My One and Only Princess Diary

I am such a princess!

Why just last week I was complaining to Jim that we didn't have enough decent saw horses and...voila! He got out his tools and...now have a total of four new heavy duty saw horses to help us with our many house building tasks.

We're using two small saw horses to hold the planer and two new large ones
to hold all the pieces of planed cedar we'll be using as window trim.

It looks easy but there was a lot of pulling and pushing as a team to get each board through.  

As the princess, I also told Jim months ago that if he wasn't able to design a bathroom with a six foot tub in it that I didn't want a tub at all - a nice shower stall would be just fine instead of a five foot tub. Well...he managed to design a perfect place for 'my' six foot bathtub!  Then he set about to make it the most well insulated tub imaginable for me.

The tub...out of the way in its temporary cubby hole.

Jim's used the offcuts from our ICF styrofoam blocks to insulate the tub.  There were bags and bags of cuttings to use up.

Tools of his trade as insulator extraordinaire. 

It took six tubes of heavy duty adhesive glue to insulate the whole tub.
Those are our sail bags hanging on hooks out of the way.

This was truly a labour of love on Jim's part.

You can see what a great job he did of smoothing and shaving off all the rough parts.
 Looks like a styrofoam cooler on steroids.

A little fine tuning to make it fit.

Ta Daa! Doesn't that fit well!  I can hardly wait for my first bath!  Now we just have to finish the rest of the bathroom.

I may joke about being a princess but Jim can be quite a prince himself.  For example...When he finished building our beautiful interior staircase he gave ME the honour of being the first one to climb up them.

I had a tear in my eye when I made the inaugural climb up our staircase. 

On any given day I usually work with Jim until around 6:00 then I head to the trailer to make supper.  He always keeps working while I'm cooking, only stopping when I call him to come for food. After an hour long dinner break I do the dishes in my outdoor sink, with water I've heated in my outdoor kettle, draining into a slop bucket. (I can't seem to adjust to making simple meals so I have a LOT of dishes to do. ) One day soon...I'll have indoor running hot water.

While I'm outside doing dishes at the outdoor sink, Jim's often back in the house working on something, sometimes til 10:00 p.m. when I drag him in.

Taken from the trailer while I'm doing dishes. There might not be much light but he's cleaning up anyway.

When Jim finished building our temporary front door he literally picked me up and carried me over the threshold of our new home.  A first after all these years. How about that!

You see...even after almost 29 years together there can still be a little romance! Not much room for any princesses, though.

Until next time....

Tricia and Jim Bowen
tandjbowen13@gmail.com