Mild December

When we were rushing to get the roof on before the snow arrived in November, we never thought that November and  December could turn out to be such balmy months. We saw only the slightest dusting of snow, once or maybe twice. We had a few frosty mornings, and the ice did form briefly on the beaver waterways north of the house, but the ice did not linger for long. We had record highs for Christmas Eve, and a surprisingly green Christmas.  I don't know how many times we asked why we couldn't have had this kind of weather when we were trying to get the concrete poured in November 2013, or when we were trying to close in the house in November 2014. Still the mild weather this month allowed us to get our insulation and drywall delivered with no worries about moving it through piles of snow!  

Somehow I managed to be at home the day the insulation arrived. More than 60 bags of it were dropped off at the site and had to be hauled into the house. Fortunately it came in on pallets, so Rob was able to move them closer to the doorway, using the tractor, which saved us some manual work.

Rob tried to rig up a pulley system that would move the bags up onto the second floor, but it soon broke, and obviously needed some adjustment, so we settled for piling it all in the future guest room, and kitchen, and then the next day he fixed the pulley system and moved as much as he could upstairs.

The tricky part was to make sure that none of the piles of insulation would block Rob's access to where he was working on installing the plumbing.   And to leave room for the arrival of the drywall.

I was sure that we had every single plumbing part that we needed   - it seems like we've spent hours in the plumbing sections of numerous building centers,and have hauled home bags (and bags!) of black plastic pipes and fittings in various sizes, but I was wrong.  Several times before or after work, I would be visiting the local hardware store, clutching a list of yet more needed parts. The whole plumbing system took some figuring out - but eventually - we got it done.

Well - sort of done.  The pipes that remove water and ummm "other things" are now all installed and hooked up.  We still need to install all the pipes that bring the water to the various sinks, toilets, tub and shower. Below is a photo of the mudroom, and the set up for the washing machine.

The guest bathroom plumbing is seen in the photo below. Yes - if you are a guest here, you will have your own bathroom., with a toilet, sink and shower. Hope you love German Shepherds though...and cats. Lots of cats.

Our bathroom is in the photo below. And all that sawdust ?  Well, that is the result of drilling through the studs, which meant more trips to the hardware store in search of a more perfect drill bit. (Apparently the drill bits last longer too if you don't hit nails with them.)

A couple of days before Christmas, the drywall arrived. We had a short delay in the delivery date due to rain, but soon had a clear day when they could deliver. I was home when it arrived, but had luckily made arrangements to pick up some food supplies from a local farm, so couldn't offer any help.  I was there though to document Rob bringing in a sheet to add to the first half of the load in the dining room. It looked like heavy work!

So, with batts and batts of insulation sitting there, and 100 sheets of drywall, and the pine boards for the ceilings, and the stain "wash" that we are going to apply first to those boards - well it would seem that Rob has his work cut out for him this winter. He is once again spending lots of time re-reading the entire electrical code book too, as it's time to get the wiring done as well.

With Christmas approaching, he did take time for a quick visit with family and friends a couple of weeks before Christmas.  And with the amazingly mild weather, we both took some time off for good long walks around the property.

Two years ago at this time, the fields were piled with snow. This year? Not a flake. We did get lots of foggy, misty mornings though.

We both love the rich green moss that grows on the forest floor, and can't believe we are still walking around on this moss, and that we are still wearing fall coats and shoes. The snowshoe hares may not be as pleased. We get glimpses of them as they run through the bush, entirely visible as they have turned white for the winter, and there is no snow to camouflage them.

The beaver waterways are deep and wide open right now. Usually this time of year we are walking on top of them as they would be frozen over, except for the occasional hole where the beaver would smash through. The plant in the foreground even looks like it's greener and growing again. I read on a nature group that I follow that some people are hearing spring peepers. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

With family living in St. Catharine's, we've seen more than our share of green Christmases there. But it was strange to have a green Christmas here.

Shortly before it arrived, I had the opportunity of visiting a nearby farm to pick up some of our wish-list food supplies. A big shout out to Moonlight Crofter's farm !! I usually order my tourtiere from them via a local food co-op, but I was unable to make the pick up time. On the off chance that I could get one from them directly, I contacted them, and was told they were sold out. But they immediately emailed me to say they had enough filling for one pie, and would make me one if I was interested. We had bought their pie last year and it was divine - both the filling and the pie crust, so we quickly said "yes please!".  Two days before Christmas I found myself at 9 a.m., inside their incredible round stack wall house (yes !! round  - almost like our sweet old dome!!) They welcomed me in, and set about offering other farm fresh goodies (along with kind offers of breakfast and coffee). In addition to the tourtiere, I was able to pick up 2 dozen farm fresh eggs, some delicious home made sausage rolls, a frozen heritage chicken, and 10 lbs of organic carrots.   O.k. 10 lbs is rather a lot, but I wasn't sure how much to ask for. And when they offered to go pick some exquisite ones out of the garden (on Dec. 23rd - really?)  I was thrilled.  (I did decline the various squash they had - I am beginning to feel like I need some kind of squash intervention, but later on I did lament that decision).  I got a lovely tour of the farm, saw some of their highland cattle and free ranging chickens and various garden beds, and took a nice walk up past some pretty horses at a neighbour's farm,  to pick up my frozen chicken and sausage rolls from a second location.  Driving home, I just kept thinking how incredibly fortunate we are to be living in this amazing place, and how much I absolutely loved being at that farm.  And later that day, when I headed into town, and the local grocery stores for the rest of our weekly groceries, I must say that I really thought a lot about that farm - how hard they work to supply a few basic items, and how much I preferred being there and seeing where my food was coming from.  A lot of food for thought I guess....

Christmas Eve brought high winds, power outages, and record high temperatures. I came home to find Rob removing downed trees from a nearby path. On Christmas Day Rob and I checked for damage in other areas. We were sad to see one half of a giant pine tree snapped and lying on the ground.

Rob took some time and secretly wound some LED lights around a small tree in front of the new house, and powered them up using our small solar panel. We sat in the new house, enjoyed a lovely local ale, and looked out the window at our pretty little tree. Ah - who needs Martha Stewart?

On Christmas Day the weather was cooler, but still well above normal. We spent almost all day outdoors, walking around and even enjoying a bit of sunshine.  Neither of us wanted to be indoors.  The weather forecast was for snow and ice pellets in the coming days, and we wanted to enjoy every last bit of the warm temperatures.

And now Christmas has come and gone, and we are approaching the end of 2015.  I took some time over the last couple of days to look through the blog, and looked through some of our photos. Sometimes it feels like we haven't accomplished much, so it's good to look back and see just how much work we really did get done.
I also found some photos that I'd set aside for the blog posts but never posted.  So here's one of them. Rob took it one day this fall after discovering a small weasel was hanging around the steps to the mudroom. Shy but curious, it suddenly struck this great welcoming pose !

As always, the blog allows me some time to look back, and some time to look forward. I have a feeling the next couple of blog postings will be interesting, as there will be a lot of changes inside the new house.  Who knows, maybe this time next year, we'll even be living there! Maybe....

We'd like to wish everyone who follows along here, a very Happy New Year, and hope everyone has a healthy and peaceful 2016.

Celebrations

October gave us one little snowfall, just as a gentle reminder of the weather to come, but the snow soon melted, and we were able to continue working on installing the metal roof.  As Rob's birthday approached, he decided to take the day off in celebration.  I had already booked the day off from work, so we planned on making a day of it. But when we saw a bit more warm and sunny weather coming our way, we decided it would be better if he kept working on the roof while he had a chance. We were feeling the pressure of time and weather, knowing that the past two Novembers have been rather cold and snowy months. As well, the daylight hours were getting shorter, and Rob was finding the available working hours to be a tad too short.

Back in August, while Rob was away visiting family, I decided to paint and stamp on a denim shirt, and give it to him for his birthday in October.  Rob has always lived by the credo "The joy is in the doing", so I thought it would be nice to give him a shirt with this theme in mind.  I had a lot of fun thinking about what I wanted to put on that shirt! I set my paints and stamps up on the table on the porch, and set to work.  It's a lovely place to sit, with the river in front of me, plenty of fresh air, and lots of bird activity in the many trees surrounding the cabin.  I started to set up the opening words "The Joy is in the Doing" with my stamps, and went upstairs to get some more supplies.  When I came back - I took a look at the shirt..... and was surprised to see this:

Hmmm...it looked to me like Jet was messing with this while I was upstairs. I wonder if it's possible that he rearranged the letters while I was gone. The Joy is in the Dog ????  Well, maybe Jet, but not quite what I wanted to put on this gift. Maybe the next one....

Unfortunately, I never did get this shirt finished in time.  But I thought it was rather appropriate, given the theme, to not worry about it. I will continue working on it this winter, and try to appreciate the "doing" part, not the "finishing" part!

Despite spending most of his birthday working on the roof, Rob still had a good day. We stretched out the celebrations a little by having some special dinners at home each day that week. For his birthday dinner I made homemade pizza crust and toppings - at Rob's request!  It was a nice birthday celebration.

So the next couple of photos show where Rob spent the majority of his birthday. He rigged up a little seat for the peak of the roof, to make it easier to move along as he fit the peak pieces in place. And there he sat, installing pieces, moving along, installing more pieces...and of course climbing up and down - a lot - every time he needed something.

Once the last peak piece was added, all Rob had left to do was to put the final metal roof sheets onto the area above the dining room and kitchen.

We thought this job would go pretty quickly, but of course it went slower than hoped. We were getting frost almost every night, so Rob had to wait until later in the day for the ice to come off the roof before he could safely get up there to work on it.  We also had a few rainy days, and rain made the roof far too slippery to work on. Rob was so close to finishing, but the rain kept holding him back. Finally he was able to get up on the roof and get at the final pieces. He came back to the cabin to get me when he was ready to put the last piece of roofing in.  He knew I didn't want to miss seeing him do it!

And then we did a happy dance...  Wow what a long, long job that was!

Rob was more than pleased to be off of the roof and back on the ground, but he didn't take much time off as there were a lot of pre-winter chores that needed doing. Although I had split all 10 cords of firewood earlier, it still needed to be stacked so we got at it and got most of it done pretty quickly.  It's a good feeling to see a decent pile of wood all neatly stacked and ready to use, especially as we both remember running out of firewood the first two winters we were here.

We moved some of the firewood over to the new house as well. Rob got the wood stove there up and running, and began monitoring the temperature as the house slowly warmed up. The concrete pad took a while to heat up, and the humidity in the house was, and continues to be, rather high - a combination of the concrete drying, as well as the timbers. But it's an amazing feeling to sit in front of that warm stove, in that lovely bright house, and think about the days to come... Especially for Rob - this will be the first time that he's working where it's dry, sheltered and warm!

On sunny days he took the opportunity to service the tractor, and got the snow blower fixed up and ready to go.  The new house site needed a good clean up too.  He kept thinking he might get a chance to do some timber frame work for the workshop, but there were more than enough tasks that needed attention first, and the days were slowly getting too cold to be outside carving timbers. On rainy days he did some work inside the new house, like installing the upstairs floor !!  I can't wait until there is a real staircase in. I had to cautiously inch my way up a ladder to get this shot.

This is a shot from below.  When I asked Rob what the red X was for, he groaned. That piece was supposed to be cut out before he installed it. I have a feeling he'll be ripping some boards up .....

It was nice to see the electrical panel get installed too.

We took some time one day to drive up to a local sawmill, and ordered the wood that will be used on the ceilings. Now we begin a whole new dance, as we try to figure out where to put everything.  We have wood arriving for the ceiling this week, and a pile of insulation batts coming later in the week.  Rob is busy getting ready to do the plumbing and electrical, and doesn't want to have to keep moving everything around out of his way. We can no longer leave anything outside as we know that the snow could arrive any day now. We dodged the latest snow storm, but can't possibly continue to be so lucky! Although I must say November had it's share of lovely warm sunny days too.

Rob spent a couple of those nice sunny days, helping our friend Murray and his nephew Simon to get a small roof onto Murray's new addition. (I guess Rob hadn't had enough of roofing after all!) He was happy to do it as they had both come so willingly, along with Murray's son Scott, and our friend Bob, to help us get our second level of timbers up last year.  It was nice to be able to finally give a little something back.

While Rob is busy building, our agreement is that I will do all of the cooking, but Rob happily suggested that he would make appetizers to bring to a pot luck birthday celebration dinner for our sweet friend Elizabeth. He made salad rolls - a favourite of ours, although neither of us had ever actually made them before. They were delicious, and he even tucked in little red hearts cut out of red peppers. Elizabeth loves hearts!   And he made two delicious dipping sauces for them too.   I can't wait until Rob is able to cook more often again.

Fortunately, we both love to cook, and I've been able to make lots of good soups and stocks, and our freezer is looking a bit fuller again.  Now that it's cooler out, the porch is a great place to set things out to cool, and I thought the recent batch of granola looked pretty lovely out there.

As always, we take lots of time to walk together in the woods, and along the river. It's easier to walk through the woods in late fall, and after a recent wind storm we made our way through a few areas to check for damage, and look around.  This particular section of woods is quite different from the rest; the ground is spongy and mossy, and there are lots of holes and openings in the forest floor so you have to watch where you step.We always keep an eye out for any fallen trees that may be hung up above us though as well.

When we heard there was a possible snow storm on it's way, Rob spent a few days last week doing a more thorough clean up of the job site. It sure looks good when all the scaffolding is gone, and the scraps of wood, metal and foam are tucked away.  If we have a chance, we'll do one more scan for nails and metal objects and then we're done. (Maybe we'll even find that pair of lost glasses.) (Again)

As December approaches, we are going through what are now familiar chores. We've swapped out our spring and summer clothes for fall and winter ones, and checked through our hats, scarves and mitts to make sure we have a good supply. Our pile of winter boots and shoes are filling one corner of the kitchen (why is it that having a dog to walk seems to require so much attire ?) Our one tiny closet is stuffed with winter coats, down vests, rain pants and snow pants.  The garden ornaments have been tucked away, and we have a box of kindling ready for starting the wood stove. Snow tires go on this week. (O.k. - a bit late on that one!)  Anything that can't be left outdoors for fear of freezing, or damage from the snow, has been brought back into the cabin.  We've checked our store of batteries and flashlights and stocked up a bit on water and a few tinned items in case of power outages.  (It will be so different when we are living off grid!)  We also realized that Rob will be walking back and forth from the cabin to the new house when it's dark, so have made sure he always has a small flashlight on him.  Just for fun we went out for a walk one night and turned off our flashlight to see how dark it really is. Yup - it's really dark !! You could walk off the path and into a tree in a second....

There are times too when there is not enough natural light in the new house, which makes it difficult for Rob to see what he's working on - so after a lot of  thought, he rigged up a small solar system and some LED lights. We've been testing LED lights here in the house, and they sure have come a long way! They produce a much better light than they used to.  He should be able to work just fine in there now.

And work he will; if the joy is in the doing - he plans on doing lots.  He's busy now studying plumbing and electrical codes, designing the staircase, thinking about concrete floors and acid stains, tub drains, faucets, vents and ducts .... insulation and drywall, pine ceilings....well it's a bit of a list.  And it all has to be done in some sort of reasonable order.

One of the nice things about all these jobs though - is that for the first time in this project, none of them are weather dependent!  Rob can work inside the house no matter the weather  - so we can now take a bit of time to ourselves on a sunny day, and not worry that we are wasting good building weather. And our favourite place to be on a sunny day is down by the river. It's lovely to watch the changes in the river that come with each season.  Slowly it's getting higher and faster, and this morning there was heavy frost in the vegetation on the shoreline.  On a sunny day though, it's still easy to sit on a rock at the edge, close our eyes and listen to the river song.....  it's a sound we miss during the winter, so we try to get our fill of it while we can.

Delays and Arrivals

Three months have flown by since our last blog entry - it's hard to believe it's been that long since I last posted! As my sweet cousin Carol always likes to say when she sends me a nice long newsy email - "get yourself a nice big hot cup of tea, and put your feet up - reading this is going to take a while!"

August arrived with hot, humid days, and glorious sunshine, and it finally felt like the kind of summers we used to have.  The last two summers were so cool and rainy here, especially last year. The down side of hot humid days is that it's really difficult to work up on a roof for most of the day.  Rob tried to take frequent breaks, and would head for some shade periodically, but the heat definitely slowed him down some. The plus side was that we had lots of wonderful, cooling walks in the river at the end of the day!  Much to our surprise the same fabulous weather continued into September - and for the entire month !! We had day after day of sunshine, blue skies, warm temperatures and very little rain. The good weather continued even into the early weeks of October.

With the foam and strapping all installed, Rob set to work in early August to getting the plywood up onto the roof.  This job went fairly quickly for the most part. The only weather issue was when the wind picked up too much. That's no time to be on a roof with a giant piece of kite-like plywood in your hands!

The tractor really helped with this job. Rob built a nice little gizmo on one of the tractor forks to help move the plywood around.

Rob thought starting on the north side of the house was a good idea. There was a bit more shade on this side later in the day, so he could get some relief from the sun. The first piece of plywood went up !

As usual, I was there to take photos of some of the progress, but because I'm at work 4 days a week, I missed the chance to photograph some of the various stages. Before I knew it Rob was working on the east side....

Once the plywood was up, Rob had to install some very sticky waterproofing membrane in some areas. Not only is it sticky, but it has a peel-off backing, and you can imagine how much fun that is to deal with on a windy day! He's lucky he didn't just stick himself permanently to that roof.

Rob was feeling pretty happy when this section was finished!

The south side was the final section of roof that had to be done.  Turkey vultures flew overhead and checked out the job. Look at that lovely blue sky too...

As soon as the plywood was up, Rob was able to determine exactly how much metal roofing to order. As the roofing would take a few weeks to arrive, he did some site clean up, and moved the scaffolding away. The timbers for the workshop were supposed to arrive shortly, and he was anxious to get working on them, while he waited for the roofing to arrive.

We decided to take some time off on a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon, and headed across the Ottawa River and over to the Quebec side. We had a fun afternoon, exploring some new areas, and enjoying some rather lovely views of the river. We discovered a vibrant arts and craft area, and met some lovely people!

This is an old stone stable, that the owners have converted into a gallery. They have done an amazing job, and are now digging out the basement below. The same town also has an art school, and we spent some time there looking at the featured artist's work. I had no idea the school was so close to us, and hope I can take some classes there in the future!

The timbers unfortunately arrived later than promised. It's hard to watch beautiful days slip by, with so many jobs to do that require decent weather. But finally, early one evening, the timbers arrived.

While they unloaded the timbers, I wandered off to admire the crescent moon in the evening sky. They obviously didn't need my help!  I was reminiscing too about how excited we were when the first load of timbers arrived...

Our firewood was also late in arriving, but we weren't as concerned about it, as it was pretty much too hot to be splitting firewood anyway!  We left it to continue drying until September.

Rob didn't even have a chance to get working on the timbers, as the roofing suddenly arrived as well!
We decided that it was best to go ahead and get it up while we had the chance.

Unfortunately, once Rob unwrapped everything, he discovered that the roofing manufacturer had cut the eave starter to the wrong specification. He had to wait another week for the proper size to arrive. Which it did - but it was still cut to the wrong size, so another week or two passed....with kudos to the building supply company who worked so hard to get the shipment to us after the roofing manufacturer failed to deliver it here on site on the third try!

While waiting for the proper roofing shipments, Rob switched gears (again) and decided to finish the strapping on the sides of the house. He didn't want to spend too much time getting all set up for working on the workshop timbers only to have to stop and put everything away. With all the delays, we also realized that we were running out of time this year. The timbers were probably not going to get done after all....

Once the strapping was done, Rob started to clean up inside the new house, and prepare for acid staining the concrete floor.

Just before he started staining the floor though, the roof parts arrived - and they were the proper size this time!

Once again, he started with the north side of the house.  Things went well, until he decided to make some changes to the placement of the plumbing stack.  He'd been fighting with the decision, but really wasn't happy with the placement lower down on the roof, and wanted it higher. As he got nearer to roofing around it, he realized that if he was going to change it - he had to do it now.

I thought we were finished with looking for 4 inch pipe connectors, but found myself back in various hardware stores, clutching a list of needed parts. It's amazing how many parts we seem to have now.

Hoping he cut the hole out in the right place!  (He did!)

As Rob worked away on the roof I started on the job of splitting the firewood on my days off. It's a task I actually quite enjoy, but I don't like stacking it, so just kept tossing the split pieces into new piles.  Rob promises he will stack it all once the roof is finished!

Rob demonstrated one of the many cuts, bends and folds he had to do to the metal roofing and flashing.

We were both relieved to see that the pile of roofing was starting to go down!

I arrived home one day to find that that Rob had to make changes to the wood stove pipe installation too. The north side was proving to be more difficult than anticipated, but once he got past the stove pipe, it got easier.

And suddenly - the north side was done!  (And look at that gorgeous blue sky again. I don't think we ever saw such clear skies in the whole of last year. Do I keep saying that?)

Next up was the east side, and we both knew that the valley would be a bit of a learning curve.

I can tell when I go over and the radio isn't playing, that Rob is trying to think and to figure things out. It seemed like a good time for me to go back and keep splitting wood!  I knew he'd figure it out, and he did.

We both think it looks pretty good!

We couldn't believe that the weather was continuing to be so warm and pleasant.  The days were slowly getting shorter, and the nights were cooler, but we had plenty of sunshine and warm days. We were in the river several times in September, and could comfortably sit out at the river's edge, wearing light hoodies, and watch the sun go down. It was lovely!

Remember when Mom Snapping turtle was busy looking for a place to lay her eggs, but we thought she'd given up on the new house site ?  (Here's a photo of her in front of the house in the spring)

Well one day we spotted a baby snapper in front of the house!  We gently moved it to another spot near the house, but  a little ways away from where we found it, as we didn't want it to get hurt by us or the tractor. I raced home to look up the best place to relocate it; closer to the river, or closer to the shallow channels where the other turtles seem to hang out. I came back to find it was gone - it had already wandered off!

As Rob moved to the southern side of the house, we were both getting pretty excited about seeing the roofing project finished.  This side however, proved to be the most difficult, and the weather finally began to be a factor again. Cold nights gave us heavy dew which made the roof slippery (and the ice one morning didn't help either!) Rob found he had to wait until later in the morning or early afternoon before he could safely go back up to work on the roof.  Luckily the sun would dry it fairly quickly, once it came round to that side of the house.

This valley was even trickier, and it took a while to figure it out too.

I was happy to come home one day and find it finished, and Rob moving on to the next section.

We could see that the light was changing, and although we were still wearing t-shirts, it was obvious that fall had arrived and this lovely weather wasn't going to last forever!

Rob had been working long days, so on Thanksgiving weekend we took a couple of hours off, and went and enjoyed a quick drive around the area, to admire some of the spectacular fall leaves. Then, it was back to work!

We could feel that these warm days were about to end.  I finished splitting the wood, and Rob kept going on that roof.  Thanksgiving night we sat out on the porch and were feeling pretty grateful for the lovely fall weather we had this year.

Of course, we knew it had to end sometime, and it did. Just one week later - it snowed. Not a lot, but just enough to make it dangerous to be on ladders and the roof, not to mention rather cold to be working outside.

Rob had just finished the upper south roof, and was working on the peaks when the first snow hit.

Today it's been snowing off and on, so he is working inside the new house. He is pre-assembling the peak pieces inside, and will wait until the weather warms up a bit later in the week to complete the job of installing them.  On the plus side, he has the wood stove hooked up in the new house, and is slowly heating the concrete slab and interior, and is able to work in total comfort inside! It's amazing to be in the new house and to be sitting in front of that nice warm stove, imagining the days to come....

So all in all, it's been a busy and productive couple of months.  The good weather provided us with some lovely long evenings on the porch, some relaxing times in the river, and some wonderful walks in the woods, as well as an incredible number of good building days.  We have enjoyed lots of good meals, with a huge variety of local meats and vegetables from local farmer's markets and roadside stands. We made it to a rather special wedding, (congrats Sally and Tyler!) a good friend's birthday, (thanks for the invite Sam!) a visit with an "old" friend (so wonderful to see you Karin and to meet Pat!). Rob had a chance to visit family, and I had a chance to attend a yoga festival for a day.

We're hoping for a few more "warm" days to finish up with the roof, and that will be it for the external work this year.  We have some chores to do around the cabin before the snow truly flies, and then Rob will begin some interior work on the new house.  It should be an interesting winter.....