Saturday, October 7, 2023

Back to work in the Guest Cottage

Life got really messed up the last little while.  We had a bunch of plans all set, and then Covid screwed things up... again.  It turns out that the cold that Helena came down with while we were in Crowsnest Pass was actually Covid.  It wasn't long before the whole family came down with it.
Hailey missed out as she had made plans to spend some time out at Nordegg for her 21st birthday.  But when everyone got sick she ended up staying out at the cottage longer than originally planned, to avoid exposure.  Margarit was going to go out to Nordegg with her friend Donna, at the end of September, but that got postponed.  I was going to go down to East Coulee for a few days but Covid changed that too.  By the time the end of September rolled around I was feeling better, and as the cottage was available, I headed out to Nordegg.
Hailey was still out at Nordegg when I arrived on Friday.  I was pretty much over my bought with Covid by that point and I'm certain that I was no longer contagious.  Hailey and I spent a couple of days together before she headed back to the city on October 2nd.
Clearwater County had an open house in Nordegg on Saturday.  They are about to undertake a complete overhaul of the land use bylaws and this was a first introductory session.  Around 80 people showed up, which is significant considering a lot of the cottage people were not around, and the entire population of Nordegg is only a couple hundred.   Hailey and I attended the meeting and got some good information.
After the session was over we took a quick drive up the David Thompson to the Kootenay Plains, as far as the Spreading Creek Burn.  We enjoyed a nice afternoon together and later that evening we made a big batch of tacos for supper.
On Sunday I just puttered around at the cottage.  Hailey made some chicken wire cages to place over the pine seedlings that I planted earlier in the year.  This will hopefully keep the deer from nibbling them all off.  I puttered around in the Guest Cottage.  When I came out on Friday I brought the toilet, the dinette table, two of the dinette chairs, some wood trim, and a bunch of small odds and ends.  I unloaded everything right when I arrived on Friday, to keep it from being damaged in the rain.  But now it was time to organize everything and get to work.
I installed the toilet in the bathroom, and also put some bumpers and a hook on the trap door to the crawlspace.  This will hold the door in the open position when access to below is needed, and prevent the door from denting the wall.  I also installed some more floor tiles between the wood stove and the east wall.  And, we unpacked and put together the dinette table.  Hailey and I BBQ'd some steaks later that night.
On Monday we didn't do a lot.  We had been hoping for some fog so that we could get out and do some photographs, but it never materialized.  Later we took a load of garbage to the dump.  After that Hailey gave me a hand to adjust the gate at the guest cottage.  I originally put it up by myself and just didn't have enough hands to line it up properly.  It's better now, but still needs a little fine tuning at some point.  In the late afternoon Hailey packed up and headed back to the city.  After she left I continued with the installation of yet more floor tiles.  





No comments: