I keep trying to imagine that this will be my view from our bed. Well - without the ladder there of course, and eventually with a finished closet and a bathroom sink inside the door on the right. And with some art on the walls !
As we slowly slipped into July we began to discuss when we would actually move in, and how much had to be done in order that we could easily do so. We both agreed that the really messy jobs needed to be completed before we moved in. I put in a wish list for one working closet in or near to the bedroom, a place to hang coats and store shoes and boots in the mudroom, a towel rack in at least one bathroom, at least one bathroom mirror, a bed to sleep in, and the stipulation that all the drawers in the kitchen had to have their final finish on before I moved my kitchen ware in. (I wanted drawer fronts on too, but dropped that off the list!) We both agreed we could live with using the guest bathroom if our bathroom wasn't finished. And we also agreed that our two geriatric cats would be best off in the room above our bedroom (away from the rambunctious German Shepherd dog) and so an easy to clean floor would be required there.
We also tentatively set a date to move! We picked November 1st. Spoiler alert though - we didn't make it. The new date was (maybe) December 1st (oops didn't make that deadline!) but definitely maybe before Christmas!
July is my birthday month and I always take time off from work on my actual birthday to celebrate. My only wish each year is to go for a nice swim in one of the local lakes. This year I eyed the weather leading up to my birthday, convinced that the unusually cool weather was going to cancel my swim day. But the weather slowly changed and when the actual day arrived, it was downright hot and humid. Unfortunately, we also had severe thunderstorm warnings, so we wisely decided to forgo the whole lake idea. While we can't actually swim much in the river as it's so shallow for the most part, it is still lovely to splash around in, and we figured we could more easily keep an eye on the storm clouds. And so we spent some time that day floating down the river, and later in the day, grabbed our chairs and sat a few feet out from the shoreline with our feet in the cool water. Later in the weekend, I did manage to sit by Golden Lake on a rather cool and windy day and at least enjoy the lake view.
And I spent the rest of my time off, enjoying the summer flowers, and butterflies, and enjoyed watching the Yellow Bellied Sapsuckers in one of our Birch Trees.
The wild irises were in bloom along the river edge and were stunning this year.
The PhotoCoach photography challenges included instructions for Intentional Camera Movement and I had fun trying out this new technique although not always with the best results. Still, there is something really fun about NOT steadying your hand and camera, but simply waving it around a bit, using different settings.
The wild irises were pretty obliging and I liked the results.
Meanwhile, Rob was working on one of the items on my list, and had pulled out the kitchen drawers and was busy sanding and finishing them.
When our friends Gary and Liz announced they would be visiting us for a week in August, we switched gears slightly, and began working on a few other areas of the house. As everything eventually needed to be done, we didn't really think that it mattered much what job we did first! And there is nothing like future guests to inspire stepping up the work pace a little.
As they would be staying in the guest room of the new house, we began working on the closet outside of the guest bedroom/bathroom. That timber brace made it a little interesting to work on!
And as "towel bar" was on my list, one got installed in the guest bathroom. Not before some discussion however. Rob wanted to make a custom one out of maple, while I was leaning towards just buying one. When Rob said you can't just stick one in the middle of the wall, I brought up dozens of photos from home building sites where they did exactly just that. I lost that discussion, and I'm glad I did. First of all we are both happier to use existing wood and not have to buy a product. But also he was right. (Shhhh....don't tell him!) The custom bar looked great. And the design included running the bar into a new shelf above the sink which also looked wonderful.
I began going through our boxes of items, and was happy to find towels and facecloths for the guest room. Our boxes of kitchen ware yielded all sorts of goodies we hadn't seen in a long time, and with the drawers now finished with a protective coating, I began to fill them with cutlery, pots, etc. It will take a while before the kitchen is working efficiently, but it was a good start.
Once again we pulled out some scaffolding, and fashioned a guest bed with one of our futons. Thanks to our dear friend Elizabeth we had some festive cushion covers from Mexico to adorn the bed, and finally got to use a beautiful blanket from Ecuador that I bought from her store years ago. We even put one of our prints up on the wall! For a temporary guest room, it was looking pretty good.
The dining room lights we had purchased on sale quite a long time ago, were finally unpacked and installed. This of course meant making a box in the ceiling to mount them into, which got primed AND painted. Amazing what you can do with guests arriving!
The house had a bit (!) of a cleaning, and we moved all of the tools and building materials we'd been using into the future master bedroom out of the way.
As the kitchen island hadn't been built yet, we opted just to leave the microwave where it was.
By the time our friends arrived we were more or less ready. We stuffed the fridge with some basic foods for them as we would still be living in the cabin, leaving them to fend for themselves when we weren't there. I still did most of the food prep for all the meals in the cabin as all of my spices, good pots and utensils were there, but we had enough items in the new house to finish off any of the meal preparation there when necessary.
We got the closet finished in time, (no door though!) and the bathroom was more or less done, although it still requires a frame around the window and some finishing around the exterior of the shower.
Rob had pulled out our old reel-to-reel tape player earlier in the spring, and had been going through some of the old tapes we had stored away. He found one of he and Gary playing guitar together with another friend of theirs (some 50+ years ago?) so had it ready for Gary and Liz to listen to.
As soon as our friends arrived we took some time off and enjoyed their company. We did some touring around the Valley, took in a great show at Batstone's Northern Ramble in Renfrew, and enjoyed some good meals together. When Gary professed a life long desire to use a back hoe, Rob obliged by setting him on up on our tractor and gave both Gary and Liz a chance to try their hand at it.
Sometimes it's hard to take a break when we are so focused not only on getting work done on the new house, but all the usual end of summer tasks that need doing on the property. But we both agreed we were in need of a reprieve, and it was fun to spend some time with friends. The oddest feeling was closing the door of the new house at night, bidding sweet dreams to our friends who were staying there, and then going back "home" to the cabin! Ah well, soon enough we shall be living there ourselves.
Having friends in the house also gave us some opportunity to "test run" the house. Pretty much everything ran smoothly. We had plenty of hot water, and power, etc. We were once again reminded of the need for a bathroom mirror, but that was certainly already on the wish list. The house was already wired for outside lighting, but we had a good reminder to install some fixtures when we would step outside in the complete darkness at night and walk home. Nothing that a good flashlight didn't remedy of course!
The kitchen drawer idea worked pretty smoothly although I may have to shift a few things around once I am actually living full time there. I really enjoyed working in the kitchen and being able to talk to our guests when they were either in the living room or dining room. We never had that ability in the dome, and certainly don't have it here in the cabin either. It's going to take me a while to learn where all the light switches are, and I may need a manual to get the colour-changing LED lighting strips figured out!
The refrigerator had a few issues as the freezer kept icing up. After our friends left Rob studied up on refrigeration, pulled the unit out and apart, and made some adjustments. It seems to be just fine now.
Thanks Gary and Liz for the photo of Rob and I relaxing near the river when you visited. It's not often we have a photo of the two of us!
As Gary and Liz made their way back home, it was almost mid August and it was time to get back at it. We began with working on window frames for our bedroom.
They are made of Ash wood and I liked the design. I kept puzzling over what the boxes were in the photo above , and then realised those were the lamps we had bought earlier in the summer. So as you can see below, we also installed some new lamps! Two in the bedroom, and one in the upstairs room. We are still wondering if we installed them with the correct length (or height). Time will tell I suppose. Either way, they beat the bare bulbs that have hung there all this time.
As we neared the end of August, as always, I began to lament the "end of summer". The daylight hours shortened, and the night time temperatures began to get cooler. We decided to stop working a bit earlier in the day in order to take advantage of the last bits of sunlight, and would grab out chairs and sit in the river. We were always aware that the time left to do this was getting short.
Even our "new neighbours" across the river began to spend more time in the river. They would try to paddle their dinghy out but ended up walking it most of the time as the river levels continued to drop due to the lack of rain.
Every time I dried my river shoes, I began to think it might be my last time in the river this year.
Early September we set off for a small buying trip in Ottawa. We always knew there would be a few basic items that we needed for the new house, and it was time to get them. First on the list was a new mattress, and we had found one in the summer that we liked. It was on sale so we went to pick it up. We also knew we needed an energy efficient washing machine. Because the house is off-grid we opted not to get an energy sucking dryer. We had done a lot of research but thought we were really just checking on prices when we found out about a 25% government incentive for energy efficient washing machines, so decided the time was right to buy one. We were also looking for a couch, but after 40 + years together of never actually having a couch, or seeing one that we liked, we didn't have high hopes. We were pretty surprised when we not only saw one that I liked (on sale!) but Rob liked it too and after sitting in it for a while, we decided to go for it. Wow, our first couch! It took about 2 months for it to come into stock though, so we had to make a second trip to go pick it up ...
Next on our wish list was to do some work on the mudroom. There is still a lot to do, but our basic requirement was for a place to hang coats, and to put mitts and hats etc. in the winter.
I love that we were able to re-use some wire bins that used to be part of our Chilly Chiles warehouse!
And don't ask. Next to the new washing machine is the printer we used to use for all of our labels and printing needs when we owned Chilly Chiles. We have yet to decide what we are doing with that.
When we first put the timbers up in the house they suffered a bit from exposure to rain and snow. We decided to try to clean them up a bit with a touch of sanding and re-application of some stain. Sanding timbers is a messy job, so it seemed like this was the time to do it. Up went the scaffolding again as we tried to clean up some of the areas.
Before we sanded though, we moved the Kelly Moore painting out of the way so it wouldn't get damaged of course!
We cleaned up the master bedroom too, and rolled the new mattress in there. We knew it would be a while before we had a bed frame for it, so there it sat all rolled up for a while!
Tinges of Autumn colours began to appear in the countryside around us. There was no doubt that the season was changing.
We took some time off to attend a local auction with a friend. I was hoping to find some good deals on furniture (especially drawer units!) but it turned out to be mostly (old) tools and such. Still it was fun to go.
And I began to lament the end of the local vegetable growing season. We've been so fortunate to have lots of local produce available nearby this summer. We don't have a cold cellar, and only have the small freezer units above the fridge here and in the new house, but I still continued buying lots (and lots!) of squash varieties and roasted them to stuff, or made soups. I was tucking away as much as I could.
As our anniversary approached September 11, I caught Rob in the workshop, working on "Secret stuff".
Hmmmm...I wondered what this could be.
Well I didn't have to wait long to find out. It's the beginning of the bedroom closet. Which is not yet complete, but looked like this. (After some drywall and painting of the closet of course.)
And not just one closet door, but two.
And a close-up. Just in case you haven't figured out that it's a woven wood door. At this point I began sending my brother emails that I thought Rob had maybe entered into some new phase of house building folly. (In actual fact I may have said "I think I married a mad man".)
Still, they are beautiful. And the upper portion isn't finished yet, but that too will be a surprise.
As the evenings continued to cool down, it was time to reconnect the wood stove as we would soon need to be heating the house. We had disconnected it while we worked on the upstairs railings. We had been discussing whether or not to install some kind of hearth, and although not necessary, a heat shield behind the wood stove as well. If we were going to do it before the real cold weather arrived, then now was the time! We popped out to one of our favourite tile stores, and found a few samples we could bring home. We immediately picked the same one, and ordered the tiles. Wow, that was easy!
While we waited for the tiles to arrive, it was time to tackle some outside jobs. Last year the first snow arrived in October, and although it melted, the November snow did not. We decided we should get everything done outside that we could while the weather was decent. We had some really nice days in September, but the early tinges of Autumn colours were a good reminder that fall was here, and winter wasn't far behind.
All of the poison ivy leaves began to turn red. It's stunning to realise how much of it there is on the property! Luckily when it's red, it isn't as volatile so I didn't worry as much about walking through it, Mind you, I had on long pants and shoes when I did!
We could feel that our days of sitting at the river edge in the evening were sadly about to end. We tried to make the most of it; sitting in these chairs up above the river in the early evening for as long as we could. As soon as the sun dipped behind the trees it would get rather chilly!
Rob put up scaffolding between the house and workshop and began tacking down the Tyvek wrap where it had come loose. It flaps like crazy in the wind, and we can hear it flapping even in the house.
The firewood that we had cut, split and stacked in the spring of 2018 was now dry enough for our winter use. We moved enough (we hope) down for the winter, stacking it on the porch of the workshop, some on the porch of the cabin, and some in the outside front entry of the new house. We moved most of it together, but one morning I went up by myself and finished loading the last load.
I brought some water, a sweet crisp local apple, and my camera with me. I worked slowly, enjoying the blue skies, and the scent in the air. I occasionally disturbed the odd garter snake in the pile, and they reluctantly moved over to the next stack. It's one of my favourite places to hang out, probably because it reminds me of our early times camping up there oh so many years ago. I'll admit I sat around for some time, munching my apple and enjoying the fresh air.
I even managed a quick "selfie" of sorts.
The hearth tiles arrived around the 3rd week of September, and we began laying them out on the floor, trying to figure out the best look for them. At first we were trying to match the patterns, but had a eureka moment when we were looking down at them from the second floor, and realised we needed to arrange them in a much more random pattern.
At first we weren't sure about them at all, as we both remembered the sample being quite different from what we were shipped. But as we pulled them all out of the boxes and saw the different colours and patterns emerge, we began to quite like them again. They were definitely the same as the original sample!
Some days I just like to sneak around outside and take a look to see how everything looks through the windows. I couldn't quite see the tiles that we had temporarily arranged on the floor though.
I love the photo below. Sometimes people ask why we don't just move in now. Well - this is why. I don't need to be living in the chaos while things are getting built, and Rob doesn't need us trying to make sense of the chaos while he's trying to build. We've done it enough times in our lives to have learned that!
We moved the wood stove away, and began installing the concrete board on the wall behind it.
Rob had some questions about the proper installation specifications, so while we waited for some answers we switched gears again. The weather was really nice and warm, so we grabbed the opportunity to do some work on the truck.
We loaded a bit more firewood onto the front entry way porch.
And serviced the tractor ready for winter.
I went for a long walk, and noticed that the leaves were falling from the trees, and spent some lovely time down by the river.
I realised I should have been airing out some of our clothes that have been in boxes all this time, and grabbed a chance to put some out on the line to take advantage of the warm sunshine and autumn breezes. Hmmm....I seem to own a lot of jackets. But I am hoping to get back into doing some "altered artwear" soon, so will have fun embellishing them, or using some of the fabric from them for something else.
On sunny "warm" days we continued to carry on with some outdoor fall jobs. On rainy days Rob worked on the hearth installation. Behind the stove and to the left of it, was a bit of a challenge. We had installed hydronic heating PEX tubes in the concrete floor before we poured the concrete floor, in case we want to use it for heating at some point. There is a set of tubes that comes up in this location, so when we boxed it in, and put the tile around the box, we made sure we created a tile door to give us access if we need it in future. We decided to put an angle on the hearth on the other side, so that if we come down the stairs and into the living room, the natural walkway would be here, and we won't be stubbing our toes on the tile. And if you are wondering, we have left an opening in the drywall to the left that will someday be a door to a small screened in porch. For now, it's just temporarily covered in.
By the end of the first week of October, fall was definitely in the air.
Local apple growers were commenting that it was one of the best years for apples. We checked our wild apple tree and sure enough, the apples were large and sweet!
Despite the gradual drop in temperatures, it was still nice enough outside that we decided to get to work on the kitchen island cabinets. We wanted to try spray painting them as it provides such a nice even finish, and we definitely didn't want to be doing that indoors! Rob built one of my studio cabinets at the same time, so he could spray paint them all together.
The island was just put in place with a couple of boards on top to give me an idea how things would look. There is still a lot to be done, including adding a counter that we can sit at, but it gave me a good idea of the positioning, and a chance to say that I loved the colour! Also it has two levels which will be perfect for me. The lower level is just what I need when I am rolling out pizza dough.
When we got the call that our couch had (finally!) shipped to Ottawa, we took a day off, drove to the city, met some friends for brunch, and picked up the couch. We couldn't resist unwrapping it and adding some cushions just to see how it looked. Our first real couch! (Well, technically I suppose it's actually a love seat. ) Then we wrapped it all up again to protect it from the dust and building debris that is somewhat inevitable at this point.
The house was beginning to get rather cool with no wood stove up and running. Luckily Rob finished all the tile job and grouting, and we were able to hook the stove up and test the hearth out.
The room could use a nice little area rug. Many years ago a dear friend gave us one, but it needs a little repair work on the edges and a good cleaning. I've been watching videos on line to see if I can fix the edges myself. I repaired the edges of a beautiful old Peruvian wool blanket that we had and it came out o.k. so I'm pretty sure I can do a rug! It will just take some time.
By the time Rob's birthday rolled around, we were ready for another bit of a break. We usually go for a nice hike in Shaw Woods to celebrate, but with rain in the forecast for his actual birthday, we opted to head out for a hike a couple of days earlier. I'm glad we did, as it poured all day for his birthday!
We even managed to sit for a wee while at one of our favourite spots, along the Snake River in Shaw Woods.
We then took time for a quick drive to Golden Lake where we grabbed pecan tarts and a coffee, and went to sit by the lake for a while. We returned home and I made a nice spicy curry using some of our stash of Ghost Peppers. Yumm.
With birthday festivities more or less over, we got back at it. Although we had decided we would just use the guest bathroom until the master bedroom bathroom was complete, Rob opted to get the master bathroom sink installed. We had picked up a small package of tiles years ago at a surplus tile store (for a great price!) and had hoped we could use them in the sink area. Rob chose walnut for the counter top, and we realised we would also need to purchase a bathroom mirror. With the mirror size specifications in hand, we headed out for a local hardware store, but first we made a stop at our local waste recovery site to drop off our garbage and recycle items. As always we checked out their reuse center where you can drop off and pick up unwanted household items. To our surprise and delight, someone had dropped off a perfectly good mirror, and it was the exact size that we needed !!
Yay, another item off of our list.
On the last day of October I got new snow tires installed on the truck. I thought I was a bit early, but it was a good time to do it. November 1st we woke up to snow. Timing is everything.
We began to switch somewhat frantically between jobs on the new house. We installed lights in the fixtures outside as darkness was descending earlier and earlier. Rob continued to work on all of the closets in the house, using wood on hand as well as old office divider steel tubing that he had from years ago for the closet rods. After a bit of sanding, priming and painting, they will work perfectly !
As the time nears for us to move in, Rob continues to practice his "This is Not Furniture" mantra. We are anxious to move in, and there will be time later to build some real furniture where we need it. Some of the items we are working on now will be temporary, and some may stay that way for forever. We have lots of stories to tell about the last month or so, but with Christmas on the way (and our "moving" date just 4 days away!) I've opted to bring this blog posting to a close. I will try to post another update in the New Year.
Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas, and all the best for 2020. Thanks as always for following along .... Much love. xooxoxo
