A year ago this week I dodged Icelandic volcanic ash (
plus ça change)and flew from London, where I’d been living for a decade, back to British Columbia, where I’d lived throughout the nineties. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, moving from a major metropolis to a small Gulf Island. Whatever it was, I certainly wasn’t expecting that less than a year later I would be a widow of sorts, living alone on Gabriola without Mike. No, I certainly wasn’t expecting that.
Nor was I expecting to start this blog again. It had done its job. I was writing again. Well, I haven’t been writing since March when a massive heart attack took Mike away. (Yes, I know I’ve said it before. We all hope that when our time comes it will be quick and we will be oblivious and so it was with Mike, but it is brutal on those left behind.)
Although originally intended to be a blog (requested by friends in England) detailing the transformation of my once upon a time garden on Gabriola, this blog has also covered the transformation of the apartment Mike and I rented in Burnaby. It doesn’t, therefore, seem inappropriate that I should start it up again with another interior transformation.
This particular transformation is tinged with sadness, because Mike isn’t here to see and enjoy it.
In 2006, when our mortgage came up for renewal, we put some more money on it so we could do the renovations we’d been dreaming about since buying the place 10 years earlier, like turning the semi-finished basement into a guest suite and finally replacing the raised-pattern, diarrhoea-coloured carpet we’d inherited with the purchase. I was living in the UK, so poor Mike got stuck living with the renovations. I did my bit when I came over for Christmas that year, painting the finished basement and the kitchen and diningroom. We jointly chose a replacement carpet and the colour for the walls in the livingroom and bedroom. I didn’t think we needed to discuss the woodwork, because it was, well, wood. How was I to know that Mike (who was an easy mark for tradesmen) would somehow be convinced that the wood had to be painted to “protect” it? (Huh? Yeah, that was pretty much my reaction when I found out.) When asked what colour he wanted it painted, he said it should be painted the same colour as the wood – a reddish, mahogany brown. He thought, bless him, that I would like that, because he knew how much I liked the wooden window frames, doors and beams.
It was bad enough with the grey in the livingroom and bedroom.
But with the blue in the diningroom and kitchen it was just vile.
I got rid of the brown woodwork there over the long, snowy winter of 2008/9.
And now it’s also gone in the livingroom.
This transformation was part of the Down With Brown project undertaken last week with my wonderful friend Irmani, who flew all the way from London to pitch in.
Although the walls were probably ready for a lick of paint, I might have put off doing them had it not been for Mike’s perplexing decision to leave the cheap chipboard archways (instead of having them dry walled with everything else) and also paint it brown. (Honestly, sweetie, what were you thinking?)
So the walls had to be painted, too.
Those of you who remember the
Burnaby apartment transformation story, may recall that it was all a bit crowded in my bedroom.
Well, there’s rather more space for everything now. (One of the things that sold Mike and me on the place originally was the huge front room with windows on three sides overlooking our “forest”.)
And the white woodwork makes it so much brighter. (Now, if I could only figure out what to do with the surplus to requirement desk parked at the end of the bed. I can’t get rid of it – it was a present from Mike – but there really is nowhere else I can put it.)
After a job bloody well done, I saw Irmani off on the float plane, stopping first for a lovely lunch.
Then she boarded the floatplane for a night with friends in Vancouver.
What a star.
Yesterday I dealt with the last of the ground level brown. (Not that I couldn’t have guessed beforehand, but painting louvered doors is really a pain in the ass.)
Of course, that still leaves the beams. General agreement that this is a job for a professional.
But it already looks so much better I think I can live with it until I can afford to pay someone. (Where is Josh?)
What, do I hear you ask, about the garden?
Well, I confess I’ve been pretty slack about that. (Without sounding flip, which I certainly do not intend, I did have a funeral and an apartment pack up* to sort out.) However, some progress had been made. Thanks to Krys, another wonderful friend, who flew out from Toronto after Mike’s memorial service and came over to Gabriola for a few days, a third of the vegetable patch was weeded (oh, yes, weeds had no problem growing in my barren soil) and dug over in April. My wonderful neighbour Pat did the rest of it. And now I’m finally getting to the rest of it.
More anon.
* When I went back after the move to do a final clean and inspection of the Burnaby apartment it had gone back to being beige throughout. It was as if Josh and I had never painted it, as if Mike and I had never been there. Made it easier to walk in the door in some ways and extraordinarily sad in other ways. When I asked the very nice building manager Zeb what was going to happen about the deposit, he at first told me it would be forfeited, as Mike and I had signed a lease agreeing to be there for at least a year. When I made it clear this wasn’t, under the circumstances, going to fly, he rang head office where someone, under the circumstances, agreed. I was then presented with an itemised list of deductions which meant I wouldn’t get anything back. With the exception of a charge for repairs, which I accepted as Mike’s walker had gouged a few corners, I told him I wasn’t going to accept any other deductions and wanted the deposit back, minus the repairs. This involved a call to someone else at head office, who wasn’t there. By then I just wanted to get out of the building. So I said, “Zeb, when you talk to this woman, you need to tell her three things. One, she is trying to rob a widow. Two, I am a media savvy woman who has good contacts in the press and friends at City Hall. Three, if she doesn’t agree to refund what is owed to me, I will become this property company’s worst nightmare.” An hour later he rang me back to say I would be refunded the amount I was asking. Bit of a letdown, really, such an easy win.
