We've been in our new home up island in Qualicum Beach for over a week now and what a week it's been. It really was quite an experience that Monday afternoon when we pulled into the driveway, turned the unfamiliar key in the lock of the front door and walked in. Home. It was empty, voices echoing off the walls, floor and ceilings and was only semi-familiar.
I should explain at this point that neither of us have seen this house, together or separately, more than 3 or 4 times, ever. We bought this house about 5 years ago, well before we moved to the Philippines. It's been rented out all these years to several different tenants, but now, as we step in as live-in owners, we have only vague memories of what it really is like. We've never previously lived here nor for that matter lived in this town. All is totally new.
The house is empty so it looked small. The paint colors were deep hues, a gorgeous paint job but for me, dark. Not only did it look small, it IS small when compared with that 3500 square foot condo with high ceilings we lived in back in Manila. That was La La Land - this is...well I'm not sure yet. Life?
We did as we said we would. We're camping. Camping in our own house. We bought a blow up air mattress, not the kind of air mattress I remember from cottage days in Minden. This is way fancy. You plug it in and it inflates way way up into this enormous queen size bed. To deflate it to fold back up you just turn the dial the other way. Still, I find it hard to figure out the right inflation. Sometimes it feels like a waterbed from days of yore. Sometimes it feels like a big overblown blimp, generally solid, but at times prone to wobble somewhat back and forth. Once you settle in to one spot, it's OK, and sleep in this fresh air bliss comes quickly but heaven help you if you want to get up in the middle of the night. The bed squeaks, wobbling massively and you feel like at any moment you'll slide off the edge while trying to get vertical.
A couple of days later we found a huge bargain on a teak patio set. That was a great day. "Yay, I have a chair, what a treat!" This (mid July) is typically late in the summer season here for selling summer stuff so sales are good, but more than that, this has been a very shitty spring and summer so far in coastal British Columbia. We're connected to the Philippines we just left by the Pacific weather patterns. This is a La Nina year, the second, and we're cold and rainy here and back there where the hot air (so to speak) is, they had really early typhoons in May. All screwed up, and the MAJOR topic of conversation in town - not the La Nina part, just the shitty weather part of it. I have observed in my travels here that weather is always the major topic of conversation, no matter what it is. However this summer it's pretty serious for the people who own businesses as the tourists are still not coming. In our little town, all of the shops are independently owned, so by eavesdropping you can really get a sense of what this weather really means for their businesses and livelihoods. We are doing our best to help out, being in New Home Power Shopping mode. In addition to the blow-up mattress and the table and chairs, we also now have a humungous TV (although we're starting to notice that with 200+ channels there's still nothing on). A couple of towels, corkscrew, a couple of mugs...
The car we ordered ended up getting stuck somewhere when a barge turned the wrong way and took out a rail bridge across the Fraser River. The dealer has given us a loaner until he can get it to us. Hopefully it wasn't on the bridge at the time.
However, the so-called lousy weather definitely ended up working to our advantage. The morning after we arrived I called a painter I knew of to get an estimate on repainting the house. It was a gray, rainy day and as I was talking to his wife, explaining who I was and leaving a message, she said, suddenly, "Wait a minute, I think I hear his car." He picked up the phone and the rest is history.
John the Painter had been in the middle of an outside job painting a motel but it started pouring so he quit and sent his crew home. The weather forecast was for more of the same for a week. He walks in to the kitchen and I'm on the line, offering a week's worth of an inside paint job. How good is that for both of us! I had been expecting to to be many weeks before our house could be painted. It all worked out so suddenly, I wasn't prepared and I hadn't chosen the colors. That also turned out to be easy. Gray and rainy doesn't work for me, I need the sunshine. Paint the inside yellow. All of it.
So, for the past week there have been between 3-5 painting guys in our house on any one day, from 8:30 to 4:00. We were so busy power shopping we were out most of the days, but still, it was a little challenging to have people around, to say nothing of the mess. At one point, a few days in to the project, I thought, "Thank Ganesh (more to come) we're not doing any further major renovations, as was originally contemplated. I'd go insane!"
Then one day it was quiet again. The painters had packed up and finished. Sort of. We left on a five day trip to Vancouver and the carpenter was to come back when we were gone to finish the trim in the guest house/playroom/bunkie/studio which I had torn out and replaced. I still don't know what to call this space which is a separate building in the back garden that is finished with its own bathroom, fireplace and kitchen counter area. Whatever it is called it is a great space for me to play in with my various projects, as well as for people to come and stay in.
The ship apparently has arrived in the port of Vancouver so our shipment is soon come. Or so I choose to believe.
