Back to Work

Alright! Thank you for being so patient - or for being kind in your reminders of me needing to update the blog. It's been a strange week, well, they all are, but I'm just now getting excited about the house.......WE ARE SO CLOSE!!

Today I went over to straighten up the green house - it sustained some minor damage this winter & I had pots that needed emptying & bulbs that needed to be potted & once I saw that the crocus & daffodils were starting to send up shoots I felt the urge to get my hands dirty! It's a bit premature for a full scale garden attack - the ground is still a bit frozen & very cold (my hands are aching right now) so I will just have to take it slow.....better to get prepared with detailed plans & focus on one thing at a time.
My white garden is looking fabulous. Phil noticed that I will need a retaining wall to hold some of the dirt back, so maybe in the fall we can find some way to incorporate that. The white lilacs that I planted 2 springs ago look like they will survive. There are shoots on them already! I've room for a few more items - maybe a white hydrangea & a white rhododendron along the slope edge.....And I will need to dig out the ditch if I want to put a bench there for people to sit on....The walk up the hill to our place is only half way & many people get discouraged when they see the rest of the hill to climb if they want to make it to the gallery at the top....Plus, it's a nice view of the harbour (for another few years til the trees grow) & if I get a bit of a gallery going, they can rest for a bit.

The first thing that I found to be DONE was the glass block window. Finally - it has been one thing that we spent a bit more money on, but since it's virtually the only window on the west wall, I thought that it should be a bit more spectacular. Just after it was finished (took 2 months!) the building inspector calmly tells us that we could have bought a window made of glass blocks already installed in the frame & we'd just need to 'slip it in place'.....Thanks Don....I think the name of the blocks is 'seascape' or something like that - it's got all these little bubbles that are so fun! Once it's framed on the inside it won't look so institutional.
The best news - so far - is that the roof is finally REPAIRED! That means no flap-flappy of the blue tarp in the middle of the night & people across the harbour won't think we've put on a blue metal roof. The boys had very bad weather for the west side repairs, but luckily the west side of the roof wasn't as badly damaged as the east side - which they finished the day that we left for Alberta. They also put on an edge cap - just on the south side of the house - which I feel finishes up the look of the roof. If we had pockets full of money, I'd have them do the north side of the roof (back of the house) as well as the covered porch on the west side. As you can see from the photos we still have scaffolding up on the deck. They are finishing up the south wall with window trim & siding - it's taken a lot longer than anyone thought - weather factors plus the final replacement window didn't arrive til after we left - end of the first week of January. Once that wall is finished - today maybe - I'll take a close-up photo so you can see how finicky the siding installation was - lots of small pieces & angle pieces....Whatever. I'll be glad once the scaffolding is down & out of the way. The boys are also working on the deck framing today - it wasn't built all the way around to the door underneath the covered porch & they've had to come up with an imaginative way of completing it.

I must say - it's been nice to have them come in to work on Saturday & Sunday. I think the main factor is that Ken (Dude) isn't here. The boys want to work & he seems to hold them up. So, Phil goes out & picks them up in his boat & spends all day working with them. It's been good.

Phil & Steve (another fellow who wants to work) installed a central vac system yesterday & I'm hoping that Steve wants to help install the drywall. We can't wait for another 'friend' of Dude's to say he'll come in - we are on a very tight time frame now - they have until the middle of February to get the suite & as much of the rest of the house into a liveable state so that Phil & I can start moving our stuff over. We are going to Cancun the last week of February & I don't think we have enough money to pay them after that. We'll be able to do most of the finishing work ourselves, but it would be nice to be able to relax 100% while down on the beach.....

The soffits are also all finished. I think Phil has a few pieces in the front that he needs to stain, which he will do while the scaffolding is up for the siding. But the pine is such a nice touch & Dude did have a great idea for how it should be done. We put in brown venting instead of white & I like it quite a bit.




Before we left, the yellow cedar posts for the inside had been planed & were ready for installation. As you can see, they replaced the 2x4's that went up to the ceiling. They've been repaired a bit with wood filler - we got the house so dry that the wood started to check - which means it started to split, so we had to quickly deal with that or else it would continue to split. So the wood filler went in - can't hardly see it & then it was clear coated with varithane. They look absolutely wonderful!