At last I’ve got some time to write about the latest in the Farpoint remodel. We went up to Enterprise over New Year’s, and oh my, what did we find?
Floors. Lovely, glorious floors in the kitchen and living room. The tiles we hauled up in December have been laid down, and we hauled more tiles up on this trip to finish off the bathroom, utility hallway, and spare bedroom. Those are commercial vinyl tiles in white and brownish-gray tan flecks. Durable, inexpensive, and easy to maintain.
We also found this:
Sinks, counter and cabinet, oh my! We wanted to keep the old steel sink, draining board, and drawers console. It’s cool and the sink is big and deep. But. There’s only one sink. Rather than beat the bushes trying to find a double console (and pay the outrageous likely price), we decided to put in a second sink. Our lovely contractor managed to find the space to accommodate not just a second sink but a larger second sink, so I got a nice deep one. Then I picked out matching Delta faucets, big and tall to accommodate things like canning kettles easily, plus the new sink has a sprayer. The cabinet maintains the utilitarian style of the house and closets, and the counters…well, I failed to take a close picture of them. But they’re pretty. Really, they are. All vinyl, because…the theme of this house is utilitarian. With occasional touches.
Really, the floors have been our big holdup on getting work done at Farpoint. Now we can paint, hang curtains, and start organizing stuff. So we painted. Hubby got most of the living room primed, and I painted my office.
I think I’m going to put a four-inch band where the colors meet, and stencil something as well. If I get really crazy, I’ll do something further with the closets.
Our time wasn’t all about work, though. We knocked off on one day and drove up to Wallowa Lake.
No ice yet. But we saw deer, including bucks still running with a herd of does. Big bucks with four point antlers on each side.
The second day, we drove up north near Flora, and stopped at the Joseph Canyon viewpoint.
And I am really, truly stoked about our Dakota truck. For the second month in a row it hauled a heavy load of tile against a stiff headwind with wintry conditions and still made semi-decent mileage for a big V-8 from 1999. Plus it handles very, very nicely in the wind. Even the Subaru gets buffeted around when facing winter gusts roaring down the Great Wind Tunnel of the Northwest. But the Dakota? A few wiggles, but nothing more. I swear that big little truck just hunkers down and goes. Yeah, I’d like better gas mileage, but I don’t feel like paying the huge prices it would take to get a truck capable of pulling a horse trailer with good gas mileage. Or necessarily make any more compromises on the power and stability end of things.
This part of the remodel getting finished means that we can wrap up the activities known as “cleaning up the place” and move on to “moving stuff in so we’re not camping out.” OMG, the time is almost here.
Our final discovery was that the little retro table that we asked for as part of the purchase fits quite nicely in the now-opened-up kitchen.
That area where the table is? Used to be where the refrigerator lived, next to a wall. We were concerned about that heat register sticking out, but putting the kitchen table right there takes care of that issue. Plus we can now sit at the kitchen table and look outside. It can be moved around to deal with big cooking projects.
Oh, this is going to be so cool. Happy sigh.
