We have water!
We have lights!
Look at all the beautiful wood. It was soooo worth saving. Although Matt might not agree right at this moment as he is varnishing the ceiling, one of the more tedious and messy tasks.
Drew and I went to Longview this evening to buy some stuff from Lowe's. When we got back we were talking with Matt in "the Room" (as I have taken to calling our little living space. It must be spoken out loud in dark and ominous tones), when we heard a loud squealing coming from the bay (the unheated garage portion of the pole building currently a maze of boxes and stuff waiting to move into the house). Drew and I are all, "what the . . ?" and Matt is all, "I know! I just heard that 10 minutes ago. There is murder going on in the bay. Norah and Audrey have something out there but I can't find what they have." The three of us went out to investigate but came up empty. Drew went home and I was futzing around on the computer when Matt came in from the bay with a stricken look. "It is a RABBIT!!!" he said. I was all, "OMG, OMG, OMG! Where is it? Is it still alive? What do we do?!!" Matt put on a pair of gloves and I got a towel and he eventually cornered it in our recently emptied kitchen sink box. We wrapped it in the towel, took a couple of pics, briefly succumed to its utter cuteness, almost kicked all the cats to the curb and kept the bunny, came to our senses and took it outside into the forest. Hopefully it had a chance to find a hiding place before Norah and Audrey discovered it was gone from the building. When we came back in they were stalking around the bay like a couple of lionesses on the veldt. 
Now it was a small rabbit to be sure but we must give mad props to Norah for this catch. Remember Norah is our tiny dancer, she isn't much bigger than a kitten. It won't be long now before she drags in a freaking raccoon.
When we returned from Los Angeles we discovered that Tom had put the wraps around almost all of the windows! (Is it just me or does he seem to work much faster when I am not around to "help"?) The wood was cut on his sawmill from beams that supported the house on it's old foundation. We then planed it on Uncle Bob's planer and then stained it. FYI, if you are interetested in the stain color, we have been using Minwax Provincial in most of the house with the exception of the upstairs where we are using Driftwood and the beam in the kitchen where we used Puritan Pine. Another note, the horns on top of the windows are a recreation of what was in the house originally. We still have the original trim and are going to be putting it us use wrapping the doors and for baseboards and trim along the wood ceiling edges.
Our cabinet maker, Warren Tilley, started our kitchen install yesterday. It looks fantastic! If you are in Washington and looking for custom cabinetry we can recommend him with highest marks.
He also built our master bathroom vanity. I tried to find an antique to adapt for use here but was unable to come up with anything that was the right size. I did find an antique commode to use in the guest bathroom. I will take a pic of that when it is installed. 
Nanny Goat here was really, really vocal. Perhaps that is why she was tied to a tree out by the road. Far, far away from the house.
On approach looking at the smoke from the Santa Barbara fire with a husk of dead insect in the foreground. It was stuck between the window panes. 
We picked up our rental car at the airport, drove to the North Hollywood park and ride and hopped on the Metro so we could get to 7th and Metro downtown.
Behold the beautiful colors on Matt's dish of black cod.
The most delicious thing I ate on the trip: Watermelon salad with baby watercress, oaxacan string cheese, pedro jimenez reduction, macadamia nuts, marash chile. Sigh. Heaven.
I don't know what to tell you about Campanile. They sat us at the crappiest table in the house. I spent the first hour of dinner wondering what it was about us that made the hostess decided to dump us in a walkway. I settled on two possibilites: 1. Braces are undignified and I look like a pimply faced know-nothing or 2. Our nearly two years in Winlock have rubbed off on us more than we are aware and we ooze country bumpkin. Did I ask to be reseated? I did not. Do I wish I had? Yes. Through dumb luck we ended up at Campanile on Thursday night and Campanile is famous for "Thursday Night Grilled Cheese Sandwiches". It's their thing. We were torn. Do we order something off the regular menu or have a grilled cheese to find out what all the fuss is about. We ended up each getting a version of the grilled cheese. Meh. I had fried green tomatoes as an appetizer and they were delicious - once I got them. See, I received sliced tomatoes with shrimp and when I sent it back, the waiter told me I ordered sliced, not fried. That bugged me. Matt thought his salad was much more exciting than his sandwich. Dessert was great but my overall impression of Campanile was weak.(No pics of the food here. It was too swanky to break out the camera. Matt would have died right there in his chair. The only thing worth shooting would have been the architecture and the dessert: honeycomb, hot fudge, and discs of sponge cake in a tower of tasty).
Friday morning I took Matt back to work and then crossed the hills over to Malibu for a drive down Hwy 1. I stopped at Zuma Beach and took these pictures.
Then I drove up Topanga Canyon, had a late breakfast at Pat's Grill, looped back up to Westlake Village, killed a few hours watching Rudo y Cursi, picked up Matt, drove back to the airport and flew home. We landed with just enough light left to see that the sky was clear. Whew.
I have not wanted to post because I have been in a really bad place and didn't want to share for a multitude of reasons: Some info was too personal, I didn't want to spread the poisonous mood, I lacked the emotional energy get through a real day let alone re-live it by posting on the blog. I intended the blog to be an accurate account of this adventure but you and I will have to settle for an account filled with holes. I guess I will let those posting dry spells speak for themselves.
Not to worry, Matt and I have made it through and will be better for having slogged into and out of the dark places. I know I have made mention to my mood in past posts with the hope that things were turning upward. That was me willing myself out of a bad place and not quite getting out. I have made it out now. It is a huge relief.
We have a goat farm in Winlock (The Blue Rose Dairy) that produces delicious goat cheese. The goats are not always in the field by the road so I don't get to see them every time I do this route. 
In the spirit of past posts highlighting the homemade signs so prevalent around here, I present a warning against human waste. No, I have not visited the website. This sign is an upgrade. For months there was a small stenciled sign tacked to a fence. One day it was gone. The next week it was replaced by this giant sign. Well, giant might be taking it too far. It is maybe 6 or 7 feet wide.
Geese. Mean and Funny rolled into one.
Whatcha doin?
In the "Old News" department, Una is older than dirt and is continuing to age. Check out her gnarly thumbnail! WTF?
Russell and Audrey continue their love affair. . . 
. . . Despite the fact that Russell desperately needs his teeth cleaned. I hope to take care of that this summer.
And then there is Norah. Oh Norah. She is a tiny thing. At the moment she weighs in at 6.7 lbs. and we don't expect her to get much bigger. She is a mighty huntress. Yesterday was a really rainy day and we noticed mouse and shrew carcasses floating everywhere! She is fearless and that worries me greatly. Speaking of fearless, also yesterday, the deer were in the yard and Audrey and Norah decided the deer would make good playthings. They started darting out of the grass at the deer. I wish I had video. You have never seen more confused deer in your life. 
I have been on the lookout for a little medicine cabinet for the guest bathroom for months. I finally found one down in Kalama. (FYI, for any Twilight fans - and they are legion - the high school scenes in the movie were filmed there). Anyway, while the size and shape were perfect, the bright lilac color was not. So I am scraping it off.
Looking upstairs. 
Living room and kitchen looking through to the window in the master bedroom.
This is the guest bedroom. Look how beautiful those board are! We didn't have to replace a single piece of wood in this room.
They are working in stages. This is the dividing line between the guest bedroom/little hall and the living room. The living room is the last room they will finish.
In my yellow room the floors have been stained but not varnished. We did have to replace a couple of boards in this room but not nearly as many as we thought.
All the wood in the house, new and old is fir with the exception of the bathroom floors. The wood in those rooms is pine and was generously donated by friend Jess and Joelle Winters. It was left over from another project and I think it was meant for this purpose. We got 139 square feet from them and used about 135 square feet! 
The nearly completed mud room. We just need to put trim boards along the floor and in some of the corners. The walls are #3 grade fir. Looking at the room you might think that that was the most difficult part. The travertine on the floor was some sort of closeout. We got a screaming deal on it. But! As our tilers were finishing up the laundry room (to my back as I shot this photo) they found a bunch of cracked tiles at the bottom of the pallet so we had to scramble to get more. It took three weeks and I don't really know how or where my supplier found it but more tiles finally arrived. Also cracked! We made do with what we got and when you come to visit I bet you won't be able to tell. 
Cedar walls and ceiling in the master closet looking out into the master bedroom and the laundry room beyond.
Here are some shots of the master bathroom. The ceiling is the same wood as the mudroom and we used slate around the tub. We looked at all kind of tile options for the tub and shower and the floors in the mud room and laundry room. Real stone was cost prohibitive but ceramic/porcelain reproductions didn't feel authentic enough for this house. I just kept on searching and re-thinking the look I wanted until I got real stone at a price I could live with. Originally I wanted stones that were in the oatmeal color family for everything. I really couldn't have ended up farther away than that with the bathroom walls but we LOVE the slate!
Making sure we had a deck of usable size has turned out the be the best design decision we have made so far. Sitting on the deck watching the deer is a dream. When the first design of the house was done the deck was only 6' wide. We punched it out another 4'. It made a huge difference in the way the space can be used.
