Having just returned from a nice leave of absence from the Shack that took me and the family to Minnesota, I have decided it is high time I continued reviewing the year before the year is over.
When I left off, we had just acquired this new shack, and on the very first day we owned it, it was in fact dubbed "the Shack". At the time, this shack was not looking very healthy. It was dirty, rather foul-smelling, and somewhat dangerous to walk in... the basement was also, for lack of a better word, quite dank (some things never change, to this day we call it "the dank"). I remember thinking that Dad would have to pull off a miracle to make this thing habitable, and maybe borderline respectable. And although I, like many others my age, hate to admit that my parents can do anything right, I must say he did indeed pull off that miracle. He installed brand-new carpet in the upstairs, which made me feel much more comfortable about living up there. He also sectioned off the large living-dining area into two smaller rooms, one of which became Mom and Dad's "sleep-in closet", the other becoming our (somewhat cramped) living/dining room. Not much was done to the dank... it wasn't worth trying to make it into anything but storage space. However, Dad did paint over the walls in the one bedroom that is down there. They had been a lovely orange and purple flame pattern, with permanent marker writing all over them, a lot of which was rather rude. You can still see some of this original pattern and these scrawlings through the light yellow paint that now covers those walls. This room is the one that we have our fussball table in, and also one that I use as a photography studio from time to time - when I can handle the dankness.
Advancements were also made in the world of plumbing - the upstairs bathroom sink faucet lacked a handle, so instead of buying a new one, Dad decided to be thrifty. I can't remember exactly what the tool is called, but it looks somewhat like a fancy pair of pliers that is now affixed to the upstairs sink, functioning as its handle. There is no temperature indication - one must simply remember that left is hot and right is cold. And as if that were not enough bathroom-innovation, Dad did something possibly even more amazing, or weird, depending on how you look at it. He took the rather unappealing end of the kitchen, which may have been a pantry at one point, but had the proper fixings for some plumbing, and made that rather small space (about 2 feet by 6 feet or so...) and made it into a bathroom! It is, I suppose, technically a half-bathroom, complete with dual flush toilet and large laundry sink... and a door! There are a couple things that some may not consider to be features, however. The walls are made out of hardboard, and are no more than 1/8" thick. Though they are entirely opaque, creating enough of a physical barrier that you feel you have some privacy, sounds escape (into the kitchen, no less) very, very easily. And if that's not enough to make you feel somewhat exposed, there is, in fact, a rectangular hole in the wall, right by the sink. There is a good reason for this hole - the light switch for the kitchen is in fact placed inside the bathroom! Therefore, the hole is entirely necessary, and placed such that nobody can really see anything from outside except for maybe the back end of the sink, but it's still somewhat unnerving, especially because it has to be large enough for people to stick their hands in there! Mainly for this reason, this bathroom is referred to as "the creepy bathroom".
Now, while all these improvements were being done, we were still not entirely sure whether or not we were actually going to end up living in this shack. This was basically being done "just in case", or for the purposes of renting the Shack out short-term (we in fact did rent it out for a month). Of course, I was still opposed to the whole idea of having to live in this thing, but things slowly fell into place over the spring months of 2009, and before we knew it, we had sold our wonderful new house and were preparing to move into the Shack.
Moving in itself was quite an adventure. One of the greater logistical challenges was the fact that it was raining quite heavily on our one main moving-day, so many tarps were used in many ways in efforts to keep our stuff dry. The other problem was where to put everything... even though we still had the porch and shed in those days, the Shack was not nearly as large as our previous house. A lot of our stuff ended up in the shop, and has remained there. The problem with that at the time was the fact that the shop was not nearly finished, and things needed to be carefully placed under the ramshackle roof so that they wouldn't get wet. Otherwise, it was just a matter of trying to fit everything else in. I remember having several people helping carry things into the porch, where Mom would either direct them to the appropriate place for what they had, or take the things herself and carefully place them somewhere in the porch. Her Zerbe instincts helped us find a place for everything. At the end of that day, which was July 29th, 2009 in case you were wondering, we celebrated our first day/night of living in the Shack by cramming 10 people into the aforementioned living/dining area and ordering pizza. Somehow this all feels like a long time ago now... has the Shack perhaps become normal reality in my mind? Oh boy.
Look out for part 3 of the year in review: coming soon! In it I plan to discuss the parallel universe in the backyard - aka the building of the shop!
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