Christmas Day

So, my computer crashed just before Christmas and the hard drive was toast, so I lost a ton of stuff, but thank God for iCloud and Google Archive that saved many of my photos and videos.  I've been able to rescue maybe 50% of what I lost.  Better than nothing.  Blogging has been minimal, but we're back at it.

So how do you spend Christmas Day in Hawaii?  At the beach!!!  Here are some photos of our day ending with a sunset.  Enjoy.

setting up our spot

Daniel & Tony (left) playing Marcus & Dominic (right). Lots of beach volleyball that day.

Mike and Reegan enjoying a father/daughter moment.

Spokane Welches

Hawaii Welches

The whole gang at the Harbor for apps & drinks

And as the sun sets in the west, our Christmas Day is ended.

Dec 18

So, we've been told to put the house on hold and relax for the holidays.  And we took some time out for a cultural excursion to Marilyn's hotel, the Mauna Kea, to greet the sunrise and bless the canoe's at the Mauna Kea Canoe Club at the hotel.  Now nothing can get blessed unless it has a name, so all the canoes had to be named.  The Mauna Kea is the flagship hotel for the Big Island.

Greyden, who is in charge of cultural affairs at the hotel, welcomed us to face east and greet

the sunrise.  He sang a traditional Hawaiian song. Greydon is singing a sunrise Hawaiian song
that he wrote himself welcoming the day.  

Hawaiian Reverend Billy Mitchell came to bless the canoes with leaves dipped in ocean water. And of course he performed the blessing in Hawaiian with part of this chant below.

It was all very impressive and respectful, like going to church, but Billy told some good humorous stories as well.

And then, of course, the boys had to test them out.  They go out into the waves and catch
the surf on the way in only in a canoe instead of a board.

Dec 17

Well, it was a frantic month, but just before Michael and his family came for Christmas, we got hot water, power, and the appliances in.  The house was a mess, but we put it into some semblance of order and here is the result in photos.

The guest bathroom more or less in working order.  Notice the bucket for garbage.  We have no
garbage cans yet.

The beautiful Koa pedestal counter that Gary, our cabinet maker made for the powder room.

Still no mirror.

This is where the kids are sleeping - on air beds.  Nice curtains, eh?

Mike and Larissa's bedroom.  Another aero bed and moving blanket curtains,  Kind of like the early

days at the lake.

Our first dinner at the house.  Daniel has been quite proficient at doing card tricks, so he has everybody

mesmerized.

Our bedroom.  Still not put together but we don't have an aero bed.  We made sure we got one - at

Sears of course.

The hutch looks like it was made for this place.  Fits perfectly.

And of course, we got the tree up.  Yes, it's fake.  We're getting old and trees here are very expensive.

Of course we still have a lot of this going on.  Slowly but surely.  

Dec 10

So, with Michael and his family coming tomorrow, we've been frantically trying to get things done.   It's hard because of the plumbers and the electricians.  They have a lot of jobs on the island and they fit us in when they can.  It would be easy for them to give us a list and then we could go buy everything and do it all in one fell swoop, but the electrician was waiting on the countertop guy; the countertop guy was waiting on the cabinet guy, the plumber was waiting on the cabinet guy; and we were waiting on everybody.  But hopefully tomorrow the electrician will be done.  The countertop guy is finished and so we wait on the plumber for water.  Everything is in place for him.  Just show up because we move in tomorrow night.  We've been "teased" a lot.  Like the plumber came, did a lot of work, then we didn't see him again.  Normally it wouldn't matter, but because Michael decided to come early, everything has been moved up.  And we are at their mercy.  We have enough electricity, now for some water.  So here are some recent shots.

Crissie with Gary Aguirre, our cabinet guy.

This is why he's good.

And here it is together.  We still have to get cabinet and drawer handles.

Here's Rogelio (left) & Leonardo (right) working on the hearth.

Rogelio did all our countertops.  Great guy.

Here it is after set up with the stove.

Putting up the chimney pipe and caulking the rain cap.  Nice that it's a one level house with
a low pitched roof.  No snow or ice here.

Waiting on the plumber for the sink, dishwasher, and water to the fridge.  No, we can't do any of it.  State law.

Best way to do the doors.  Stand them up and hook em together. Should be done in two more days. Tony did one side

and I did the other.  Got two coats in today.  So some light sanding and one more coat and we should be done, but I'll be 

working alone since Tony has to go to work.  He can't wait for retirement.

So that's where we are right now.  Crissie is opening boxes and we have beds set up.  So with or without water we'll be sleeping there tomorrow night.

End of Nov. Update

It's been a while since I've blogged but that doesn't mean we haven't been doing anything.  The other week we went to Hilo Sears and picked up all our appliances.  They are in the house but not set up.  We have finished all the floor but were two boxes short, roughly 39 square feet (the master bedroom closet), but luckily we ordered it out of Windsor Plywood in Spokane and Michael and his family will bring it as extra baggage when they come for Christmas.  Yes, Michael and his family will be here! We warned them the house might not be finished but Mike reminded us about living at the lake when we had dock boards for shelves and a laundry tub for a sink.  There's no way you can control your kids after the age of 13.  So we bought some Aero beds.  Let's hope we have the toilets in by then.  You are actually not supposed to live in your house until you get a final inspection, but we'll beg forgiveness.

Our countertops should be coming in next week and we are going to buy all our lights so the electrician can put them in.  It could be a busy next two weeks if the plumber and electrician can fit us in.  They haven't been fully paid, so here's hoping they want a little Christmas cash.

We also planted another tree - an avocado and we bought a big leafed tree that gives the nuts that they make leis out of.  Oh and Marilyn and Tony gave us a crepe myrtle tree that was growing too close to their house.  Fruit, nuts, and shade - what more does one want?  Well one thing is to find all my tools because Crissie and I did a poor job of packing.  We did not make a master list of what's in every box.  True we have most boxes labeled but I was missing some important tools I need, so today we started moving things out of the garage and in rooms where the plumber and electrician and countertop guy can work around.  As I said most boxes were marked but a lot of stuff was wrapped by the movers, so we had to open it to see what it was.

I thought for sure my chop saw blade, orbital sander, multifunction tool, dremel, and other stuff I put in a plastic bin, but we checked all of them and found nothing.  Finally we found some unmarked boxes and hit the mother load!  Of course I had packed things separately and not together, so as we opened each box to find something it was like Christmas.  I even found my baseball glove and the framed green shag carpet from 17th.!  Now I'm happy.  Tomorrow we make some shelves to put the stuff on and next week we'll start on the doors.

Here's some pics of what everything looks like now.

The Avocado.  Okay give it 3 years, Marilyn says. Pono is guarding the tree.

Crissie putting on the finishing touches.

Tony & Marilyn digging the hole and fertilizing

The garage has more room

Laundry room ready to go

Guest bathroom ready.  I'll be trimming the window tomorrow.,

Kitchen area with appliances near the window and bathroom window trim ready on the sawhorses.

Living room.  We are trying to keep the floor clean with plastic and cardboard.

Front entry looks good.

Our bedroom.  Bathroom on the left.  Closet on the right.

I added more grout to the shower.  All that's left is caulk & sealant.

So now you're up to date.  Weather has been a bit wet the last few days.  Good for our plantings.
Got cold - down to 60.  Are we becoming acclimatized?  It's been a year without winter.  We had a nice Thanksgiving with Tony's family.  Hope yours was good too.  Another unmarked box bonus - outdoor Christmas lights.  Hopefully we can hang them up.

The Tale of the Shower

Before we get to the tale of tiling the shower, let's see what else we have done to get ready for Michael and his family to visit for Christmas (Dec 11-27).  The most important thing is we bought 3 aero beds.  We are hoping we get water in the house by then, but as we were deciding what to do with our shower, we continued on with the floor and did some outside things as well.

Marilyn and Crissie went to the plant sale last Saturday to get an avocado tree.  Instead they came back with an orange and a tangerine tree.  They were out of avocados. So with Marilyn's Meyer Lemon tree and our orange trees, we have citrus pretty well covered.  And yes, they bloom and ripen during the time we are here.

Marilyn loves planting trees and she has a fine assistant digging so while we tiled, they planted.

The floor got a big boost as we finished the bedroom and started on the living room/kitchen (open concept)

First bedroom done

We bought a piece of granite to fill in under the wood stove and along the walls.  Should look good.

Just another gorgeous day in Waimea.  That's Mauna Kea in the background.

Marilyn, Luca, Marcus, and Tony relaxing on our Lanai.  Oh and Pono, the dog.

And now the tale of the shower.  It's an Ugly Duckling story.  Milton and Agnes came over last Sunday to supervise and advise on the tiling of the shower.  We had the wrong tile and needed porcelain, so when Marilyn and Crissie went to the plant sale, they stopped at home depot to pick up nehtw tile.  Milton approved so off we went.  What I thought might take one or two days, ended up to be a six day project that could have had a disastrous outcome.  So like the ugly duckling, ours had a happy ending too. I'll tell it to you with the pictures.

Now I'm not a professional tiler and have done some but never a shower and going up walls, but we started in the middle of the back wall using screws and washers to hold the tile in place while the thin set dried.  Looks like a good beginning but...

We had two problems - how to trim the niche and how to trim the window.  There was no bullnose to match the large tiles, So Crissie bought some bullnose to match but it was thinner than the big tile, so we would have to build it out somehow and as you can see the corners would have to be mitered at 45 degrees.  We mocked it up to see how it would look and proceeded to throw up.  How would we hide the edges of the main tile?

Then the answer came to us.  Why bother to hide it.  Take all that "fake" bullnose back and just butt up the tiles and sand the edges and they'll look fine.  We did have to take some down, thankfully it hadn't dried yet and pretty much solved the problem.

So we just went around the window and niche and it worked fine.  The window is a little off center, so that's why you see the two small pieces on the left of it to maintain the vertical line.

And voila!  Here is our "swan" shower grouted and ready for fixtures.

I don't think I ever want to tile again.  I'm going back to the floor, it's a lot easier.

Tile Prep & Floor

1. We planted an Hibiscus at the end of our fence rail after the new podocarpus to give a little flowering plant to our driveway entrance.

2.  I found out that after putting the wonder board on the shower stall for tiling that it needs to be painted with a waterproof membrane called Red Gard which goes on pink and turns red when it dries.  It needed two coats.

3. We plan on tiling the shower on Sunday with Milton as supervisor.  Milton is Marilyn's father if you just joined the blog.  Now we're wondering if the shower tile which is the same as the floor tile will be overkill in the bathroom.  I'm okay with it since we did buy some different accent tile but Tony (who is building his house vicariously with us) thinks it's over kill.  We'll have a translucent shower door and the pan is not tiled but a prefab.  Any suggestion from the experts out there?


 3. We started to lay the vinyl floor and decided to do a practice run on the guest bedroom.  There is a learning curve but we quickly figured it out and working as a team with Tony doing the cutting, me on the floor putting it together, and Crissie feeding us the vinyl planks we got 3/4s of the room done in an hour.  We finished today and it looks great.  So we decided to for it and start the kitchen  and living area since we think we have it down.  Tony is the cutter, Crissie is the feeder/gopher, and I'm the assembler.  Works pretty good.

4. We opened the wood stove and put it where we planned it to go.  Our countertop guy sold us a big remnant slab which he will cut and put an edge on that we will use for the hearth.  He'll also cut two wall pieces in the corner where the stove is.

We're moving along.

Wonderboard is up and waterproofed and ready for tiling.

Practicing flooring in the bedroom

My main cutman

Bedroom finished

Wood stove nearly in place.  Notice the lines closest to the stove.  Those are the ones that the
granite slab will fit into.  Then about 18 inches up from the floor and along the back walls, the rest of
the granite will go.  It's a 5x5 foot slab with the front corner cut off as you can see.  Should look great.

Working on the main living area. Yes, I'm wearing knee pads.