Contemplating Baby-Steps

I was at 3283 alone today. No contractors. No family. I hadn't slept there....but Bobbie and I probably will tomorrow night. I looked around the cottage this morning. There are dozens of things that need to get done. Tomorrow the electricians and plumbers will join me there. When they leave their work should be done. We have contracted with a roofing contractor and a HVAC contractor. They are scheduled to be there next week. So we will still see some big steps toward the completion of the project.

But, I realized that once those contractors are done the big steps are pretty well over. And when I realized how little I accomplished by myself today the idea of baby-steps came crashing down on me.  It will be wonderful living at 3283 and making incremental progress toward completion. But the changes that will be seen each day will be no where as dramatic as they have been for the last 2 1/2 months.

I hope I can keep up the enthusiasm I have for the project when I am both the "owner" and the "crew."  I'll try to keep up this blog. And your comments will encourage me.

Today there were two baby-steps:
The first involved relocating the overhead lamp on the back porch. Where it was located would be inside the new bathroom. It will now illuminate the screened porch--like it was intended to.

The second involved the newly sided east wall of this porch. I spend a couple hours filling the nail holes in the siding and caulking the trim boards and along all the vertical edges and around the window. I finished all the filling and caulking by about 2:00. And, since I had to wait at least an hour to paint, I decided to make a grocery store run. [With electricity at 3283 I can start filling a refrigerator.]

When I returned, I found some old cardboard boxes to protect the split face block, and began slapping primer on the bare wood band boards and siding. [I am a sloppy painter and I didn't want to get paint on the split face block. It would be impossible to clean off.]  By 6:00 I had much of the wall done...but not completed. I won't be painting tomorrow...unless I have a fully functioning water system earlier than I expect. So the wall will wait until this weekend to become all white.