Cleaning House! 4 DAYS UNTIL OPEN

This will be a short post because it's 1:30am and we just finished painting the houses and putting down most of the lines.

It's been an exciting and draining evening painting the last of the houses to stay on schedule to open this Saturday for our All American Bonspiel!

I don't usually use members names because this is a blog about our clubs journey to what we like to call "Dedicated in the Desert." But I have to give a shout out to Karen Tait, who started the club 10 years ago and is our Mother Hen of the club (most of you know her as our amazing Bonspiel Chair), who was the one to grab the ice crew mop and literally "clean house" tonight.

Let me explain...Once the houses are sealed with a fine mist (in the last post), it's time to clean the houses and put a final seal on them 8-10 times with a clean (new) mop head, getting heavier with water each time, then allowing it to freeze and repeating. I don't know why, but it seemed symbiotic and fitting to see her seal the first house on our dedicated ice. We all know that we wouldn't be here without her vision to pull together Canadians to curl in the desert. (A little club history for you.)

We also put in our red and yellow curling stone indicators. Oh, soon we will be able to put our rocks on the ice!

And lines to divide the sheets...pretty cool, eh? No, I'm not Canadian. I just married in. ;)

While we were cleaning house on the ice, a team of volunteers was cleaning house on the front end (of the building).  All of the things were moved out of the common areas to prepare for a cleaning crew coming in the next day or two. The ADA front ramp is near completion along with a new raised ceiling.

We are now down to a laundry list of odds and ends that we are finishing up, like adding doors. It's always fun to come off the ice at the end of the night and see what they've accomplished. (I will have more volunteers in photos next time !)

And our general contractor (head honcho and curler) was putting in an air control system with venting for the ice house until 1:30am with us. It's the little things, right? Little on his list...

At the end of a painting night, it always reminds me of a scene from a big party. And I feel the same way in the morning, exhausted and just want to take the day off!

But we are SO CLOSE to OPENING in 4 DAYS!!! So sleep is at a premium and we are all pushing "hard, hurry hard" until Saturday.  And it's all coming together.

When I took one last look through the viewing windows and my tired eyes tonight, I saw 4 sheets of ice, 8 beautiful, bright and vibrant houses, 2 bright-as-day hog lines, many frozen pieces of yarn dividing sheets and areas, cute felt cut outs of A, B, C, D and little curling rocks, real curling rocks and a broom. And then we shut out the lights using a real light switch instead of the breaker box. Wow, this warehouse has come a long way...until tomorrow, bloggers, when we are one day closer to curling on dedicated ice in the desert!