodbye and tooddled off.

After a day of play, though, Big Papa arrived and it was time to replace some serious powder-post-beetle-damaged porch support posts. The porch supports the roof. Enough said! Have I mentioned how incredibly knowledgeable Big Papa (or, more recently, Big Papi!) is, and what an unstoppable team he and R make? They can, in all seriousness, do anything!!! Look:

Oh, sure, we can jack up the porch, no problem!

Voila, just like that, crappy wood and shoddy cement out, good wood and pier post in! Repeat six times. Thank you, thank you, Big Papa and R!

One more thing had to go.

Ta-da! Isn't it lovely, all shiny and new?

M and F also visited, and in between relaxing, they managed to bust out painting the front door. It is just beautiful, ladies!

In the meantime, and after much sanding and vacuuming, sanding and vacuuming, R and I were ready to start staining the floors. Why, yes, those are knee pads peeking out from the left! Hot, right? Seriously, though, I can't quite articulate what it's like for a city girl like me to learn all these amazing new skills and be surrounded by so much love and help. It's truly mind-blowing!

Labor Day = much actual labor

Having a whole four days off together seemed like the perfect time to invite parents and friends up for a weekend of work and play. The rub, though, was that it was floor-refinishing weekend.

The advantage of the cottage not having been touched in years means there are incredible bones to work with. The disadvantage is what we discovered about some of those bones. The living room and alcove floors, having lived under the previously-mentioned carpet for too long, were in decent shape and "only" needed an entire day of R going bucky on them with a rented padded sander. The kitchen and the bedrooms? They were a whole other story. Layers and layers of red, brown, gold, blue, and turquoise paint, plus tar underneath the linoleum layers, gave us a giant run for our money.

You know the old adage "measure twice, cut once"? It should be "x 100" when your house is on an island and the nearest hardware store is a ferry ride and then 10 miles away. The sander we'd rented just wasn't doing the trick, and was making R want to tear out her beautiful head of hair. So, Saturday morning, we woke up at 6:15, took the first ferry back to Bellingham, and were back at the cottage by 9am, with a totally intense drum sander.

While sanders were going in each bedroom, and hand sanders, too, N and T were sweet enough to tackle massive honey locus offshoot weeds in the backyard. In the pouring rain. Yes, they are amazing.

After a hard day's work, we hit the town for burgers and beer at the Beach Store Cafe (you can't even believe the deliciousness of this food!), and the next morning, we feasted on a crab and veggie scramble on the front porch, the crab courtesy of a neighbor's generosity, and marveled at our stunning adventure. Labor Day weekend resulted in excellent progress!

August, they're right about you

Taking advantage of a vacation cottage that's only two hours away is predicated upon actually having days off to do so. For me, that means weekends. For R, it's a little more complicated. If one week, she works Friday, the next week, she'll work Saturday, and the week after that, it'll be Sunday. August was such a month, cruel 'til the end, which meant we were only able to come up together one time. That was the weekend I'll fondly remember as Prep-The-Crap-Out-Of-The-Living-Room-Walls (three days), then Prime-and-Paint them (three hours). It was also the weekend I discovered muscles I didn't know I had, while vacuuming the 10' ceiling from the top of a ladder, sanding and TSP-ing every inch, and making a well-informed decision on a lovely Atrium White, selected from four minutely- but significantly-different whites. I also discovered that among R's infinitely amazing qualities, she's a rockstar with a caulk gun. Possessed, in fact.

Bye-bye, gross wood paneling! Thanks, excellent super-sticky Daly's primer!

As a matter of fact, they are different!

The rest of the month, R took advantage of a couple of four-day breaks during the week to finish painting the living room, and to get ready for our next adventure: Labor Day weekend.

And so it begins...

It's amazing how many times "can you believe we own a tiny island cottage?" has come out of our mouths. The reality of an-almost-100-year-old house, however, quickly becomes sobering. One thing at a time, though, and the first thing to go was the g-narls barkley living room carpet. And the furnace. And the bathroom floor. Did we mention we have the best, hardest-working helper-friends ever?

She had us at tiny little red cottage

It all started so innocently. Just a girl on a couch, clicking through the John L. Scott website, just, you know, checking out island houses, but only the west-facing shores like she'd been primed to do. I found this one, on Lummi Island (never had heard of it; we'd only had our duck eye on Guemes Island), but R. wasn't that excited about it. A month later, I'm leafing through Seattle Metropolitan magazine, and in their "Island Getaways" cover story, there's a spread on Lummi Island, with mentions of an inn, the Slow Food movement the owners are fans of, farming, farmer's markets, artists, fishing, eagles, orcas...turns out, the Tiny Red Cottage was still on the market. On a whim that Sunday, we loaded up the puppy, grabbed our BFFs, and took a day trip north to Lummi. Two hours later, we came around a corner and saw this. After two months, many random inspections (septic, structural, one, two, three oil tank ones), going back and forth on offers, counter-offers, counter-counter-offers, our tiny hearts on a giant yo-yo later, IT'S OURS!!!