Okay. So where were we?

Hillgrade:

It's taken me over a month to get back to business. I just had to. Couldn't take any more of the nagging.

And I couldn't have picked a better time to write. I spilled my tea into my keyboard this morning and now I have no right arrow key. Who knew I used that darn key so much! And what's more, John tells me that you can no longer just take off a key-cap and clean the contact. Now you have to take the back off the keyboard (unplugging it first, natch) and clean the inside of the business. Maybe later.

So. Where were we? Oh yes, working on the house. Let's see. When we last chatted, the foundation and the pony wall had been finished and the house lifters had departed. The rest was going to be up to us. Many hours and dollars later, we are closing in on completing the goals we set for ourselves this summer. Several milestones have been achieved and celebrated.

Crawlspace windows. Check. Nothing fancy, but they work and do the job they were installed to do - let light in and keep rain out.

Crawlspace door. Check. Double check, since John actually built two doors. An inner door which is thick (hollow) and sturdy; an outer door which is 1/2 inch plywood to prevent the inner door from being exposed to the wind. The inner door has a padlock system. The outer door has just a push latch for now.

Crawlspace window frames. Check. And nice frames they are, with drip caps and properly slanting windowsills.

Painting the pony wall. Check. We decided on red. Not sure why now except that we knew we didn't want the battleship grey that everyone else here uses on their foundations. This colour choice led us into a discussion of what colour we should eventually paint the house. We are leaning towards Dory Buff (a heritage colour) with red doors, drip caps and bridge surfaces, and white for the window frames and bridge railings. We'll see.

Landscaping. Semi-check. We've had five loads of shale dumped around the place, and shovelled and wheelbarrowed most of it ourselves. A neighbour found out we were doing this manually and came racing over to say that he has a tractor and would be happy to push the stuff around for us. Didn't have to ask us twice.
One of our challenges is that the dirt that was dug up from around the house when the foundation was poured is rather puggy. We did not want it put back around the house since it holds water so well and we are trying to solve wetness problems, not re-create them. So we piled that stuff up away from the house and replaced it with the shale. We have since re-distributed the puggy stuff (some of it was actually very good soil) over the top of the shale in order to grow whatever it is we'll grow. One more pile remains to be raked. Not urgent.

One of the days when we were digging & lugging dirt, we got to thinking that a patch of stinging nettles and old damson trees at the right side of our backyard (as viewed from the road) would make a great car park. But the problem was that our fence was inside that patch. Time to make inquiries. Turned out that the land is ours. We still don't know why the fence was where it was, and there was some talk in the cove about who owned the damsen trees that had gone to ruin among the nettles. It was finally decided that the land belongs to the house we're in so it's ours and was included in the sale. This was confirmed by the original owner once we got in touch with him. So. We now have a place off-street to part the car and the trailer. Check out the pile of shale that is about to bury the nettles (right-hand picture above). We had a second one after that. And now we have almost too much, but I guess it will settle.
Of course everything is still pretty rough. I've been keeping aside large rocks as we came across them. They'll come in handy for building a rock garden, or steps up the side of our hill in the back yard, or as a path to my vegetable garden. No shortage of them, that's for sure. And to think we have to pay big bucks for rocks like this in Ottawa. Would make ya weep.

Bridges. John has built a great bridge on the road side for our back door (picture at left). He even built a little triangular step down for it. From that step, we can go to the road, or to the side garden. The road-side edge of that step will be in line with the fence (when it goes up) and we'll put the gate I (okay, we) built last year right there so that when you step from the road, you'll open the gate right on to this step. Neat, eh?

The side bridge (right) is semi-done, too. It's bigger than the original one, which was rotted pretty badly. We saved the railings though because they were built by the former owner and it would be great to preserve his work. I like the railings a lot. How we'll use them, we still have not decided. In one of the pictures you can see that we've laid a section of railing on the back bridge. This was so that Mr. Dyke could see it when he came to visit last week. More on that later. 

Update 2023: We never did use the original railing after noticing how badly it had rotted in places. In face, that bridge has no railing at all still.


Wood stove. Check. We now have a new wood-stove in the kitchen. I might have mentioned that we had to get rid of the old kitchen wood stove because it was not in good shape and would have needed an overhaul to make it safe. Not sure that it ever could have been restored to its original grandeur. So we purchased a Drolet Legend through Chester Dawe's in Gander. It burns very well and turns the kitchen into a sauna. We will have to put a hole with a fan in the wall to the living room in order to draw the heat into that room. We'll also put a grill in the ceiling in order to let the heat rise into the upper bedrooms.
Since we had to take down the two chimneys, John installed a prefab chimney for the kitchen stove, taking it through the ceiling, through the upstairs room (called the Chimney Room) and through the roof. Enough heat rises around that chimney into the bedroom above that we don't have to install a grill to do the job.

Furnace. While the house was being lifted, the furnace had been dismantled and the pieces stored in the shed. Then we called the furnace man to come and re-install it, adjusting here and there to accommodate the new beams that are now under the house. Since the furnace chimney was a casualty of the lift, we were thinking of installing a prefab on the outside for the furnace. But the furnace man mentioned a power vent. After some research, we opted for this and now we have just a little box on the outer wall near where the furnace is mounted underneath the floor. We have not had to run our furnace yet (thanks to a scorching July and a still not too cool August) but are not anticipating any problems. It should apparently run even quieter than before now that it's fixed and not sitting on a rock.

Repair of outer walls and clapboard. Check. Because much of our lower walls on the north and north-west walls of the house had rotted, we had to tear away a large portion of the clapboard. The underlying matched lumber (tongue-in-groove) had also seen better days and needed attention. This week John spent repairing the board walls and putting on new clapboard as required. He put a new trim board (water table) all around the house, hoping that when he met up with the first piece that it would be lined up. As many problems as he had in getting it on, when he did join up, it was only about 1/2 inch out. Pretty darn good, I'd say. We don't have any pictures yet of the final job because he says, "it's not finished." He still has to address the corner trim.

That about covers it, I think. It's been a long month. With all the digging and wheelbarrowing (especially downhill) I wrecked my left knee. Haven't been able to do much since about the 15th. Luckily, we had lots of help. Boyce Sansome showed up with his shovel to help move dirt. As I mentioned above, Clayton Sansome brought along his tractor. Twice. Transporting it up and down the hill on a flatbed trailer each time. Ivan Sansome and his son Michael who was just here for a visit came over and moved the rest of the dirt from the road-side of the house. Since they were using our shovels, we could only watch. What a great place. What great neighbours. Kevin Butt has been down to help repair the roof when the chimney was installed, to install clapboard and to help with just about every other job that needed doing.

Since my knee didn't allow me to go berry picking, Boyce even brought us down a bag of bakeapples which he picked himself. I tell ya, it doesn't get any better than this. John remarked the other day that we've lived on our street in Ottawa since 1998 and we still know only a few neighbours. Here we know everyone and they know us. And here 'knowing' = 'helping' = 'sharing' = 'genuine caring'. Remind me again of why we're going back to Ottawa? Sometimes I wonder why.

Of course, if John had his way, we'd be staying here. For good. Sometimes, I think I should just let him have his way.