Mildew, Rust, Shingles and Escaping to Idaho

Last week marked the seventh month

we've been living in our trailer.

And truthfully, it's mostly okay.
But I'd be a fibber if I told you it's any better than that.
We are warm, our bed is comfortable, we can bathe and cook.
However...
I had a meltdown last Sunday morning when I pulled one of my dresses
 from my tiny closet and discovered it had mildew on it.
I very much like my skirts and dresses and the one dress coat I kept out of storage.
It was upsetting.
The trailer cools down quite a bit at night while we sleep -
especially the closets, cabinets and bulkhead that are closed off
with their respective doors.
When we turn on the heater in the morning, everything warms up quickly
causing condensation to accumulate and drip down the windows and walls.
I'd been keeping the doors of the closets and bulkhead opened to help those
compartments dry out during the day, but either I didn't
start doing that soon enough or it's simply not enough.
I even discovered mildew on the little fabric headboard of our bed
where the mattress meets it. Now when I make the bed every morning,
I turn the bedding at the foot of the bed back over the top, tuck it under the sides,
 put the top comforter on, and then pull the mattress away from
the headboard. Before we crawl into bed for the night, we push the mattress
back into it's proper position, pull the bedding at the foot
 down and tuck it under the foot of the mattress as it should be.
Making the bed in this little trailer was a pain before having to do that.
And then there are my cast iron skillets.
I love 'em.
One of them belonged to my great-grandmother.
It's disconcerting to  find rust spots from the condensation on them.
Speaking of my skillets, if I so much as fry an egg and make toast,
I've got a relative disaster in the 'kitchen' due to its smallness.
And I miss hosting our big family dinners.
I miss my boots and shoes and books and kitchen gadgets
and I miss our 'Papa Bear Chair'.
But mostly...
it's okay.
Really,
it is.

Enough of that.
I've got good stuff to report this week.

Monday:

Dean put the back door in.
I sure wish I had a picture for you, but I don't.
I swept the entire upstairs and it made me happy to "clean" our little house and
know that it wouldn't be snowed in or rained in anymore.
We finished the header flashing on all the windows, did a little trimming
on some roof details and barge rafters and some other miscellaneous things like that.

Tuesday:

Dean went Home Teaching for the evening.
When he got home, he hung the door that goes from the house into the garage.


Wednesday:

My notes say that I did some shopping at Home Depot,
but I cannot recall what I purchased.
Dean got up on the roof when he got home from work and straightened
out the north-west barge rafter - he said
it was as crooked as a dog's hind leg.
My Granny'd be right proud to hear him talk like that!

Thursday:

Dean stayed home from his 9 to 5 and worked here all day.
He got all the gable bracing built, prepped the double garage door opening for
the door installation, sheathed the top of the covered front porch to close
off the attic space, planned the plumbing vents locations and cut
the openings for them and put up a missing steel strap on a garage window opening.
And...

our heating and air guys showed up to put in the duct and platform
for our evaporative cooler.

That's right,
you heard me.
I said 'swamp cooler'.
The boys said they hadn't done one of those in about four years.
We're doing radiant floor heating, so we have no ducts.
We looked into minisplits, but we didn't like the idea of having
those apparatuses protruding from our walls or ceilings.
So, swamp cooler it is!
Besides, it's more economical too.
Thursday evening we cleaned up, put all the tools away and headed to
Market Street Grill in Cottonwood Heights for dinner with our investment group.
It was a very pleasant diversion.

Friday:

SHINGLES!
Oh, Happy Day.

They got much of the back of the house done.
It's a bit of a complicated roof
(it was a booger to frame and sheath)
so they will probably not finish til mid week this coming week.
After much anxiety, I'm happy to say that
I love the Tamko Heritage Premium "Weathered Wood" shingles I chose.
Glad that's behind me.

And then came our last, best and longest work day of the week:

S
A
T
U
R
D
A
Y

And we, believe it or not,
DID'NT WORK!
Nope.
We
PLAYED!

We loaded up the sleds and headed to our
'home away from home',
Thunder Mountain.
JoTan, Mr & Me.
The four of us, two of our sleds and JoTan's two sleds.

The marker of the entrance to Our Private Idaho.

Our wood pile is our snow indicator - not a whole lot of snow up there right now.

Dean swore he and Tan weren't gonna do a lot of  "hot doggin'", but 

they sure had a good time tearin' up the snow and makin' tracks in the meadow.

We mostly did trail ridin', though. We went several miles up Wyoming Trail.

We figure we were at about nine thousand feet.

It's so beautiful and peaceful up there...

when you turn the machines off, anyway.

This is my favorite part of the trail - it's like a tunnel through the snowy forest.
So very lovely.

It was good to get out and play and we had a good time despite a few problems
with my sled and Jossi's sled stalling and the four-wheel drive going out on our truck
and the sled trailer jack-knifing on the icy road when we got off the main road and
before we got to the parking area at the base of Thunder Mountain Road.
Yeah.
It was quite the adventure.
We got home and were pretty wiped out,
but still managed to get out and buy a bathtub for the
basement bathroom.

That's all for this week.
And despite my whining about trailer living,
we are still smiling, still happy and still very thankful
and excited about
Our Retro Bungalow.

Good night and God bless.