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The painting continues apace. The kitchen is nearly finished, although it still looks like a mess.

The guest bedroom and bathroom (aka “Kyra’s room” while she’s living here) are also ready.

And today the crew started work on the cathedral ceiling in the great room. They erected some scaffolding that’s around 30 feet high. They’re rolling paint onto the ceiling using a 12-foot roller extension rod, to reach the peak of the ceiling 40 feet up. Fun to watch.

Last July we picked up a pair of kayaks from REI. They’ve been sitting in our basement since then, in their original packaging, just waiting for the right day. Well, today was that day. It was 65 degrees, sunny, and we didn’t have much to do this afternoon. We cracked open the packaging and loaded them onto the CR-V.

I should add that since Kyra is living with us, and we don’t want to leave her out of all the fun, we needed some sort of watercraft for her. I didn’t want to buy another kayak– not only are they pretty spendy, but we can’t haul three of them on top of the car. Instead, we picked up a standup paddleboard at Costco. It’s inflatable, which means it’s (1) cheaper, and (2) easier to transport. It came in a gigantic backpack:

It was surprisingly easy to inflate; it took a few minutes at water’s edge and we were ready. We went to Echo Lake this time, because it’s smaller and we hadn’t been on the water yet. Pepper looked like a natural.

Kyra enjoyed her SUP.

Because the wind was blowing pretty steadily, the water was choppy. It made it difficult to actually stand on the standup board, but Kyra managed to get her balance for a few minutes.

The day was beautiful, and it was so nice to take a break from paddling to float on the water and look at the mountains in the distance.

After a few hours on the water, we came back home and rinsed everything off. Our three boats had a chance to dry out in the evening sun.

It was a great day, and I love my “new” kayak. More to come.

Our big painting job is underway. A few days ago, the crew came in and masked the entire house. That means we have tarps and plastic sheeting everywhere.

The ceilings were first. It took the crew about two days to paint all the ceilings except the 40-foot cathedral in the great room. They’re a very light beige– almost white– and when seen next to the existing green walls, that green really stands out.

Notice the green ceilings in the top foreground, versus the new ceilings in the master bedroom in the background. So much better!

The master bedroom and bathroom are pretty much finished, and it’s a dramatic improvement. I’m so thrilled that mint green is gone.

This week, the plan is to work on the great room. It’ll require a scissors truck and scaffolding and a gazillion ladders. Looking forward to it…

About two months ago, Pepper and I decided we’d replace our kitchen countertops. Unlike most of the house, which is littered with enormous windows, the kitchen has a single smallish window. It doesn’t get much light, and for some reason the former owners decided black granite countertops were the way to go. So the kitchen feels like the darkest room in the house.

We picked out a nice white marbled quartz material that we think will really brighten the room. It’ll be almost two months before it’s installed, so we kind of grit our teeth and put up with the black for now.

As we contemplate other changes in the house, we wondered if we should also replace our master bathroom countertop. Because it’s– you guessed it– black granite.

We were up in the Big K, and decided to drop by the countertop place that’s handling the kitchen. We explained what we wanted to do, and the owner said he had some “remnants” which would cost about half their normal price because they were left over from past jobs. We decided we really liked this white quartz with grey streaks in it:

Installing that means we’ll need to add a tile backsplash, so we headed down the street to a tile store and looked at their overwhelming display of tile options.

Wow, they have hundreds of different kinds of tile– this was one of a dozen display cases. It’s hard to know what to choose.

Then there are the sinks. They’re a cool polished chrome, but they always look dirty because you have to constantly wipe them down. Not very practical, and frankly a little strange. So I think we’re going to grab a fun vessel sink like these at Lowe’s:

Given the fact that we had only planned to do the kitchen countertops, suddenly this is becoming another big project. Funny how house things do that…

Here’s a bit of kameraspielen. As the sun was setting, it illuminated the pool table with some really cool light.

Kyra has one of those hilarious inflatable T-rex costumes. She donned it yesterday for a game of pool. It was so funny to watch.

She said it’s really hard to see anything from inside the suit, so Rex didn’t do very well at shooting.

We’re looking forward to wearing it on the jet skis. Stay tuned.

All winter, I’ve been thinking how much fun it would be to sit in our hot tub. I’ve never owned a hot tub, and the one that came with our house has been sitting there, dry and empty, for six months. Mocking me.

I called a local hot tub place about a month ago to see if they could send someone out to help me start it up, make sure everything’s in working order, show me how to mix the chemicals, yada yada. But the guy said he couldn’t help me, because all non-essential businesses are closed in Montana.

Last week, on our bi-weekly trip to Kalispell for shopping, I saw a (different) hot tub store on the road and pulled a quick U-turn. Pepper and I went inside– it was open– and talked to the owner. Apparently he thought his business was essential, because he said it would be no problem to come down and help us out. Or, we could just buy a shiny new hot tub right off his sales floor! After a bit of salesman-ey talk, he finally sort of shrugged and said, “You know, I don’t really need to come down to help you. Just fill it with water, turn it on, and see what happens.”

Brilliant!

If it works, I’ll head back to the oh-so-essential store and get the chemicals I need; if not, then I haven’t paid someone to drive 45 minutes each way (trip charge!) and tell me it’s busted. After coming home, Kyra and I went to work. First we cleaned out the interior, which wasn’t actually all that dirty but had a bit of sandy residue everywhere.

Then I plopped a hose into the tub and cranked up the water. Ahh, fresh well water from 265 feet underground, always at a constant 55 degrees.

It took a while.

Finally, as the water level neared the top of the highest jet, it was time to turn it on.

The jets spurted to life and blew bubbles, just like they should, and I was thrilled. I set the temperature to 100 degrees, put the cover back on top, and walked away. The manual says it takes 18-24 hours to come up to the target temperature.

Unfortunately, when I returned a few hours later, the water was still 55 degrees. After a bit of troubleshooting, I discovered that the main pump motor wasn’t running. I thought it was fine, after it started up initially, but maybe it burned out for some reason. In any case, I called the hot tub place and they said I should bring in the pump so they can take a look. We’ll do that tomorrow.

And hopefully in a couple of days, there will be a Hot tub, part 2 post celebrating our success.

Around here, the weather forecast changes pretty drastically depending on altitude. We have an enormous hill right in our backyard, and there are days when I can look up the hill and see it snowing, or socked in with clouds, while “down below” at our house it’s nice and sunny. NOAA gives forecasts mentioning snow, but only above a certain altitude, and so forth.

The other day I saw a great example of this: a snow line on the Mission Mountains. Notice the distinct line of snow in the trees. Pretty cool!

Pepper and Kyra built a wheelbarrow today. I came across this scene.

Apparently some of the screws were a little tricky…?

“Go big or go home”, they say. Well, we have a lot of wall space in the lounge of our party house, and our 70-inch TV seemed kind of small against it. But really big TVs are expensive– it’s much cheaper to buy a nice projector. So that’s what we did.

Now we can watch movies that literally take most of the wall. The screen is about six feet high and around eleven feet wide (150″ diagonal, if you’re doing the math). It’s a little hard to see during the day, unfortunately, but at night it’s awesome.

Here’s Kyra beside the screen, for scale:

I’m reminded of Weird Al’s famous song “Frank’s 2000-inch TV”, which includes the timeless lyric

The picture’s crystal clear and everything is magnified
Robert De Niro’s mole has got to be ten feet wide…

We pulled up a Robert De Niro movie to test this. It’s Stardust, one of my all-time favorites. Here’s his mole:

Okay, maybe not ten feet wide, but still pretty impressive.

Anyone want to see a movie on the big screen? Come on over!