Thawing out

Portland temps have been hovering in the 20's for the last 2 weeks.  Excellent timing for a couple of people who don't really own cold weather clothing to be working in an uninsulated garage space.  We've been literally freezing from morning to night, which is absolutely foreign in portland.  It's been nice though (other than the frozen fingers)...the cold has been accompanied by lack of clouds, which pretty much means we've had daily sunshine- a rare mid-winter gift here for sure! As such...progress feels like its been slow.  Hard to convince ourselves to go work in the space and hard to get our contractors focused on our job.  Our plumber got detained with 40 or so calls about broken water lines overnight and its hard for us to claim that our vacant garage/apartment/tiny home is somehow more important- mostly because its not. Slow as it may be, we're getting there.  Electrical rough in has been finished, plumbing rough in is done, and we scheduled concrete for the first day that the temps were forecasted to remain on the top side of freezing.  Our bathroom now has a floor!

In the meantime we've been putting time in elsewhere.  Jens been purchasing fixtures and appliances and watching our budget grow/spiral out of control.  Ive been filling in at ADX and trying to get some of their events organized.  Pretty fun work actually, strategizing with local firms to plan holiday team building events around building something for their office.  A chair for the company christmas auction, or a wall light with the firm logo glowing from within.  Fun to work through the design with them and then watch day of as the group works together and walks out with the pride of something they built by hand.

I'm currently working on a big event for next month that requires a bit of planning and product/packaging design for a scotch company.  Working way too many hours and it occasionally feels like a job, but i'd be lying if i said it didn't feel good to watch the products and events turn out a success.  Regardless... its certainly nice to design something that someone else is paying for rather than us!

Jen and I have also had a few meetings over the last week or so with different stores and online markets that want to sell our furniture.  Always nice to receive compliments/interest, and they are all exciting prospects but we've yet to see our first dollar.

Oh well, income is overrated...builders' gotta build.