I’ll pick up where the last post left off, and provide a few more pictures of the rest of our week after the cottage got delivered. Wednesday (the day of delivery) was a hugely stressful, but ultimately rewarding day, seeing the cottage get delivered and set on its foundation. We were staying on the island through Sunday, and still had lots to do to get the place to the point of being livable.
On the last post, I mentioned that the appliances and wood stove were well braced for delivery. Here are a couple more pics:
One of our first tasks was to take apart the bracing material and start to “unpack” the inside.
While we did that, our trade support was on site continuing to work on the hook-ups. Primarily septic and electrical. They were at it all day, and by the end of the day Thursday we had both completed!
We had a great day Thursday and made good progress. As we were not still ready to stay in the cottage, we headed back to Driftwood at the end of the day. Friday ended up being a beautiful day, and we were hoping to get our water hooked up.
We had to pull our own weight in getting things hooked up. I needed to extend the trench under the cottage further to minimize the distance we needed to bring the water line out of the ground.
By the end of the day Friday, we were all hooked up - water, power and septic! We were so close to being ready to stay. Sadly our propane wasn’t going to be delivered, so we didn’t really have any way to cook, so we had one last night at Driftwood on Friday night.
Saturday morning we packed up (for the last time!) at Driftwood, and headed up to our new cottage! We were able to surprise our neighbours with the sudden appearance of our cottage. That was pretty fun. And even better, they were trying to find a home for a couch they no longer needed - perfect! They brought that over later in the day, and we no longer needed to sit on the floor.
It’s not the most beautiful thing, but it’s better than the floor!
Saturday, we started working on the skirting around the bottom of the cottage. We want to properly protect the underside of the cottage, and hide the fundations a little bit. In addition to starting the skirting, we also sealed up the holes around the plumbing with foam insulation.
We built out the frame on the one end of the cottage on Saturday. We thought we made good progress.
Saturday night, we celebrated our first night in our new cottage with a bottle of bubbly!
Sunday was another beautiful day! Our first night was not the best - I didn’t sleep well, which was mostly because my body hurt so much from the hard labour! Our main task was to finish off the one part of the skirting.
And for the rest of the day we took care of a few other minor jobs, but tried to enjoy the sunny day.
We wrapped up the afternoon with a few games of all terrain bocce!
To celebrate our big week, we ended the weekend by having a prime rib dinner at the Galiano Inn before heading home on the ferry. This has been our one (indoor) restaurant experience throughout the pandemic. We had an amazing dinner, then headed for home.
