We're in!

Hillgrade:

I have been chastised by a few people for not keeping up to date here. And I'll have to take my lumps because I have been negligent.

We're in the house. Actually living here. Sort of. Here's a picture of what the house looks like now with the foundation finished. In the first picture, the black stuff below the plywood of the knee wall is tar, for waterproofing. In the second picture, the white stuff with elephants on it is a waterproofing membrane. The red stuff is a tape that joins the membrane pieces. And now you know just about all I know about foundations and waterproofing.

When we get to it, the ground level will come up to the red tape. We'll slope the soil away from the house in front (sea side) and the garden showing will also have a slope towards the sea. Just how important this is was brought home to us a few days ago. We had the biggest rain storm anyone in these parts can ever remember. Not to mention the thunder and lightening. We had just gone to bed and I was sure we would all be washed out to sea. In the morning, there was a lake at the back of our house, still forming and draining from run-off from the bog across the road. It's imperative that we find a way to divert this water. Our foundation might be waterproof, but it can't be good to have this much moisture near a building. 

So, what's it like? I have nothing but good to say about this house lifting business. For starters, we have a better view. We can see the ocean from the downstairs windows over the big old rock in the side yard. Previously had to climb up on the rock to do that. The view from the upstairs windows is glorious.

The view I like best though is the one from the kitchen window. Previously we looked up at the road, feeling rather like moles. Now, we can sit at the kitchen table, look directly out at the road and see who's coming and going in good Newfoundland style. Great spot for a cup of tea.

And our floors are level -- well as much as floors in a 130-year-old house can be level. No longer do we almost fall down if we turn suddenly in the kitchen. Balance issues have gone the way of the codfish. People who've come in say the place has lost some of its charm and quirkiness. Perhaps. But I can live with it.

One of the last tasks the house-lifters did was to replace the sills on the back addition of the house. They were rotted through. It was his opinion that if we'd left this job even one more year, we might not have had much to save.

The only downside of it all is that the carpenter ants that lived in the old sills now have to find a new home. They have been roaming around outside like lost souls -- very big lost souls at that. I've never seen ants so big in my life. Some of them are at least an inch long. Hopefully they'll go across the street to the old general store that is slowly rotting from the ground up.

So now the real work begins. We haven't stopped much since we moved back in. The first task was to tidy up the yard a bit. Create a few piles - wood that we'll keep to burn, wood that the neighbour wants to burn, stuff to take to the dump. Then we moved the furnace components out of the shed to under the house in order to make room for the firewood pieces that were already short. We made another pile of wood that we'll have to cut later. It's the biggest pile.

John spent some time levelling off the soil under the house in order to make space to store his supplies and tools. We're using the old concrete forms as platforms for both storage and walking. I gather it was not easy using a pick under the house without room to swing it. And the soil being rocky as it is, is not easy to shovel. 

I learned to make concrete the other day. I could probably make it again myself any old time now that I know what consistency it has to have. The only hitch is finding a way to lift the bags of cement. Those things are heavy. We used some of the sand the contractors left around with a few bags of Portland cement. From this we made footings for the back bridge. We bought some Readi-mix to make the posts. And they look very good, if I do say so myself.

So now, we have to fill in the trench. We could just push back the stuff that they took out of the trench and get a load or two of fill to put on top of it to get the grade we want. But the problem is that soil is rather 'poggy' (word used around here to describe soil that holds water like a sponge) and we don't want to give the run-off a place to live. So we've been thinking of having a few loads of a mixture of sand and shale dropped off. Problem is, where to put it. If we don't move the existing mounds, there's nowhere to put the new stuff. We don't really want to move the existing mounds to another location and then use it later as a top-soil. But we might have to.

I've been devoting most of my back-breaking labour to getting rid of the Mile-A-Minute that was growing along the road-side of the house. I really don't want it there. It takes up all the room on that side of the house and blocks light from the living room window. I've been told that even leaving one little bit of root in the soil will result in two new plants. I expect I'm defeating my own purpose by trying to dig it out, because I'm probably not getting all the little root bits. In fact, I'm sure I'm not. Sigh. I don't want to resort to poison, mainly because I tried that last year and the darn thing laughed at me. It shed the parts of the plant that the poison had touched and the rest of it flourished like never before.

We have not got our new wood stove yet. The one we want is difficult to get. The company sells stoves through at least two retailers - Home Hardware (there is one a few kilometers away) and Rona (several hundred km away). And it appears the stove we want is made for Rona only. However the manufacturer's site lists Home Hardware as their distributer in these parts so the fellow who runs HH is going to call them and give them what for and try to get the stove we want.

As I write, the furnace man is here hooking the furnace back up. Since we had to take down the old brick chimney that the furnace used, we thought we'd have to go with one of those steel chimney jobbies that everyone here uses. But it appears we can get something called (probably wrong name) a power exhauster. It is a short pipe that comes out of the foundation wall and that's it. It has an electric fan that exhausts the fumes and apparently does a great job. Doesn't foul up the siding or poison bystanders. Not sure how but that's what they say. So we're going with that. It's cheaper than buying a 24 foot chimney anyway.

The weather has been the shits, if you'll pardon the expression. We saw the sun yesterday for the first time in nearly two weeks. It was 28 degrees Celsius yesterday. I did two loads of laundry to take advantage of a great sea-breeze and the heat. Today the grey skies are back, but it's not as cold as it was last week.

At one point I was so cold I was starting to remember why I left Newfoundland in the first place all those many years ago. I said in a weak moment, "I want to go home." My dear husband looked at me and said, "I'm already home!"

And on to the dig...

Summerford:



These pictures show what the house looks like in the light of day. You can see from one side to the other underneath it. If you look closely in the right picture, you'll see the furnace lying on the ground. We will put a tarp over it soon to prevent damage in case of rain.

There was no work going on today, Tuesday. We were still waiting to find out when the digger fellow would be available to do the work. It was a good opportunity for us to clean up a little around the site. John went under the house (no way I was doing that) and pulled out the old wooden shores that had been knocked out from under the beams the previous day. They will make great firewood. Very old. Very dry. Very heavy. Ooof.


So John tossed them out - okay maybe not tossed - I managed to heft them across the yard, up some rocks and over to the side of the shed where I made a pile of them. Didn't know I was so strong.


There were lots of bricks that needed to be moved to safety. I want to keep them to make something interesting in a garden one of these days. I had wanted to keep the kitchen chimney bricks so John tossed them out from near the house and I carried them to a far corner of the garden where they should be safe. People have said that they are very valuable since this kind of brick cannot be purchased anymore. I finally realized that we had way too many for me to use in the garden unless I was building a brick shit-house, so we donated the majority of them to Dr John, a retired doctor in aVirgin Arm who, though legally blind, managed to arrange them beautifully around the back beds of his place.

We also took down the fence so that the digger can get his machine close to the house without damaging our nice fence paint job of last year. Those rails and posts had to be hefted across the yard too. I made a pile of them next to the blackcurrant bush near where we've stored the old back bridge which we are going to try to save. It was built by the previous owner of the house, a Mr. Dyke, who we are told is closely following developments with the house via phone calls to his daughter in Hillgrade.

John went into the house to get a few things that we needed. I have no intention of going in there while it's up in the air like that. He says it's very weird in there now. Like it has lost all of its character. I think I know what he must mean. It does build character to keep one's balance in a sloping kitchen where one quick turn can make you dizzy. Hah.

Since we could do no more at the house for the day, we decided to go to Gander and pick up things that we have not been able to get on NWI. I had a long list and we were determined to fill it without darkening the doors of Walmart.

It's an hour to Gander on some teeth-rattling roads. We discovered the health food store had disappeared but were relieved to find it relocated at the Gander mall. Two hours later, we had everything but a few items and were on our way back to Summerford where we are staying for now.

Last night as we were driving back from Jo and Simon's, John's cell phone rang. Since it is against the law to talk on the phone while driving, it was a scramble to pull the phone from John's pocket and the car over to the shoulder at the same time. It was the fellow from Lewisporte returning our call earlier in the evening. He had contacted Coates the lifter (glad his name is not Shirts - sorry obtuse attempt at a joke) and work will be resuming on Wednesday. Yay.

And so it goes.