A Little Alchemy Help Please?

We made the decision to rebuild a cabin, found a terrific contractor, and took the financial hit on the well (but at least we have a GREAT well).  We've scrambled to find the money, sold off things we'd held for over a decade, and are doing all we can to live simply now, storing up our financial resources for this project.  I've been "living the cabin" for months, wandering through the floorplans, thinking through materials and colors and hardware and lighting, ferreting out retro items to mediate the shiny newness when it's built, grappling with plans of how to manage two good-sized dogs in a trailer in the wilderness, all while managing our life in Tucson from a phone and Internet free location in the Colorado Rocky Mountains.  I'm not ready yet.

A large part of this plan included my husband's taking up to three months off from his job to go up and help with the final stages of the cabin, something our contractor, Brian Shelton, actually encourages -- he understands that folks need to be able to save some money by doing some of the work, and that it also helps them feel invested in their new home.  It's one of the reasons we decided to hire him.  We were hoping the timing would work out so that he'd need us in mid to late May, and that we could spend most of the nicest part of they year there (with the rampant wildflowers) while avoiding the hottest part of the year in Tucson.  With the support of his boss and the financial troubles municipalities these days we figured he'd get some kind of award for volunteering to take three months off without pay during a time when employees have to take furlough days.  Not so.  We were shocked when the request was flat out denied.

So, where does that leave us?

When my husband ended his 24 year career with the state he was getting nearly six weeks of vacation a year.  Now he works under one of the most archaic vacation policies I've ever heard of -- two weeks off a year for TEN years.  It was almost a deal breaker for him, but then he struck a verbal agreement with his boss (and her boss, and her boss's boss) that he could take up to 12 days a year of unpaid leave.  After five years he's never taken a minute of it.  Adding up his meager vacation days, fulough days he has to take before June, and a couple of holidays, we've scrapped together a little over three weeks to be in Colorado this summer -- no where near what we need.  Oh, they've suggested he revisit the request in a month or two and request just a month.  And we must be one of the rare families that is praying for more, a lot more, furlough requirements starting in July.  Rumor is that there will be 80 more hours, so that gets us to over a month.  And even if we can just get one set of 12 promised days for this year, that would be helpful.

This plan to spend time during the build was much more than helping reduce the cost of the cabin -- my husband makes more in his job than he will laying floors.  He helped his father build the original cabin in 1963, and spent many vacations as an adult doing serious cabin maintenance and land stewardship.  It was his favorite place on earth, and still is even though the cabin was taken eight years ago in the Hayman fire.  He wants, badly, to be part of the rebuilding of the cabin and not just the guy signing the checks.

That's where the alchemy comes in.  How do we stretch somewhere between three and half weeks and a month and a half into three months?  We need a presence on site during the finishing of the cabin.  We trust our contractor Brian completely, but I have a clear vision of what I want the cabin to look like and how I want it to function and need to be there while decisions are being made.  We're not sure how we'll work it out, but it appears that after an initial and critical few weeks together, there will be airlines involved, with flights between Tucson and Denver shuttling my husband between work and cabin building to stretch out the time.  I'll stay behind, with decisions and sourcing and labor and trying to keep track of the dogs by day, and lonely evenings and long walks to the outhouse by night.  I'm still hoping we'll manage to be in our new cabin for my 60th birthday early in August, joined by my daughter and her husband and a few dear friends if they can manage to get there.

In the midst of the unwelcome problems created by the leave without pay denial, a sweet surprise arrived.  I'd been haunting Ebay for cabin stuff -- mostly vintage things like tablecloths, hammered aluminum, depression glass, and lighting -- until I discovered Etsy.  Etsy was a whole new world, more of an online community than a place to shop.  One of the things I found was a set of vintage hanging lights for over the kitchen counter.  They were from a farm in Canada with softly frosted half round shades that were like the best beach glass and brown Bakelite fittings.  I'd looked and Looked and LOOKED for something different but not weird, and certainly not from Home Depot.  These were perfect.  Over the course of the transaction I got chatting via email with Penelope, whose shop it was, and sent her the address for this blog.  When the lights came, along with some charming little owl decoupage plaques I'd also purchased, there was something else in the box -- our first cabin warming present.  This delightful little hand-painted pitcher will be used frequently at the as yet non-existent cabin, and will never fail to remind me of an unexpected bit of encouragement from a near stranger at a time when close associates had let us down.

Thanks Penelope!

Click here to visit her shop, Birch Beer Boutique, on Etsy.