I arrived late on Thursday, around 9pm, to the cabin in North Conway, Katy was two hours behind me and I quickly opened up the house for fear of giant wolf spiders and other creatures lurking inside waiting to attack. There were none.
My car was loaded with tools, food and drink and I was so anxious to get going on our floor demolition that I began to pry up the vinyl in the bathroom. Underneath, I found the old wood floor, which was a wonderful surprise, considering we didn't really know how to install a new floor. Phew.
I couldn't help but tear it all up, it only took an hour. I didn't have a mask that night so I used a tank top (terrorist photo?) then Katy arrived, which was good, as I needed to stop.
We spent a lot of time at hardware stores getting supplies for our long list of projects. Some girls like diamonds, I like supplies.
We decided to go forward with cleaning up the wood floors as best we could, sand them, prime and paint. We also decided to do a bunch of other projects at the same time: paint the kitchen cabinets, wall behind the wood stove, walls in the bathroom, etc, etc. We thought that the floor in the kitchen and dining room would be as easy as the bathroom, so we took on more projects.
We figured, five days, no problem, we can do it all. We were doing well, eating great, getting the floor slowly and painfully scraped up, then we lost power to Hurricane Irene. Which was okay when you are in a rustic cabin with a giant fireplace, candles, and daylight. I ended up painting until midnight with a head lamp on, and we did a pretty good job considering.
The final day was gorgeous and I was sorry to leave because we were finally able to enjoy all of our hard work. We could clean, put the furniture back and pretty the place up. But, I was also exhausted, really exhausted, and reality was calling me home.
It is my dream to have a place like that some day. I would prefer a crusty old cottage by a lake or by the sea that needed someone like me to bring it back to life. I know I could do it and I know I would love it. All of the sweat, aches and tears would make it all worth it in the end.
