OUR CRUISE TO GIMLI

Well, Tuesday did not turn out to be conducive to boating. 

The winds and waves were up and we were glad to receive a phone call from Lake Agassiz Marine telling us that we would not be pulled until late on Wednesday.  Due to Tuesday's weather.  

So on Wednesday we pulled away from our dock,

and on out of the harbour to end our boating season.  

 
It was a lovely day and a nice uneventful cruise up to Gimli.  

And as Dan heads the "Thunderbird" onto the trailer so ends this part of our year.  

IT IS TIME TO GO ON TO OTHER THINGS

THE LAST DAYS OF SUMMER

You can sure tell that summer is quickly waning.  There is a definite nip in the air late in the evening and especially in the early morning.

The leaves are turning and it is getting very pretty.  I love fall.

We have moved ashore, into our little beach house, and are preparing to put the boat into storage for the Winter. 

The weather forecast says that Tuesday afternoon should be a perfect time for a cruise up to Gimli.  The boat will be pulled Wednesday morning.  

AND THAT WILL END OUR SUMMER SEASON

WE'VE BOOKED OUR PULL OUT

We went to the Gimli today to pick up groceries and stopped at Lake Agassiz Marine to book our pull out.  I guess the boating season is coming to an end, so it's time to put the boat in storage for another year.   

We are booked to be pulled out of the water on Wednesday morning September 28th.  It sure has not been much of a boating season for us.  Oh well, maybe next season will be better.  The boat will certainly be our escape from everything we plan to be working on at the house.  

SO, THAT'S IT FOR THIS YEAR

MOVING ASHORE

Well, we have had a sleep over at the house and everything seems to be working fine.  We made a few changes to furniture placement etc., hung up curtains, and did a couple of repairs we discovered needed to be done.  So I guess we are satisfied that that we can move in now.  We even have TV.  

So now we are making a list of everything we need to take off of the boat that we will need here at the house.  We hope to spend the last two weekends aboard, (Saturday and Sunday)  weather permitting.  But, for all intents and purposes we are now living ashore.  

THIS IS THE START OF OUR NEWEST ADVENTURE

THE BIG TREE IS GONE

When we purchased our little beach house it came with a great big tree right in front of the porch.  And of course I immediately wanted it gone. I hate trees that close to the house due to spiders chipmunks and squirrels.  But, of course that certainly was not a good enough reason to cut down a perfectly good healthy tree.  Plus it blocked the view of the front of the house where I planned on putting a big nautical decoration.  But that too was not a good enough reason.  So, I resigned myself to living with "The Tree". 

Well this week, we decided to arrange for Shaw Direct, to come out and install a satellite dish for TV reception.  Well it seems that big tree was blocking any hope of line of sight to a satellite, which apparently they need.  So, I suggested to Dan that, "Maybe we should think about taking down that tree?  After all it is very close to the house.  What if it comes down in a storm while we are away?"    Next thing I know we are negotiating with a "Tree Guy", and the tree is coming down. 

It was interesting to see them take it down, but far more expensive than I thought it would be.  With the hot water tank, and now this tree, this place is starting to make me think of the movie "The Money Pit".  And we haven't even started the real renovations yet. But, at least now I have a nice clear view of the house from the front street.

I THINK WE ARE READY TO MOVE IN

OUR BOAT HAS NOT LEFT THE HARBOUR

With the house purchase, the move and making the house livable, we have been so busy this summer that we sure have not done much cruising.  "Thunderbird" has been stuck to the dock.

Today looks like it is the one good day, of the weekend, for a cruise, tomorrow is to be hot, but the winds are supposed to be up.  Unfortunately we have to go into Winnipeg to run some errands.  Oh, well, we still have a couple of weekends left in September.  

MAYBE WE WILL GET A CRUISE IN YET.  

 

THE MARINA FALL SUPPER

The last big hurrah of the season. This weekend was our Marina's annual Fall Supper.  We have a catered dinner in the club house, where everyone has a chance to socialize, and meet and greet.  It is always a well attended function. 

As usual it was a very nice meal and everyone had a great time.  I guess we are going to have to get over to the office some time this week and choose a pull out date.  We will try to arrange for as close to the end of the month as possible, by then we should have our house ready for moving in. I am just waiting for the new hot water tank to be hooked up.  Then we will move ashore.

THE SEASON IS FAST WINDING DOWN.  

REDESIGN

Well, it looks like I have found my new involvement that I was musing about last month.  We have sold our Condo and purchased a little old house in the beach.  

This is a good solid little house structurally (good foundation etc).  But being built in 1955 the fixtures and appliances are very dated, but to make it livable it also needs a lot of work and re-design.  

The bathroom needs to be gutted and rebuilt with new fixtures and a shower stall. 

The so-called dining room ( added on to the back of the house, near the back door) will be made into the brand new kitchen, with new cupboards, appliances etc.  

And the now kitchen which is a better situated room, will be gutted.  It will have patio doors added which will step out onto the deck (that also needs to be added) and will be turned into the new dining room.  

Both of the bedrooms are small and exactly the same size, so to make a decent size master the wall needed to be moved to steal some room from what will then be a small office/sewing room.  We will live with this for now
and see what we can do to make it work.

 

The rest of the house (which is just the living room and porch) is just fine and only needs to be spruced up.  So, this should keep me involved and busy for the next few years. 





ANOTHER MAJOR PROJECT WE HAVE TAKEN ON

THE SORTING OUT CONTINUES

Our son Ken came out for the long weekend and the first job on Saturday was to tear down the wall between the two small bedrooms.  I am going to have to steal some space from one to make the other big enough for my bedroom suite.  The other smaller room will end up as my computer/sewing room.  

Today we unpacked all of my books and put them in the bookcases.  I was very reluctant to tell Dan, after we got it all set up, that I didn't really like the set up with the TV in the center bookcase.  He just scoffed and said oh, well! You'll just have to learn to live with it, until we tear it all apart to put in the new flooring.  

The other thing we got functioning was my computer.  One of my dilemmas with this move has been how to get wifi, for myself on the boat and at the beach house.  This rural area is not well served by our big competitors.  So I have been talked into getting a smart phone that can pull in the wifi and create a computer hot spot for me to hook my computer up to whether I am on my laptop on the boat or on my desk top at the house.  Tested it out today and it seems to work fine.  In fact I'm using it right now.  

SO WE JUST KEEP PUTTERING AWAY. 

EVERYTHING IS HERE, NOW WE HAVE TO MAKE IT LIVEABLE

We had lots of help over the weekend.  Lots of people to remove everything from the condo and down to the elevator, load up the elevator, unload the elevator, and load up the truck.  But with many hands it went really fast.  We were finished by noon and out at the beach by early afternoon.  We puttered around and prepped the house for Sunday's unloading and relaxed for the rest of the day.  

Sunday saw more help arrive to reverse the whole process.  We had lots of help to unload the truck and put everything in it's proper rooms.  With all the renovations we want to do to this place there isn't much we can do to settle in.  Just make it livable. 

THANKS EVERYONE FOR ALL YOUR HELP!

Yesterday I managed to get my kitchen sorted out and workable.  

 There are so few cupboards so I salvaged the old TV stand from our condo bedroom for extra kitchen storage.  That'll work for now. 

 

Today we unpacked all my computer stuff   It's not exactly up and running yet, but it's a start.  

We are still living aboard the boat and will, until our pull out date in late September.  Each day we have been going over to the house for a couple of hours to sort through stuff.  Because we had such a short possession date on our condo sale, we didn't purge as we packed, so now that we have the time, we will try to purge as we unpack.  (That is hard for me, because I'm a bit of a pack rat.  Dan is exactly the opposite, he throws everything out, so I have to watch him.  lol )

 We plan on renovating every room to some extent, except the living room, that only needs new flooring, so any set up we do will have to be torn apart again anyway, so what's the use.  

WE WILL BE LIVING IN KAOS FOR THE NEXT COUPLE OF  YEARS