Wednesday, March 23, 2016

Cold family weekend

I took Sophie and lil Neil up with me to the cottage this weekend. Bonnie stayed home with Anna, who had several Cleveland Orchestra Children's Chorus performances on Saturday. Bonnie and Anna caught the 8:00 am ferry Sunday morning so we could spend the day together before I headed back home. Bon and the kids then would stay for the week since they had Spring Break from school.

Neil and Soph have not been to the island since September 2015, so they were super excited to see their rooms and get re-acquainted with the cottage. Friday night, we had a "Play-Doh" contest, watched movies and hung-out.

Play-Doh content

Saturday morning, it was freezing outside at a brisk 35 deg and windy! My only mission was to build some heavy-duty deck barstools. I found some great looking plans online, bought the wood and a new pocket-hole jig. The first one took about 4 hours, since I was learning the system and wow, it was cold.

Deck bar stool

I started another stool just to see how far I could get. I managed to finish one more before dinner time. By Sunday, early afternoon, I had all three completed.

Ready for a margarita

Gas grill...

I needed to try to salvage our gas grill again! It had seen many, many years of action and actually looked better that it worked. The stainless steel lid was in great shape but the insides were a total mess, completely corroded and would not distribute the gas properly. I believe I extended its life last summer by trying to re-build the innards. This time, "no mas". Time for trash pick-up back home. So yes, I will need to get a new grill for the cottage ASAP.

Longing for warmer weather.

Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Opening weekend 2016

After not being on the island for almost 4 months, I made it to the island for a solo trip on Friday, March 11th to open-up for the season! Because of the mild winter, this was 3 weeks sooner than last year. All good news. Furnace, well pump and all plumbing worked fine. Very happy!

Great room

While checking out the property, I noticed a mysterious deck installed bottle-opener. Still not sure who provided this little gem, but it will get much use very soon. I suspect the KI "hood" neighbors have something to do with this, but none would own up to this surprise.

Surprise - bottle opener

Saturday evening, being a very chilly night ~40 deg, it was time to build a fire and have a few beers.

Time to relax

Not much island news to share. Kinda quiet being so early in the season. Looking forward to 2016!