House Renovation on an Island

House renovation on an island accessible only by ferry is challenging. A trip to Home Depot involves driving 15 miles to the north end of the island, waiting for the ferry (the winter schedule has fewer than hourly trips), a one hour ferry ride across the inlet, and a drive of 75 miles. And then the reverse to come home. Renovation requires careful planning and crossing your fingers that you won't need something that's not available at the hardware store on the island or you will be waiting.

It's now the new year and we have lived in our house on the canal since just before Thanksgiving 2017. We had access to the house in mid-October but had more work to do than we had imagined. Isn't that the way renovation always goes?

First I had to clean out the house. It was a rental so it came furnished. I gave everything away and within a day and a half, I had only a few framed pictures and a box of miscellaneous household items to donate to our local thrift store.

Next came the demolition of the kitchen and needed repairs. There were rotten fascia boards. Some of the rot was obvious but others had been painted over. They were all replaced with new cedar boards and painted white instead of the pale yellow someone in the past had chosen.

We closed up the front entrance to an attached in-law suite and put a doorway leading into it from the main part of house. This would become our master bedroom. The closed up entrance would become my closet.

We knew that there was rot at the back door of the master bedroom and we were hoping that it didn't extend into the joists. It did. The entire sill and part of the door frame were rotten as well as part of the first joist back into the room. There are always surprises in renovation but this wasn't too bad. The cause of the rot was a leaky door. There was evidence that damage had been repaired in the past but not the source of the damage, so it continued. We have a good, solid, airtight (and expensive) door there now.

My kitchen reno was delayed when my cabinets were two weeks late in arriving. Scheduled for the 16th, they finally showed up on Halloween. Our carpenters installed them quickly (of course there were some issues there too!) but then the kitchen came to a grinding halt; the countertops would not be installed until Dec. 18. How could I get through the myriad of Christmas events here on the island without having a kitchen in which to bake? Solution: temporary countertops! We cut up plywood and placed it on top of the cabinets. It worked....I baked dozens of cookies and other items but it was a challenge with no sink in which to clean up. I became accustomed to doing dishes camping style; heating water on the stove and washing dishes in plastic bins.

We found a variety of other issues; leaking plumbing, unusual electrical wiring (this is Ocracoke after all....it's endemic). One of the biggest problems we discovered was a rodent infestation. Rats were not in the house but had numerous access points to the area under the floor. Lots of chewed up insulation, rat poop, and yes, dead rats, were involved. We are still working on that problem and plan to replace all of the plywood under the house with cedar and install new insulation. We think we have closed up the current access holes and hope that in the near future, we will never have to experience the smell of a decaying rodent wafting up through the floor.

So, the renovation continues. There is still so much to do. I'm currently working on installing a tile back splash in the kitchen. I still have unpacked boxes. There is painting to do. There are future projects. It will go on and on but at least I am here, on this island, and that makes it worth it.

Living a Dream

How often do we get to fulfill a dream? I had a dream to be a mother and I did it; three times. I had a dream to design my own home and I did it. I had a dream to go to Mexico for a month, live with a family, and study Spanish. I did that too.

I had another dream that I never imagined could come true and that was to live on Ocracoke Island. However, it came true as well. A series of events led to us being here full time. After Neal's parents died we had the financial resources to purchase a house. We originally planned to rent it but quickly fell in love with the little cottage and decided to keep it for use by us and for friends and family. I was still working at the time and had just started a new job I really enjoyed. I planned to stay there for four years, until my teaching license expired, and then then I would retire.

After working at my new job for two years I began to feel torn between work life and home life. My husband has a variety of health issues and was, by the spring of 2012, unable to work. It became obvious to me as the months progressed that he needed me to be with him at doctor visits and needed my company at home.

I am not the type of person who can leave work "at the office"; teaching was all or nothing for me. I was beginning to feel as if I could never recharge. Weekends, holidays, even summers were not enough. In a 2 1/2 year time span, we lost all of our parents, both of Neal's maternal aunts, Neal's younger brother, a good friend, and had numerous surgeries, hospitalizations, car wrecks, and so on, all within our immediate family. The four years I had planned to work became reduced to three, then two and a half, and finally, just two. I left a job I loved but a job for which I was steadily losing energy to do.

So, we began spending more and more time at our Ocracoke house. I became very involved in community volunteer work and we both loved life on the island. Meanwhile, in Thomasville, our large house on 5.71 acres with it's guest cottage (housing our daughter), large outbuildings, and many tools and pieces of machinery sat, unattended, uncared for, and not maintained.

My niece and her husband mentioned buying our property last fall and came by to look at the house. She partly grew up in this house so it felt like home to her. However, after several months of not hearing back from them we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would need to keep going back and forth between homes, a task that was becoming more and more difficult.

We were on Ocracoke in February when I received a text from my niece; she said that they were ready to get serious about buying a home and they wanted ours.

I freaked out. I FREAKED OUT! I am not really using that term carelessly. We had lived in that house for 32 years. We had raised three children. We had lots of storage space. LOTS of storage space. It was all full. We returned to Thomasville and got to work.

After much cleaning out; after many truckloads of useless stuff to the recycling center and to the dump; after a mega two-day yard sale (I made tons of money...yay!), and after donating lots and lots, the house  at last belonged to my niece and her husband.

It was a wonderful place to raise children; it was a quiet refuge from the world, and now my 6 year old great-niece, champion bug collector and toad catcher, will have a chance to grow up there too. And our daughter stays in her cottage. We needed to sell that house, but couldn't let it go. What a blessing that we could lighten our load and, after moving 8 times in as many years, our loved ones now have their dream home.

Our journey isn't over though. We have made an offer on a different Ocracoke house. Neal wants a house on a canal so he can dock his boat, something we now pay someone else to do. We will be moving around mid to late October and we will be selling this sweet little house in which we now live.

Sometimes dreams can't come true; sometimes though, they do.

Our former house.

The toad-catcher herself.

The New Year

It's strange...thinking about the "new" year. It doesn't seem any different than 2014. I guess we need a way to mark time and thinking about a new year gives people a time to think about change. I have given up on making resolutions. I never keep them. If I can't get up each day and think that I will make it the best I can, what good is making a resolution based on some arbitrary marker of time?

On New Year's Eve Neal and I drove up to Steve and Penny Kilby's house in Mouth of Wilson, VA for for their annual party. Neal had been once a few years ago but I never have. Steve and Penny came to visit us in Ocracoke this past summer and I have gotten to know them better so I really wanted to go to the party. It was fun, although it would have been more fun if we played music. I keep saying that I want to get back into it and one day I will. (Is that a resolution?) The most fun we had out of the entire evening was listening to Wayne Henderson picking with some young musicians; fiddlers Kitty Amaral and Mary Shumway and a phenomenal 10 year old guitar player named Presley Barker. What talent and dedication to music those young kids have and what a pleasure it was to hear them play!

On New Year's Day we went to Bob and Rachel's house for their annual get together. Their son Ben wasn't there, having flown to Seattle to visit family. I wanted to see if he had changed after a semester away at college (Columbia) and a newly acquired girlfriend! We had a nice time visiting with Tom and Marianne, Steve and Molly, Nancy and Bob's friend Coleman. We left about 4:00 b/c Neal wanted to come home and hunt, Jan. 1 being the last day of deer season.

I thought about taking down the Christmas decorations but I am enjoying the air of coziness they give to the house so I'll save that till next week. I finished the quilt that I made for Kathy Perez's baby Gael. I may embroider his name on it....not sure. I cut out a dress to make for our 2 year old Ocracoke neighbor Camryn. I am enjoying having time to sew! I have fabric for Roman shades for my kitchen and another outfit for Josephine. I remember sewing when Rachel was a baby....she would just play on the floor while I sewed at the kitchen table and I could talk to her while I was working. Happy times.

I guess if I have made any kind of a resolution for the new year it is to waste less. I have been trying to throw out as little food as possible, even if it means eating leftovers far after my interest in them has faded! We spend a lot of money on food and I don't want to waste it. I might as well be throwing money away.

I am also trying to rid myself of some of the things I no longer need. I have a collection of Polish pottery....I love it....but I don't need it and I am going to sell it. I have gotten it all out of the cabinet, sorted it by pattern and measured each piece. I will list it on Ebay and since I gave my postage scale to Sarah, I ordered a new one this morning. My old one wasn't really adequate for my needs so this new one should do nicely. Quite often when I want to get rid of stuff I just give it away but I am going to sell the pottery....now that I am retired I can use the money!

Lots to do and it won't get done as long as I am on the computer. Happy New Year.

New Year's Eve

I neglected to post last night, New Year's Eve Eve. We traveled back from Ocracoke and Neal wanted to stop and eat at Cracker Barrel. He really wanted to stop and eat there! Normally when I am traveling home from the 1:30 ferry to Swan Quarter, I go through a drive-in b/c it takes me till 8:30 or 9:00 and I get tired driving. But, as I said, he really, really wanted to eat at Cracker Barrel; it just seemed so important to him, so we did stopped at Rocky Mount. I had chicken and dumplings (or as it should have been called, a small amount of chicken with hard hunks of dough), carrots and turnip greens. I love greens. I really love them. But not at Cracker Barrel. I don't know what they do to them, other than putting what looks like some country ham in them, but I almost immediately got heartburn. It's roughly a 2 1/2 hour or less home from Rocky Mount so I drove the rest of the way in intense discomfort.

Cracker Barrel is just a very interesting place. It's the kind of place to go when you want a large quantity of filling food without spending a lot of money. Oh, and you have to listen to country music. The only good thing about Cracker Barrel is that they have a wood-burning fireplace for cold weather but we weren't anywhere near it. As we were leaving, Neal said "That was good." I replied, "No, it wasn't good. It was edible; there is a difference."

So home now, posting with a cat on my lap. We are going to Steve and Penny Kilby's house in Mouth of Wilson, VA for a New Year's Eve party tonight but right now I am going to Waffle House, courtesy of Daughter #3 who has a craving. Let's hope the food is better than Cracker Barrel.

I Am So Lazy

How lazy am I? Soooo lazy! I didn't do much of anything today but I really enjoyed doing nothing. Well, I hung some pictures and cooked dinner. I took a shower and dried my hair. And I read a book. Otherwise, that's it. Nada.

It was gray and partly rainy today and I love days like this! In the afternoon I decided to install myself in our little sunroom so I turned on the equally little heater and it got so cozy and pleasant that I pretty much stayed there for the rest of the day.

Tomorrow we have to leave for home. I always hate leaving and this has been a super short visit so I am not ready to leave but we have plans for New Year's. Tomorrow morning I'll put my few Christmas decorations away...there is a space under the eaves with an access door from the cupola. I am going to put my entire tree in there, decorated. It's just a little tree...and it is decorated with shells that I found on the beach. Except for the starfish top....I bought that at The Pirate's Chest. And then it will be so long Ocracoke (till later in January) and so long Christmas in Ocracoke, till next year.

Sunday, Sunday

Technology is great, technology is terrible! I was halfway through typing my entry when I tried to insert a picture. The window for inserting the picture wasn't opening so I clicked on the "back" arrow and found myself exiting the blog post I had just written...NO auto-save here! Of course, I don't feel like rewriting what I already wrote so I am going to condense it. (So after I wrote and published this version, I find that there is a draft saved. Ugh...will I ever learn!)

• Didn't go to church, went to the beach instead.
• Picked up a few shells and a grocery bag of trash. People, throw your trash AWAY!! What goes on the ground finds it's way to the ocean.
• Sat on the dunes and watched an amazing performance of hundreds of cormorants flying in a line, making loops and swooping up and down over the ocean.
• Went to Variety store; saw Janie T. and Kati W. Chatted. Shopped for t-shirts which are 40% off right now! Oh, and bought a few groceries too.
• Realized I only had 1/2  hour to get to the quilting group. Ate very quickly and made it more or less on time.
• Phyllis W. came by to see the quilt she had commissioned for her granddaughter...it is a log cabin pattern in pinks and grays...lovely. We basted a section of the quilt for the OPS Museum raffle. It is going to be beautiful and very unique!
• Neal and I went to the Schramel's open house. The food (seafood gumbo, duck gumbo, salad, bread, cheese) was incredible. Stayed for a while and talked to several people. What a lovely, wonderful event!
• Watched the movie "Mud" with Matthew McConaughey. It was very good.

Now Neal has gone to bed and I am typing this. The first, lost version was better. But this gets the job done. And here is a picture of the lovely quilt for Phyllis' granddaughter.

Christmas Time, Again

Curious that I seem to post around Christmas. Maybe it is a more introspective time. I don't know.

I am writing from Ocracoke Island, NC. Two years and three months, minus one day, we bought a house here. It is a sweet little cottage on the edge of a marsh on a fairly busy road but still relatively private due to the trees in our tiny front yard. It has been my dream for many years to live here and now that I am retired (5 months and 26 days) I can spend more time here. If my family lived here too, I'd probably never go back to Thomasville. (Except that Thomasville is much closer to the Ikea store.....)

So today is the annual Oyster Roast on Ocracoke Island, a fundraiser for the Working Waterman's Association. The parking lot at the fish house is cleared out, tables set up and people crowd in to eat their fill of fish stew, steamed shrimp and oysters. And today is lovely weather, blue skies, no wind and the temperature in the low 50's.

After we eat our fill of stew, shrimp and oysters, Neal and I will stroll over to the Community Square where dessert and hot cider is being served in the Waterman's Exhibit building. They usually have a little fire going in the stove and it's wonderful to soak in the warmth along with the warmth of community and friendship. Pictures later!

Ok, so it's later...here are pictures of the Oyster Roast followed by hot cider and dessert.