Months 13-17

I bet you’d forgotten about me hadn’t you?

It certainly has been a while since I updated the blog so it will be a concise version…

Upstairs washroom (formerly known as the bedroom closet)- We have finished installing the door trim and the back splash is up and grouted. The only thing left to do is to put in some chair rail (dado rail for those English folk J )

Main bathroom upstairs- The bath, toilet and sink are in! We had a slight issue in that the bath leaked when it was drained…I was not a happy bunny! It seems that when the plumber fixed the slope on the drain pipe a long time ago, he nicked the pipe with his saw L  It took many weeks ( 6 to be exact ) for him to finally come back and resolve the issue. In the meantime we had called another plumber to come out but he couldn’t check it since we had no water, I’ll get to that later… The shower is tiled and grouted so we’re ready for glass, I have someone coming in a couple of days to measure up. We also have a fabulous heated towel rail and in floor heating which is hooked up and working nicely. The electrical inspector has been and done the final inspection so that is one less thing to worry about. We installed new lights and a medicine cabinet, I just need to install door trim on one door and paint it then we’ll be all done in there! I can’t wait to finally be able to take a shower in that bathroom.

Our bedroom- We carried on scraping off as much texture from the walls as possible then I gave them a skim coat of plaster and painted them. We had to brick up the hole from the woodstove and it is patched so well you can’t really tell where it was J The hardwood floor  is installed, the new custom baseboards (sorry, skirting boards) look terrific and match the existing  ones very well. We have moved our bed in there (yay!) but are yet to get wardrobes so are living out of a washing basket for clothes right now, along with the closet in the room downstairs that we were using as a bedroom. The only things left to do are putting  in some quarter round trim, which needs painting first, and adding a door.

So happy to be in our bedroom!

Callum’s room has been emptied of furniture and is being used as a workshop. Now that the tiling is all done I have been able to tidy a lot of things away, next job there will be to install the hardwood floor and he can get his room back.

Kitchen- This is the most recent project. The ceiling has been drywalled, a joint effort with the boys (thank you reading week for making Callum available!) then it was mudding, taping and sanding until I couldn’t sand anymore. Those high ceilings make it that much harder to work. Priming, painting and new lights and it looks like a totally different space! We also built a bulkhead around the plumbing to the upstairs bathroom, patched and painted the walls, built an island and refinished the existing cupboards. The cupboards doors were falling apart so they needed to be secured with mending plates before scrubbing and painting. They have obviously been there a long time and when I was prepping them, I removed many layers of dirt and grime, revealing a completely different shade of brown. Yuck!  Now they have gone from a cherry stained pine to a heritage green, with new handles. Now with extra storage, we’ll be able to unpack some of the boxes of kitchen items that haven’t seen the light of day for over a year.

The colour on the left is after cleaning...

Goodbye chicken border!

Winter has been harsh this year, the bitter cold has caused a few problems inside and out. Just before Christmas we had a power cut as the result of a big ice storm. The trees were hanging low (with the top of one birch touching the ground and another resting on the main power line coming into the house) causing a couple of trees to snap in two under the weight of the ice. With no power comes no heat and no running water (well living of course) which, with an electric stove (cooker) and without a fireplace we had no means of heating the house at all. Eating out, candle lit games and early bedtimes ensued. It got down to 7C in the warmest part of the house and we feared for the plumbing system but miraculously after 50 hours we got power back on. We have since bought a gas stove in case we have the same thing happens again. The only casualty was the plumbing in the laundry room, burst pipes and lots of mess which happened as it warmed up and the pressure forced the ice out of the pipes! The plumber was working around the clock with other clients in the same boat but eventually fixed us up. The good thing was it forced us to clean up the laundry room while we were soaking up the flood.

Outside, the snow melting and refreezing caused problems with JM’s car. We had been away and when he opened his door the ice was so solid it bent his door and fender( wing) so that was an expense we could have done without. The snow blower got a rock stuck in the auger, causing the belt to snap but thanks to YouTube and some tools, JM got that working again...he’s turning into an industrious country boy J 

We have had snow on the ground for over 4 months with no mid-winter melt so I’m more than ready for spring. I almost forgot, the severe cold also cracked a pipe in the septic system so that had to be fixed too.

We lost another chicken (courtesy of Kaiya) and she injured the new cockerel so we kept him in the house to heal for a week. He still limps but is doing much better.They have had a heat lamp running 24/7 and their water still freezes on the very cold days!

I need to finish up all these little jobs in the house then we can spring clean, finally unpack then move onto outdoor projects - I have hundreds of them! First up will be to fence off an area for the dog so she can run freely and not get our chickens (or the goat we’re getting in May).

I’m praying for warm weather to come soon, before I lose my mind!