Old Chinese Proverb... "Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey"

Busy, busy, busy...

Mr M has been busy grouting this week... all the grouting is finished! woohoo.... amazing how much better the tiles look now!

Shower....

 

Floor...... 

And kitchen.....

He also got the all the plumbing working and the hot water tank all fitted, involved lots of faffing around with the water system, but it is in and working!

Pressure release valve, overflows down the drain to the outside...

Earthquake straps in place, at least the hot water tank won't fall over - can't be sure about the rest of us though...

 

And voila we are off and flowing...

 



I cleaned up the sink & taps for the bathroom, all ready for installation...

As are all the pipes, fancied up with shutoff valves ready to be attached to fittings and fixtures...

Our building Inspector came out this week to take a look, he is happy with everything and once our Electrical Inspector has signed off we can move in as soon as we are ready under a temporary permit, which gives us 30 days to get everything finished off for our final permit!

So we are moving right along - really don't know how much longer until we get to sleep in there :) please don't ask, as the answer will be "just 6 more weeks"!

This weekend we went to the beach for our dog walk, and found that SOLVE was taking place! What is SOLVE? it is Oregon's beach clean up! so naturally we picked up a bag and off we went!

http://solveoregon.org/what-we-do/solve-spring-oregon-beach-cleanup

I think I have mentioned before how shocked I am to see so much plastic washed up on our beaches after storms, one day all our sand will just be teeny tiny bits of plastic! We collected a whole bag and managed to drag some larger items back up the beach with our spare dog lead (spare dog lead - do we need another dog?).  The majority of what we picked up was plastic, and shockingly most of that was plastic bottle tops!

This week San Francisco has just become the first city in America to ban the sale of plastic water bottles, a move that is building on a global movement to reduce the huge amount of waste from the billion-dollar plastic bottle industry.

This is huge!! and I sincerely hope that more cities follow in their footsteps, after all with a reusable water bottle at least you know where your water has come from! The production of one plastic bottle uses energy, omits toxins into the air, and uses more water to produce than actually put into the bottle for drinking.

And there endeth my rant for the week.....  PLEASE consider us next time you are buying bottled drinks!  My back is killing me after walking 4 miles stooped over :)

WELL one of my chickens has been a bit under the weather for a week or more! I was convinced she wasn't going to make it, and we (Mr M) were going to have to do the kindest thing and euthanize her!

Have you ever googled how to humanely euthanize a chicken? well I have, in fact I spent quite some time last week on the internet, top 4 tips were:

• Decapitation - "Probably one of the oldest methods used, decapitation is a quick death for a chicken when done swiftly. You will need a very sharp, heavy knife/cleaver or a sharpened hatchet, plus someone there to hold the chicken." LOL Mr M you are on your own!
• Cervical dislocation  I cannot stress enough that you must be confident in your ability to use this method correctly. That rules this one out then Mr M.
• Use a gun or pellet gun We do have a pellet gun I am not convinced that would work! but Butch our neighbor has a real gun... I did ask him if he would take care of her if I needed him to, but he thought I was joking! Ummm no, I was serious!
• Using a CO2 ‘chamber’ At last a solution I might finally be able to get on board with! plus Mr M would get to design something, and I am sure it would be over engineered and more than capable for the job!  

So I kept on procrastinating, and poking at my chicken trying to decide if she was in the final throes of life and hoping that I would just wake up one morning and she would have passed peacefully in her sleep!

But as the old Chinese proverb tell us "Kill the Chicken to Scare the Monkey".  Good job I don't have any monkeys to scare as it seems she still has some life left in her! In fact a week on and she is looking much more like her old self! 

Giving me the stink eye....

And wondering why I keep focusing so much attention on her...

My garden is coming along.... beds are pretty much all built - next to fill them and then they are ready for planting..

Soon we will be picking some of our salad leaves, these are growing well under the watchful eye of our pole dancing gnomes!

 

Keep on Keeping On Bunty Chokin.... just one more week!

 

Red shoes.... No Knickers!!!

Let's hope that saying doesn't work the same for kitchen counter tops!!

This week the kitchen got some attention - anyone ever applied laminate before? Mr M hasn't either, but as with everything he took it all in his stride!

First of all he built the counters, 2 pieces of chipboard glued together to give us a nice chunky top, hole cut out to fit the kitchen sink....

Then the sides are laminated....

And then the tops..

We are both really pleased with how they have turned out..

The kitchen is pretty much finished for now once the kitchen sink is installed!  We will wait until we have moved in to fit the cupboard doors and overhead cabinets.

Next job for the week was to finish up tiling.  The last row of tiles in the shower...

And then the skirting around the bathroom...

Kitchen got a backsplash....

.... and behind the sink got an extra special touch....

Final job for the week was to plaster board the back of the big wall inside the end garage bay, this needs to be plaster boarded, taped and skimmed for our inspection, I will be leaving the painting to Mr M, he will need something to do once this project is finished

We are so close to moving in - just another 6 weeks!! (hopefully NOT) !!!

It's like our very own version of "Homes and Gardens" on this blog, another productive weekend in the garden saw some more burning! Plus Mr M was out with his chainsaw, taking down some rotten trees and generally being all manly!

It's all I can do to keep him away from my high heels!!

We didn't burn all of the trees that we took down, I used some of them to create some borders along my pathways...

 

Our lovely "part time" neighbor turned up this week with a trailer full of cedar planks, he lives next to a cedar mill and these planks are all ones that don't make the grade for selling, but are perfect for us and our MANY projects to complete.  We can now finish up making the raised beds just in time to get planting.  I have my greenhouse full of seeds - none of them have sprouted yet, but I am practicing the art of patience :)

Not much else to report this week, Spring has officially arrived - wooohooo!!!

til·ing - a way of arranging identical plane shapes so that they completely cover an area without overlapping.!

Guess what we have been up to this week? ok, not so much we, more of him...

Last week our bathroom looked like this..

This week it looks like this...

So how did it get so pretty?  First the back wall was tiled...

I was responsible for selecting the Mexican tiles, and making sure they were placed where they were intended for :)

Then the side walls were completed...

The shower pan is next..

 

 

Next was the step, using some more of the Mexican tiles for pretty detail...

 

More concrete backer board was then laid on the floor and using our massive tile surplus we have been able to get the floor completed...

This week it will be grouted, sealed and then the hot water tank will be fitted, as will the fixtures and lights etc.

It's coming along and we are really pleased with how the bathroom looks - the boy done good!! *pats Mr M on the back*

Also this week he has finished up some more trim, round the doors...

 

Hiding cables.......

And the kissing booth is all filled in but looking smart!!

Kitchen counter tops are made... the laminate will be glued on this week...

Our bargain kitchen sink will be fitted into this unit..

Which I have been cleaning up and getting all the old silicon off of... good job I am a happy cleaner!

I also managed to get the big wall finished up... a couple of evenings after work saw this taken care of!

It's been a wet, wild and stormy week here in Port Orford.  Seems like March is trying to live up to December's reputation! We had a particularly wild storm blow through on Wednesday night, bit disconcerting when about 11pm the Tsunami siren started going off down in the town! We were a bit unsure if us and our neighbors up here on the hill were all that was left of Port Orford..  But when I heard the binman come around on Thursday morning I figured it was a false alarm! I am not sure why it went off, but it wasn't because of a Tsunami!

We had another pile of river rock delivered on Monday, for just $100 it is the biggest bargain so far!Amongst the storms I have managed to spend a bit of time this weekend putting in some more pathways up in my garden, no need to go to a gym pushing my wheelbarrow full of rock up our property is keeping me fit and healthy!

I also managed to get 25 strawberry plants in their bed... I am sure they are Thankful that I planted them just as the torrential rain arrived - fingers crossed they will make it up to me in the Summer..

One of the only things we both miss living over here on the coast, is the mountains and the easily accessible skiing.  We did get some white stuff this weekend, but it was just hail, and despite being a bit slippery underfoot it really doesn't scratch that itch!

cam·ou·flage..... to hide or disguise the presence of (a person, animal, or object) by means of camouflage....