5 Year Anniversary Blog - September 7

Five years! What a crazy five years it has been! Enjoy this short walk down memory lane and the photos that follow.

Best I recall: July 31st 2006 I read in the paper of a piece of property that was 'For Sale' in Wisconsin. After having lost out on several other properties with my Dad, I decided to go this one on my own. On August 12, Carlo and I visited the property which would soon be known as O'Wich.- Our Wisconsin Cabin Hideaway. We arrived around 9:00 am and wandered around. We knew this was the place from photos the seller had sent us. We were enjoying the quiet and peacefulness and even at that moment, it felt like 'we belonged'. As we wandered around we noticed what appeared to be an outhouse off to the side, but I also noticed a small window on the back wall of the cabin. I said "if that window is a bathroom, we're buying this place!" The sellers arrived and we ended up staying there for nearly 6 hours looking around and chatting. We stopped at Jackie and Tom's on the way home and showed them and Rick the video and photos we took. After we left, we continued talking about the property on the drive home and decided to call the sellers with an offer as we exited the highway. Never expecting a call back from them that same evening, I got the call that they accepted our offer as I was telling my Dad about the day and showing him the photos. "Looks like we got us a cabin!"
The weeks leading up to the closing were not without an abundance of stress; My Dad was suffering with water accumulation in his lungs, I had a mortgage broker that was (to be mildly nice) an idiot, then I got a bad flu. Finally September 7th rolled around and we went to the closing. Due to our schedules, we couldn't even get to the cabin that day and Dad and I first visited O'Wich on September 20th. Carlo's first visit was the weekend of the 30th along with Jackie, Tom, Alex and Zoe.
In the last five years, there isn't a spot of the cabin that hasn't been addressed - redressed - or touched! We found out the sellers and their friends were not as handy or smart as one would hope they were. The place was left full of their unwanted garbage - equaling over 1 ton in weight and hundreds of dollars for us to deliver to the dump. The converter for the furnace to go from gas to propane was installed upside down (propane to gas) and if it weren't for the air leaks and drafts of the cabin, we would be dead, along with Rick and Katie who visited the weekend the furnace went out. The two birds that somehow got in were not so lucky.
The sellers built an addition to use as the kitchen but we made it a bedroom and added a door for interior access. We rebuilt the front porch and back deck and added screen rooms to both. We found out the vanity they left in the bathroom had no plumbing. The shower was ugly, the toilet was too low and too close to the wall, the bathroom walls weren't finished and there was a home-made septic receptacle. We remodeled and installed a holding tank, professionally, with the blessing of the DNR - after a very lengthy and expensive courtship!
The Titanic style ceiling fans were replaced along with the kitchen counters, dining room table, living room furniture, TV and TV stand. We added a shed and satellite. O'Wich survived the 50 Year, 100 Year and several other floods in the last five years. The biggest flood was in September 2010. This is one confusing calendar!
There has been tiling and painting and staining and lots of nailing. There has been many blades of grass cut, killing of many mice and lots of blood, sweat and tears...not to mention the crazy electric.
We changed out the propane tank, cut trees, planted trees and lost trees. We have critters and bugs and birds and dogs...not dogs, but deer; which always look like dogs at first glance! There's a hawk, rumor of an eagle, cranes and turkeys. There are mischievous raccoons and hoarding chipmunks. How do they get those acorns in through those tiny openings?
O'Wich boasts gentle breezes, warm sun, still nights, beautiful moons, many stars, the beauty of a fresh snowfall and the soothing drops of rain. I am happy with what we've accomplished and what we've enjoyed in the last five years. We are truly a-l-m-o-s-t finished with the sprucing up, restoring and building of O'Wich. I look forward to the only attention needed will be to the grass and the cobwebs!
Happy Anniversary O'Wich! We have had an incredible five years!

 

 

P.S. I would love to include more photos but this site just sucks the time out of my day! You'll just have to plan a visit!!!
But schedule a time when the water is down, unless you have a boat!

August 26, 2011

Good thing the job got done yesterday, since the river is up today. I took some photos for the O'Wich 5 Year Anniversary Blog. Five years - isn't that wood? Too bad it's not stone. Let me just say fireplace walls and fire pit and looking forward to the stoning completion!
The morning air is cool - my coffee is hot and I am watching a hawk fly though the trees as the cranes seem to be talking to the rising sun. Geez, they are loud! I cleaned up - packed up and waited for yesterdays job to get finished. At 9:45 my wait was over and Matt was gone by noon. I hit the road shortly after he left and am looking forward to the next couple of three day weekends that are coming up in September. I really hope that we get done the things that we have planned!

August 25, 2011

What a day! I had slept almost 12 hours and got up around 5:00 am. While enjoying my morning coffee, I spotted a doe and her fawns enjoying the shrubbery in the back. Yet again, I thought they were dogs, until my eyes focused! They stayed for quite a long time and I was able to get my camera and take some pictures without scaring them away.

Once they were gone, I wondered if the job was going to start. At 7:30 my wondering was over, when the excavator and the machinery operator arrived. By 8:00 they downed a tree, dug the hole for the tank and pumped out the water that was seeping up through the sand.

The rest of the crew arrived and Matt worked outside while Steve did the inside work. The kitchen sink was redone and he roughed in the bathroom sink.

I am beyond excited to finally be so close to having a sink in the bathroom, as I'm sure my guests will be when they don't have to use the kitchen sink! Steve also worked in the crawl space and reworked all the PVC pipes. The tank arrived at 8:30 and the driver had the tank in and was gone by 9:30. They dug a trench to lay the drain piping and then they work came to a giant halt.

At the time, I didn't know they were expecting the inspector - but once that was explained, and they had inspected the work, they were gone and the work started up again. The job was given two-thumbs up and a giant blessing from the county! The lawn was tortured by the machinery and now we can add another chore to our outside To-Do list when the soils settles back into place.

The next project they tackled was the removal of the original home-made holding tank. It was truly home-made. They had used an old propane tank and we are lucky it even (sort of) worked!

By 3:15 their trucks were loaded and they were pulling away. A new lid for the tank and some concrete work will finish the job tomorrow. I still cannot believe it is done. With all the problems we had with the DNR and permits and the height of the river, I never thought it would get done - and it took over a year and a half to boot! We are relieved in more ways than one! That's a pretty $hitty joke - bam...one bad pun after another!
I visited with Betty for a bit and then cleaned up when I got back. I put the stuff back under the sink and cleaned up the utility room and bathroom.

I hung a drop table in the kitchen to have additional counter space.

I was happy to have some food in the freezer to defrost, since I was too pooped to go out.
Although I didn't do anything today except walk back and forth and snap photos, I am exhausted! Time for TV and sleep...or maybe both!

August 24, 2011

I was told this morning that the water level was probably at its lowest and the septic going in tomorrow looked good. So I got everything into the car and hit the road around 12:30 pm. I unloaded the car, got stung not once, not twice, but three times by a wasp. Most likely the same wasp, but I was so busy jumping around and screaming that I didn't think to see if there was more than one. But if I could explain instant pain in one word, it would be "OUCH".
Jim the excavator arrived, hauling in the most gigantic piece of equipment. This thing is gonna cause some serious damage to the ground.

I didn't stay up too late - the wasp stings were freaking me out and I was hoping to just not die. The sting on my arm was the worse. Glad I knew it was a wasp bite, because it felt like something people describe as the left arm sensation of a heart attack!