The Great Wall

Okay...so it's not really the The Great Wall of China, but some days it feels like it could be.

I rationalize to myself that taking on any project that is new to someone, that a person has questionable skills to complete, that sends a person running to books and the internet every couple of hours will naturally seem daunting. It's normal. This rationalization is fine until it's me that I have to apply it to.

I am referring to our project to build a partition wall in the studio. Nothing fancy. A wall to separate a guest bedroom and the office. Seemed simple when we starting talking about it. As with so many "simple" things, as we starting getting down to actually planning the specifics "simple" translated to "oh my gosh, what have we gotten ourselves into".

First there was the design. My lovely Mark is a master of aesthetics. I gravitate towards simplicity, ease and function. Turns out, the designs in each of our minds were not the same. Surprise!

However...we've moved beyond that. We're sticking with a simple wall, right down the middle.

Then there was the transportation issue.
How would we get supplies and materials from Hilo to Volcano? Since the truck was on hold, the Subaru was put to the task. Unfortunately, little Subi just wasn't up to the task and, basically, crapped itself.
So...the truck moved up in schedule.
However, since we are on an island and apparently people going to the Hilo dealership only want double cabs we needed to order from Oahu. So, more delay.
[On a side note, though, the Oahu Toyota office was great!]
Subi got a pricey stay at the Hilo Subaru spa, and now seems to have all its vital signs looking good.
The truck arrived on July 3. Yay!!! I LOVE the truck. What a fine vehicle. This answer to my dreams is a silver Toyota Tacoma 4WD V6 TRD Off Road... of course. :)

Planning can continue.

Then there was the question of the bathroom.
This is another item I put into the "country living" category. There are some things I just hadn't thought about before.
We needed to assess the slope between the bathroom location (more specifically, toilet location) and the cesspool. Basic concept: Poo needs to run down hill. More to the point, we need to have a plumber assess this since we are wise enough to know that this is way beyond our current location on the learning curve.

Ah, to find a plumber...** Asking around (the only way to do anything here) I got the name of two plumbers. Amazingly, one called me back! After some delay (a term I prefer to affectionately call island speed) the plumber, Randy, came and deemed our toilet location acceptable.

Moving on to lumber.
This was remarkably easy. A lumber list created by yours truly (hope it's accurate). A call to Home Depot with some faxing of forms saying I won't sue if the lumber gets dropped on my toe. Tuesday morning a friendly guy shows up with a stack of wood and even takes it all the way up the driveway to the studio.

We've ordered a fabulous French-style door from Depot. It may be here before we are collecting social security.

The pounding should begin Saturday morning.
The target is to get some sort of vertical structure up before Mom arrives in August. It may even have insulation and electricity. But, I'm getting ahead of myself. We've only started to investigate these things.

I see more learning in my future...



**Note: Building is in a major boom here and skilled trades people are in short supply. This makes finding plumbers, electricians, etc rather difficult.