We have been here in Yarmouth for a month today. It has been
an interesting and enjoyable time for us. When we started out
we had no address, no phone, no insurance, no electricity, no
water and no heat. The address and phone number were easy to get.
Insurance was too. In fact, the insurance is worth far more than
the house at present. For electricity we had to have an electrical
inspection which took a couple of days to get finished but all
was well and we had power after being here 9 days. That let me
get started on hooking up a pump and water storage tank to the
well. After getting all leaks sealed we had a good water supply
four days later. We were very happy to find that the old hot water
heater was working. Wow! Hot showers. Our friends from across
the street lent us a propane heater that is good for one room
and our other friends lent us an electric heater that is just
perfect for the RV. Basically, we use the kitchen and one front
room for cooking, eating, files, phone and computer. We sleep
in the RV. So within two weeks of being here we were pretty well
set up to be able to live.
Our first attack on the house has been to expose all the foundations
and strip down walls that we know are problems or that we want
to change. We have pretty well finished the foundation exposure
and found that about half of the house has good foundations and
sills and that the back and part of one side need work or replacements
at the edges. But, the stuff underneath is in very good condition.
We have started talking to contractors to help get good foundations
set and get house as level as we can. The foundations and sills
had problems because the house was set too low in elevation and
the people here before piled dirt against the siding to keep drafts
out from under house. We did a survey of area around the house
so have been able to set new elevations for new grading. We will
leave the granite block footings exposed 6 inches below the sill
and slope out from there.
We took the walls between the kitchen and the backroom down so
now have one large room for a kitchen/family room type of space.
There were two walls to take down there. One was the old lath
and plaster wall, the other was the newer kitchen wall. The space
is very nice now and when we are done will allow east light all
the way into the kitchen in the morning. Since the kitchen is
basically on the north side of the house that will help a lot
with the atmosphere. We have also been taking down walls in the
mud room (one there) and in the bathroom to get space to put in
central heating ducts. We also got new fill and grading on our
drive in from the road.
We have staked out the place for our 24x32' garage and shop with
a loft. Have been talking to a carpenter about building that and
are in process of getting bids on materials, excavation, foundations
and workers. Hoping to have that space done by the end of May.
That will really help us as we will have a place to store materials
and I can set up a shop for work on the house. Bought a nice 10"
table saw and joiner on sale that are being held in the store
for us. Still need a planner and a few other things but that will
get us started.
The plumber/electrician/heating contractor came over this past
week. He was encouraging about what we could do to get everything
we need installed by next winter. But, he did say we will probably
need to drill a well as our dug well is not resupplying very rapidly.
It had 6 feet of water when we started using it on April 5 and
is now down to about 4 feet. We don't use a lot of water but he
said it will probably go dry in summer. When we drill a well we
can hook up the water system to use either the deep well or our
present one. I will run roof water into the present well and use
it as a cistern since we will have to treat water for drinking
anyway. For showers and toilets we can just use straight cistern
water.
We found our desktop computers were getting limited for doing
computer aided design and internet exploration so got ourselves
an iMac and signed on with a local computer company for connections
to the internet. Now we can go online and get information about
materials and appliances we may want to use in the house. It is
a great computer for doing design work as it is fast and the screen
is a nice size. It will also process the pictures we get from
our digital camera and photos-on-a-disk. We are enjoying it now
and hope to get a web page set up soon. That will have photos
of our progress.
The RV that Ian, Sue's brother-in-law, lent to us is working out
just great. We use it for sleeping and getting away from the house.
As weather warms up we will live more out-of-doors and use it,
our big Moss tent, and a dining tent for living as we get more
into tearing things out of the house itself.
The weather has been 'all seasons'. On some days we can work in
T-shirts. On other days it has been snowing. Mostly it has been
cool and windy. The one thing we seem to be missing is rain as
our well is telling us. There is enough wind here to generate
power! So days we have all four seasons pass through. But, the
days are getting longer. Since day light savings we have light
until 8pm and it is only the end of April. Sun is coming up about
6:30am.
Our neighbors have been great. Gary and Judi across the street
have had us over for a brunch and we see them frequently in the
yard. Gary has a front end loader on his tractor and helped dig
out the house foundations and graded part of the drive. Vaughne
and Charlie next door have been coming over to talk and brought
us some cooked crabs the other night. John and Andrea, our organic
gardening friends, have been wonderful friends. We have been over
several times. I helped John trim Apple trees a few Saturdays
ago and he came over to help me pull down walls in the bathroom.
We also joined the Yarmouth County Museum (very nice collection
of sailing ship period photos and artifacts) and the Yarmouth
library. We joined the YMCA for hot showers and sauna. It is easy
to get involved in community things here.
Ben, the cat, has adapted very well. We kept him in close the
first couple of days but then took him off of leash and let him
do his thing. He stays around well and loves going under the house
and out in the fields. He caught his first mouse on April 12th
and got another one yesterday. Keep it up, Ben!! He stays with
us in the RV at night and usually goes in for a nap in his bed
during the early afternoon. He likes being around us so checks
in and out on what is going on during the day. He is growing rapidly
and getting darker in color.
All in all, Sue and I are very happy with our decision to move
here and renovate the house on Chebogue Point. It has been a good
experience for both of us. We find we work best by us each having
a different job to do. I will work on foundations while she takes
down shingles, for example. That way we can each work in our own
style and at own pace. If we need help we can get it. It is also
nice to see more work done that just the project one is doing.
While we have a lot to do in the house we know we have to take
time off once in awhile. Sue went to Halifax to the home show
and to see professional skaters the day I was pruning trees with
John. We go into town to shop and run errands or eat out (we are
trying to try different restaruants each time) and I always have
a book going.
We are very pleased with the progress we made in the first month
here and are looking forward to keeping things rolling during
our next phase.
This makes two months we have been in Nova Scotia. We can characterize this month as being one of foundation digging, room deconstruction, and frustration on getting our garage started. We added two of our neighbors to the "construction crew". James and Alma live just down the street and have been great at helping us on a regular basis.
Early in the month we started on the mudroom floor and the basement. The mud room floor was resting on the ground so we pulled it out and dug down several feet so it will have a crawl space under it now. The basement access and floor had filled or caved in over time so we dug that out too. We actually found a beautiful old stone stairs that are unfortunately to steep to use. I had to build a set of wooden steps over them. It took us about a week to get all the dirt and stones out of the basement. What a great collection of rocks we have for use in walls and walks later on.
After we finished the basement we dug the foundations out from under the mudroom and the room on the east we call the daybreak room. That left us five wall sections hanging by the interior support I had built. It left a big space open to the outside for cats, dust and rain to enter. It is still open but we are working on getting the foundation walls built and the house walls connected to the ground again. James and I also went around the entire perimeter of the house straightening, lifting and resetting the old granite foundation blocks. They look great and have been reinforced with rock or sand bags and sealed with foam. We will soon have 6 inches of foundation above final grade all around the house.
Sue and Alma helped with digging and stone removal early in the month and then switched to taking out sheet rock, lath and plaster on walls and ceilings upstairs. It is a messy job but necessary to expose ceilings and outside walls that we will have to insulate. We have found that we will be able to expand the size of several rooms by 2 feet or so by removing face walls that were placed inside of the actual outside wall. We will also be converting part of the attic to cathederal ceilings and adding a loft space to the master bedroom. We can see that shaping up now.
While the projects we have been working on have been going well we have had a slow time of it with the garage. This is a multi-step project and the foundation contractor has set us behind almost a month. We started out well. The excavator came at the end of April and dug the hole for the garage foundations. He also did major site grading around the south, west and north side of the house to get water flowing away from the building. Things were ready for the foundation contractor to start on Monday, May 3rd. First he got delayed till Friday, then the next Monday and so it went for the whole month. He managed to spread a five day job over the whole month and it wasn't until last Thursday, the 20th, that the excavator could come back to fill in around the foundation and put the base gravel in for the garage slab. We are back to waiting for the slab to be poured. So, the garage that was supposed to be done by the end of May isn't even started yet. The bright side is that every contractor delay shows me how much we can do ourselves.
Other events of the month.
We switched from a flush to a composting toilet system. Our water supply in the well stabalized at about 3.5 feet but we hear from neighbors that the well here is not reliable. We decided one thing we could do, and wanted to do anyway, was reduce water use by using a composting toilet system. We have a SunMar Compact that is working very well and will go with a SunMar central system for the final design. The Compact will be moved to the garage.
We happened to see a review of a maritimes artist, Dan Steeves, in the Halifax paper. He does wonderful prints of this region. We went up to a show at Acadia University and found a print of a gothic revival house very much the same as ours. We contacted him through e-mail and purchased a copy for later display. We like his work very much. I you can get access to the internet his address is http://aci.mta.ca/personal/dsteeves/. The print we bought is called Succour in Abandonment and really reminds us of this house when we first saw it. You can see it on his web site.
I bought a Davis Weather Monitor II station that has a remote setup. The main unit that measures temperature, wind direction and speed, windchill, rainfall, barometric pressure, humidity and dew point is placed out where our gardens will be. It sends data to a station in the house that I can download to the computer to plot the information. It is wonderful. We will have accurate records of conditions summarized on a 30 minute interval throughout the day. I will be able to plot by day, month or year as we go along. Since the weather here varies quite a bit and it is quite different here on the point than it is inland this will be very helpful information for our gardening.
We have been taking some time off too. We have friends in Tusket, near here, that we see often. They have a nice old house on the Tusket River and are organic gardeners. John edits a professional journal and Andrea works at the Yarmouth hospital. We found a wonderful concert series at the cathederal in St. Bernard, about 45 minutes up the coast. This granite, gothic cathederal was built by local people between 1910 and 1945. It is an amazing building for this area and has fantastic acoustics. We go every Sunday afternoon through June. We see our other neighbors Gary and Judi and Vaughn and Charlie for 'over the fence" chats on a regular basis. Sue walks down the point almost every night (five miles round trip). We go to town for breakfast, to visit the YMCA, and for supplies or supper quite regularly. I am putting together a web site and hope to have that ready by the end of June. We have taken some walks around our berry patch site down the road and it is doing well. Looking forward to the harvest in late summer and early fall.
Our "open foundation" policy attracted a new addition to our family. One of the cold and rainy nights a wretched looking, young, small sized, wet and dirty, black and white long haired female cat showed up. We thought she belonged to neighbors up the road but after she had been here for a week we found out she didn't. At first she was very skittish but as time went on she became very much in need of affection and attention that Sue was very ready to provide. Regular food and warmth helped her quite a bit and she is really a lovely little cat. Ben seems to be fine having her around. They play and explore together. Next week she goes to vet for health check and neuter routine. Hopefully, no more animals will show up before we get the house closed in again.
June promises to be a busy month. We think we will have the garage finished by the end of the month, will have the foundations closed in sooner than that. We are off to a wedding in Toronto on the 19th and will bring Sue's belongings back to Yarmouth with us. They can go into storage in the garage. We will be doing floor leveling, roof work, getting ready for electricians, central heat installation, and insulation. Hope to have my shop area set up too. But, we have leaned to take this experience one day at a time so plans and schedules are somewhat flexible.
In any case, we are pleased with where we are, what we are doing and the progress we are making.
June 24th, our third month on renovations. Things are going great around here if one can stand a little dust and the general disorder of the construction process. We feel that we are making good progress.
This will be remembered as the month of the garage. The carpenters came early in the month and started putting up the structure. It is really a neat building. On the lower level are two car bays and a shop space. On the upper level is a full loft. At 24 x 32' it is a pretty good sized structure. The roof pitch is the same as on the house (steep) so it fits very nicely with what was here before. The garage is mostly up so we will be moving into it to free the house for concentrated renovation effort. We decided to put a steel roof on the back of the garage so we can collect the water into a cistern to supplement our well water supply. Sue has become an accomplished shingle installer.
While doing the garage we discovered several things. The loft space of the garage was a little above the mudroom roof elevation. From the mudroom roof there is a great view across the river. We decided to build a deck over the mudroom roof and connect it to the loft with a door. Next we found that the master bath area floor was at the same elevation as the garage loft. We redesigned the master bath to have a windowed door dormer going out to the deck. Now we can move from the master bath to the upper level deck to the garage loft. Since the loft will be a major storage area it is very convenient. The view from the master bath and deck is just wonderful. The ability to design as we go along when we discover new things is a real advantage. Our carpenters are very good at spotting details and potentials for the place too. They are working out well for us.
We finished the foundations!! All the rock and concrete work got done and we replaced the one very bad support beam in the back. We have things as level as we can get them with what we have to work with. Any irregularities will be the "charm" of living in an old house. It was nice to get the house closed in again.
One set back was the chimneys. We found out that both of them were in very bad shape and could not be used. When we started to take them down the most we had to do was tap lightly with a hammer to remove a brick. Many of the bricks just lifted off with no hammering necessary. We deconstructed both chimneys and recovered what brick we could. It will make nice paving at some point. We will replace the chimneys with prefab units for our stove and and oil heater.
We bought a nice enammeled wood stove for the back room. We decided to keep an old Quaker brand oil burning kitchen stove as one unit for the kitchen. Sue saw one in use down the street and it had good reports as a cooking unit. We will also get a small propane stove to use as well. Have a kitchen designer coming in for a consultation in July.
For recreation we have continued to go to the weekly Sunday concerts in the church in St. Bernard. Heard the Northumberland Brass and the Yellow Dory Trio (organ, violin, cello) as two concerts. Have found several nice places to eat on the way back to Yarmouth along the local road. Our friends Gary and Judi Archibald went with us to one concert and showed us some of the good sights to see on the way back. Also found a place called the Graff Brothers which is a building materials recycling shop. We go there before the concerts to see what might be useful. The selection changes weekly.
On June 15th we left for an extended trip to Toronto. The original focus was to go to the wedding of our friends Jo and Gerhard. That was still the focus but lots of other good things came up too. We were able to go to the retirement get-together for our friend Dale at Unionville HIgh where Sue used to teach. We got to see and spend time with Al and Doris Yancy (Al retired from Unionville too). We went to the wedding and had a wonderful time. The exciting event for Sue was getting to meet her new grandchildren (Donald, 2, and Sherri-Lynn, 4) who had just joined her daughter's family while we were there. We had brunch and playground time together with them. Sue was in heaven and is looking forward to going back for a visit in August. Off to Kingston to see Sue's Dad and to meet the trucker so we could get Sue's belongings moved to Yarmouth. We loaded the truck and headed out ourselves to meet the truck driver again in Yarmouth. Stayed with Ian (Sue's brother-in-law) and Ann in Fredericton and were back in Yarmouth on the 24th of June by 2 pm. Trucker came in at 5 pm and we unpacked to the garage. It was a hectic day.
House had changed a bit in the time we were gone. Construction on the garage had progressed and the doors and windows that had arrived were installed. The front of the house had new skylights and roofing. The dormer was started. Inside had been stripped more and exposed a problem wall that had little support and will be rebuilt.
Anticipate a busy July with windows for some areas arriving, grading of site to be finished, electrical work, plumbing and central heat to be done. Walls will be being rebuilt, roofing will be finished, garage will be completed, chimneys will be added. Insulation and siding will be started. And, we are looking forward to having company too.
In any case, we are still loving what we are doing. Every day is a new adventure and we are seeing progress on the house.
When we left the story in June, Sue and I were just returning from our trip to Toronto, Kingston and Fredericton. We got back on June 24th and the trailer truck full of Sue's belongings arrived shortly after we did. We spent the last part of June getting ourselves moved into the garage and loft space and getting electrical work done in garage. Downstairs we have the kitchen, dining area, composting toilet room, and workshop of power tools. Upstairs in the loft we have our sleeping area and lots of storage space. It is really quite comfortable.
Our carpenter crew moved on to finishing the roof, east side room/kitchen space, and mudroom. We are pleased that the roof cap is now complete for the whole house. We put on new roofing and replaced facia and sofit as needed. All that remains on that is the painting. The east side room and kitchen space needed quite a bit of structural work so those walls are all new material. We will save the old boards and posts/beams for use elsewhere. The new windows went into the end wall to open up the view to the river. The light and the view are wonderful.The subfloor is in too so it feels like a room. The mudroom has a new dormer for the door, new floor and new windows. It is going to make a fine entrance area for getting out of outdoor coats and boots and into more appropriate indoor duds. Carpenters have begun working on the outside walls doing insulation and repairing window frames and sills where needed. Main job for August is getting outside walls secure and ready for finish.
We have had the central heating system installed. The furnace and ducts took up a good part of the basement and the crawl spaces but all that shows in the rooms are small heat duct openings in the floor. In addition to the central heat we will have a wood stove in the daybreak (east side) room and an oil stove in the library. I will add some additional ducts from the attic to the crawl space for warm air circulation. We are going to have to experiment with the system but we know we have enough heat to deal with the cold winter. We do need to get our insulation in order this fall.
Sue and I have been busy with finish work. She has continued to shingle and is making good progress on the garage. I have been trying to keep up with the painting and small carpentry tasks. I rebuilt the hall floor, put trim on garage doors, and built a drain gutter for water collection from garage roof, among other little projects.
The grading contractor came back at the end of the month with the big backhoe and a bulldozer. I had them for a day to rearrange the site. We got the area around the garage graded and covered with crushed shale for parking. We placed three well casings to create a 9 foot deep cistern to collect water from the garage roof. We had the area just in back of the house lowered to get drainage away from the building. Had to take out about 3 feet of soil at one point. The bulldozer operator did a great job of blending all the extra soil back into the existing land forms so it looks very "natural." We also took the opportunity to lower the area in the "view shed" from the daybreak room by several feet to get a better view to the fields and river. I am very pleased with the results of that day's work.
Our friends Dale and Rita from Toronto visited at the end of the month so we took a couple of days to go paddling with them. Had a good time exploring a couple of areas along the south coast at Shelburne and Port Joli. Lots of great paddling to do in the future.
All in all a very productive month. We are leaving here for the first two weeks of August. Dan is heading for his daughter's wedding in San Francisco and Sue is heading for Toronto to visit her daughter and new grandchildren. After that we are back here for the big push to get the house secure and warm for winter living.
August 24th was the end of the fifth month we have been here and working on the house. It was a busy month for both traveling and the house, even with us away for a couple of weeks.
The last week in July we celebrated a community birthday party for Sue and two neighbors who also had birthdays in late July or early August. We had a nice potluck with the neighbors in and our paddling friends Dale and Rita from Toronto. During this week we also went sea kayaking, got our 'landed immigrant' application done and mailed, painted trim and did shingles. We were mostly trying to tie up odds and ends before our trips during the first part of August.
We left Yarmouth on the 30th of July to head for San Francisco (Dan) and Toronto (Sue) via Maine and Connecticut. While we were gone our contractor trio concentrated on getting the outside shell of the house completed. Essentially, this meant putting on new shingles and front siding, fixing window frames and sills where needed, and painting the trim, especially the roof cap.
On August 2nd Sue took off from CT to visit her daughter and her new grandchildren in Toronto. On the 4th Dan took off with his sister, brother-in-law, and Mom to go to his daughter's wedding in San Francisco. We both had wonderful times at our respective destinations. We regrouped in CT on the 12th to head back to Yarmouth finally arriving back here on the 14th.
Wow! What a change. The house exterior had been transformed. All the old siding was gone and the new shingles (siding on the front) were complete except for some work on the back of the house. The windows were mostly finished. The house sure looks like a new place. The rest of the month has been a continuation of trying to get the house fully closed in and the trim painted so we can move on to doing insulation and the inside.
The other major tasks have been getting the electrical system upgraded and the cistern in operation. The electrician has been here the last 10 days installing new wiring throughout the house. That is progressing well and should be finished by the end of the month. Dan sealed the cistern and rearranged plumbing so it will fill from rainfall runoff from the garage roof or from the well. We pull water into the house from the cistern now. It is a great improvement to supply as the cistern will hold more water than the well.
We managed to get in an organic farmers market morning, a trip to Halifax, and more sea kayaking over the last few days but are now back to working on the house. We are very pleased with the progress that was made while we were gone and looking forward to getting things moving on the inside of the house now that the foundations, roof and walls are secure.
September 24th marks just a year since we purchased our house and the end of six months on our restoration project. We are moving toward fall weather here and making satisfactory progress toward having the place cozy for the winter.
The electrical work that had been in progress in August got completed. That was a big job but now the whole house is up to code and inspected. The arrangement was designed 'on site' by walking from room to room and going through the imaginary turning on and off of lights and appliances. It's a good system to use. We are pleased with our placement of lights, switches and phone jacks so far and still not too late for minor changes.
The outside of the house is a about 90 percent done. There are little matters of trim, second coats of paint and porch replacement that need to be done. That is, a number of little one day jobs to get things done. None are critical to our comfort.
Inside we made excellent progress. Dan got the tub/shower unit installed in the downstairs bathroom. Gerald (one of our regular workers) got the flush toilet installed in the guest bathroom upstairs. The oil furnace was activated so now we can heat the whole house. There are still a lot a air leaks so we won't turn it on much until we get all the insulation in and all the windows and doors fixed.
The major work has been on framing interior walls where needed and putting in insulation and sheetrock (gyproc). The kitchen/daybreak room is mostly done. The loft space over the kitchen is back in place. The library is mostly finished and we are ready to turn on the oil stove in there. The front guest room is done and liveable (but not painted and decorated). The master bedroom and bath, closet and loft is all framed. Other spaces are in various states of having been torn apart or partially put back together.
Dan has been working on restoration of wood windows. It involves taking out the sashes; removing glass without breaking it (I'm at about 60% success and improving); cleaning, stripping, reparing of the frames; reinstallation of glass and cutting new replacement pieces; painting; and finally, putting the window back together. It takes about five days a set but we can have more than one set going at a time. I can see where most people think it is too much bother and just replace all the windows. But, we like the old glass and the character of the old windows.
Sue started the month by putting shingles back on the mudroom wall. She took shingles off of that walls months ago and we saved them along with other old shingles from the house. Since that time the walls were insulated and resided with plywood scraps. Sue put the old shingles back on. The wall is beautiful with its mottled silver gray patterns of shingles. In the middle of the month she left for a visit with her Dad in Kingston, Ontario. His health has been failing and she wanted to make a visit to assess the situation and provide care if necessary. He seems stable now and I expect her back by the end of September.
We had visitors spend a few days with us. Sue's friend, Mike, from England was here for a week. He was the first person to get to use the front guest room. He helped Sue with the shingles on the mudroom. Megan (Sue's neice) and her partner, Rick, came over for the Labor Day weekend. Megan helped me with reorganization of the web page. See our update with new photos at http://home.klis.com/~chebogue. It wasn't all work. We went for drives and walks and just took it easy part of the time.
We did a 'night at the opera.' Peter and Julia, friends in Port Maitland, organize this party several times a year. We 'dressed up', took a potluck tray, and met with about 20 other couples at their house. The pattern is eat one course, listen to an act of opera, eat a second course, and so on. It was great fun. There was lots of time to socialize and we met a number of interesting new people. Dan got to go to the art opening at Sign of the Whale, our local gallery. There was a reception for about 12 artists who had their work on display. Nice show with lots of watercolors.
We are enjoying the beginning of the fall weather. It is warm during day but cooler at night. Air is a bit more dry and the skys are clear. Waiting for the first frost which we expect will be in October.
The end of last month found me doing windows and Sue in Kingston visiting her Dad who was ill and failing. Sue got back from that trip on the 30th having spent a productive two weeks with what turned out to be her last visit. Her Dad died quietly on October 17th. We made a trip to Kingston at the end of the month for a memorial service on the 25th. It was well attended by all of the family and many friends. Her Dad now rests with his wife, Joan, in a beautiful cemetery in Kingston. The trip to Kingston was a long drive and a pretty exhausting six days. But, we did get to see all of Sue's family and had stops at their houses in Fredericton and Montreal on the way out and back.
My major task this month has remained doing windows and doors to try to get the outside house envelope as secure as possible. I got all of the windows that had broken panes done and redid the front door with good weather shield. Took door off, stripped it, filled damaged areas, and put in two window panels. I still have five house window sets and windows on porch and around doors to restore but they can wait until Spring. It takes about a week to do a set and I don't want to open up the house to potentially bad weather and heat loss. In between windows I did get to do a few other smaller jobs. Let's just say there is always something to do.
Sue finished up the shingle job in the mud room, did painting and stripping, took care of running errands and keeping us in groceries and clean laundry. Our friend, Nina, came for a two week visit. That gave Sue a chance to 'finish' the guest room with a bed, chair, table and lamp. Looks great. Nina and Sue went looking for property for Nina in case she decides to move here. We took her on a trip to show her some of the wonderful places on the French coast part of Nova Scotia. Visited friends, Nicholas and Sarah, in Port Maitland who are also restoring two old houses. Had a Canadian Thanksgiving dinner with Vaughn and Charlie, our neighbors over to meet Nina and share our meal. A BBQ turns out to be a wonderful way to cook a turkey! Vaughn and Charlie's cheese factory down the road is in production now so we have a selection of unique European style cheeses available.
While Nina was here we had a cold snap with low temperatures and wind. It started to get chilly in the garage where we have had our living quarters since June. Since we had a heated house and more or less finished kitchen/daybreak room space we decided to move in. It was a good plan. We can now cook, wash, and sit around in a comfortable inside space and use the garage for storage of materials. To top it off, our Viking gas range arrived and was installed in its final location. It is a wonderful stove and we are enjoying using it. But, I must say, our two burner Coleman did a good job for us too. We are still sleeping in the garage loft but that is okay. We just snuggle down under the covers.
The carpenters focused on getting gyproc on the walls of all
the rooms, getting the plumbing extensions installed, and doing
vent work for the cooking stove. The bedroom/master bath is next
on the list for completion so we can move in there before the
winter really sets in. They also moved on to working on the lodge
being built by our next door neighbors so we are sharing their
time now.
In addition to house stuff, Sue and I have become more active
in TREPA (Tusket River Environmental Protection Association) (www.trepa.com).
We have been going to board meetings, have volunteered to do the
newsletter, helped with the farmers market and did a 'beach sweep'
morning at a local beach.
Basically, we met our objective of being in a weather proof and heated house before winter set in. We still have a lot to do but much of the pressure is off so we can take our time on doing the finish and decoration which promises to be the 'fun' part. Then, on to the landscape survey and design!
At this time last month we were involved in our trip to Kingston for the memorial service for Sue's Dad. After the service we came back by way of Montreal and Fredericton, arriving here on the 27th and needing a good rest.
We finished getting the kitchen arranged inside of the house. The stove vent was installed. Cabinets were moved in. We placed tables and slate together to make a useable 'trial' island to see how it will work. So far, so good.
We were still sleeping in the garage loft at the end of October but it was getting quite cool at night. By November 5 it was getting downright cold in the loft, especially for getting up in the morning, so we decided to move the bedroom furniture into the loft guestroom even though it wasn't finished. It does have sheetrock and is mostly done. It gets great heat from the woodstove downstairs and has the nice quiet loft space off of it. That is where the TV, a few books, a carpet and soft pillows are located. On Sunday, November 7, my birthday, we had our first snow flurries.
Work on the house has included finishing of one porch window, start of restoration of main entrance door, start of rebuilding of last six over six porch window, final stripping and sanding of trim and baseboard and its reinstallation, installation of a floor in the mudroom using old boards, placement of door between the mudroom and the kitchen, building of a door for the guest bathroom, installation of a few light fixtures in the kitchen, building of some coat racks for the mudroom, moving of Sue's valuables into the house and rearrangement of the library space. Sue has been doing a great job at getting things reorganized so we can find things and operate in a more normal home pattern than we had while living in the garage.
We made a decision about the middle of November to work on 'house stuff' just half a day. That left the other half a day for other things. We decided it was time to 'get a life' other than restoration of the house. It was a very good decision and has relaxed our lives considerably. Sue has been taking line dancing and meditation classes, baking bread in her new machine, getting ready for Christmas, and running lots of errands into town. Dan has been working on the newsletter for TREPA, a local environmental organization, reading, and doing other little projects for fun. One of these is an archeological dig of the old barn foundation in back of the house. We plan to expose it and use the inside for a 'sunken' garden. Doing it a little at a time on warm days (we still have some) has turned up many old artifacts as the area seems to have been used as the house dump after the barn fell down.
Our work crew is still away working on the lodge our neighbors are building. See http://www.troutpoint.com/index.html for details. That has slowed our work down quite a bit. We have a few outside jobs, finishing of sheet rock and plumbing, and completion of the downstairs bathroom as big outstanding items. There is plenty to keep us busy though, including starting on cabinets and shelves, and as soon as the lodge has a roof and is winter secure we will get part of the crew back to do our work again.
I am sure you are familiar with the idea of planning one's work so things only have to get moved and stored once. It doesn't work! When we started tearing things apart we had to store construction material we were saving in the back but avoiding where grading would take place or where the garage would be built. It worked well. But, after we finished the garage and daybreak room (view to sunrise) the stored material was right in the middle of the best view to the river. We decided to sort it, make a woodpile of scrap and store the good material inside the garage where it will be protected. But, first we had to clean and rearrange the garage. It took us about four mornings of work to get it done but now all is secure and the view is much improved. The only thing left of the stored material is a big pile of rocks waiting to be placed in a wall. Our new motto is "move it three times, use it once".
The web page is being updated with new photos and a new section on architecture and history of the house. Visit us at http://home.klis.com/~chebogue. Looking forward to going to Toronto for Christmas and being back by New Years. Not at all concerned about Y2K. We figure morning will come on January 1st, 2000 and the sun will rise as usual. We plan to do the same.
Here it is the year 2000 and we are all still here. The sun did come up and we were up early to watch it rise on New Year's day. Thought this would be a good time to get you caught up on what we have been doing and bring 1999 to an ending.
With our carpenter's out on another job, us trying to maintain our schedule of working on house stuff only half a day, and holiday activities, the renovation process slowed down a bit.
Dan's main project was to complete the door and window on the front porch. The door we used was an old four panel wood door. It needed stripping and repairs for a start. Sue and our helper, James, did most of that. We took out the two top wood panels and replaced them with glass so the door is similar to that in the 1945 photo we have. The remaining six over six window had to be repaired and reglazed too. It was the worst one yet as far as condition but it is now restored and installed. Porch still needs trim and finish work but it is secure from weather now and protects the inside door.
We continued the dig on the old barn foundation and have about half of it exposed. Sue and James have been doing that job too. They are great at finding the remains of old pots and dishes which we will glue back together. It is like doing a three dimensional jigsaw puzzle with some of pieces missing. Lots of fun. They will end up as displays in the house decor.
Dan made a mockup cabinet to try his hand at their construction. We need them in kitchen, bathrooms, hall, and mudroom so have a many to do. We are using the European 32 system to build them which is what you find being used in most cabinets you buy these days. We are using the old lath for the panel infill on doors with other recycled wood for the frame. Making good use of planer, router and sanding machines. Have found we need to bring the lath inside to dry and shrink before we do the panel infill. Learned enough on the mockup to feel okay about building the rest.
We got some framing of walls in downstairs bathroom/pantry done so that room is starting to shape up. Gyproc, plumbing, trim remain where they were. They will become new year projects and we hope to get started on them in January.
On December 1st we had our first 'stay on the ground' snowstorm. It was a big wet snow and lasted a couple of days. Made the driveway rather mushy so after the snow was gone we had two more loads of crushed slate brought in to fix the drive base. It is much improved. We haven't had any major snow since then. Weather has been quite mild and mostly above freezing.
Sue has been doing a great job at keeping the house stuff going. Living and working in same space increases the need for organization and cleaning considerably. She took a course on antiques so we will be better informed as we need things for the house. Sue is also a 'country stomping senior' doing line dancing several times a week. Has met a number of new friends so our social contacts in the community keep expanding. Dan will join her for couple line dancing in January.
Over the holidays we visited with friends in the area, went to a wonderful Christmas program at the local church where we will be getting married, and left on the 18th to visit Sue's daughter, husband and grandchildren in Toronto. We took a few days to get there stopping to visit family and friends along the way. Had a wonderful time in Toronto with the family and did some shopping for tools and house items not readily available here. Ferry was cancelled on the way back so we had to drive around the Bay of Fundy to get back home. We were home on the night of the 30th much to the delight of the cats, and us.
New Year's eve we went to gathering at home of local friends and had a nice time bringing in 2000. Met more folks interested in house renovation and sea kayaking so expanded our community of friends a bit further.
We have found Yarmouth to be a very comfortable place to live so far. We have made great progress on the house and on building a circle of friends with common interests. Looking forward to what the new year will bring.
I thought it was about time for me to tackle the monthly report and catch you up with life from my perspective. So here is Sue's first report....
While the winter landscape outside our windows demands that 'real' gardening wait, we have been getting wonderful results in other soil.....our human garden is blooming!
Our house has been full of friends all month. Ian, my brother-in-law, got married on December 27 to a delightful lady named Anne. She is a high school business teacher and met Ian through church activities a year ago. They had a very small wedding with just children and parents in attendance, then came over to visit us. We provided the 'honeymoon suite' for a few days. The construction zone decor didn't seem to bother them one bit! Ian has had a very rough 2 years since my sister died, and it is so goodl to see him laughing and loving again.
Dan has been on-call as chef all month and coming up with some wonderful dishes. His pot roast is now on record as "the best our friends have ever tasted". I'm getting pretty good at churning out bread from our new bread maker, so meals have been delightful. I have discovered that while I have been turning off the noise because of my ADD, I have been missing the music. So we are adding Andre Bocelli to our meal times. How nice to have the house full of music again.
Nina has joined us. We first met Nina at a Permaculture Course in Nova Scotia five years ago. She has been dreaming of buying a small farm in Nova Scotia for years, and that dream is now a reality. She came for a visit and bought property 2 miles away at the head of the Chebogue River. Sound familiar? We have been going through the ups and downs of real estate searching with her for a week now, but she finally landed. She has 27 acres of beautiful land which backs on to the river, a large barn, a cute house, and a floating dock which provides constant deep water access. I told her to watch out....the kayakers are coming! When she went over to pick up the keys from the realtor and meet the seller he casually mentioned that he was sure she would enjoy the island. "Island? What island?" Turns out she owns half of an island in the middle of the river that wasn't mentioned on the listing. Guess how high she was when she got back to our place! The community is gathering.
Thanks to line dancing, I have found a new girlfriend-- Ann Cain. During a break in the dancing one day before Christmas we started talking, and the rest, as they say, is history. We are like two peas in a pod. I have never met anyone with whom I share so many common experiences. For example, hanging above her sofa is a large painting she did of Big Bend National Park in Texas.....the place we found our cat Ben, who we named after the place. It has been a real joy to watch our friendship develop. She and her partner, Neil, are landlords in town and are quite skilled in the art of drywall mudding. So, as all the property stuff with Nina was going on downstairs, they were upstairs with me in the upper hallway putting on another coat of 'mud'. Mudding is not rocket science, but there certainly are tips which make it easier. We got the hallway mudded, Nina got her property bought, Dan got the pot roast done on time and we all had a lovely, celebratory evening meal.
Our friend Harry, the fellow with whom we spent 6 months in Vemont, will be visiting next month. He is at a stage in his life where things are changing, so who knows what will happen with him.
Yarmouth is also proving to be a very rich place to live in terms of its history, culture, geographical beauty and local people.
One afternoon before Christmas, after putting in my 4 hours of sanding on the front door, I decided to do some research on the man who built this house, David C. Weston. That meant going to the museum in town. The 10 mile drive took me along the shore line of the Gulf of Maine. There was no fog, so the view over the open ocean was spectacular, and periodically I got treated to large sprays on the rocks as the waves hit land. Parking in town is always available, so I quickly found my way into the Archives at the Museum. A friendly lady spent 2 hours with me searching through documents. Seems our Mr. Weston was a Master Mariner, which means 'higher than a captain'....a real sailing professional. We found several records of his voyages, and traced his genealogy back for 5 generations, all of whom are buried in the Town Point Cemetary behind the church in which we will marry next year.
While doing some Christmas shopping at our favourite co-op craft store, The Sign of the Whale, we noticed a sign for a meeting of the Yarmouth Craft Guild. We attended that meeting. It was the 'Christmas social' so we had lots of time to talk with folks. The first people we chatted with were Ann and Ron Day. Ann is the woman who stands in front of me at line dancing class. She and her husband, Ron, are doing exactly what we are...renovating an old house as a retirement project! Ron and Dan actually sat beside each other at a Router workshop the week before. Small world here in Yarmouth. They called over Margaret and Bill, their neighbours out on Lake Annis, who are about 3 years ahead of all of us in this renovation game. We learn that Margaret's father is a well-known canoe builder in Nova Scotia, and we spent the next hour talking about canoe building and paddling styles! We left the evening with an invitation to visit their homes and go paddling next Spring. Our social network is growing in all directions.
Our first contacts upon moving here last Spring were with the Organic Gardening group. That has proved to be fertile soil. Andrea's partner, John, has become a very good friend for Dan. They introduced us to TREPA, (Tusket River Environmental Protection Association), and we are now both active members. Dan has volunteered to do the newsletter and I am working with fund raising issues. Nancy and John Castlebury, also part of this group, are both members of the Buddhist community here in NS. John offers courses in meditation, and I am in the throws of trying to 'keep the monkey in my head quiet'. The class is on our sixth evening of 'sitting' together. Making time for quiet meditation each day is proving very valuable.
Jackie Scholfield is a respected alternative practitioner in town, and she has started a Yoga class. I did my first 'Cat' exercise last week, and will continue attending.
Judy and Gary, our neighbours, are now Trustees for the Town Point Church where our wedding will take place. Gary has started a "Friends of the Church' group, and we will join that and get involved in some restoration activities. A candle light Christmas service was held at the church in December. A group of 6 teenage girls sang acapello Christmas carols/songs.....surrounded by candle light...beautiful.
My Antique course held a field trip to visit antique stores. The trip was a success on many fronts. I got shown the location of several excellent stores, got to know the other class members much better, and also got introduced to a wonderful, historic town, Annapolis Royal. For any of you visiting Nova Scotia in the future, make time for a visit to Annapolis Royal. It is well worth it!
Ben, our first cat, just joined me at the keyboard. He has flourished on Chebogue Point, and seems absolutely content here. He is a wonderfully affectionate being, and always finds time for a couple of snuggle sessions per day. He has Itzy and Ezra for cat company, large fields to explore and trees to climb right outside the door.
Life is good.
Sue
P. S. I started this report saying that 'real' gardening would have to wait. Wrong! I just walked into the kitchen and Dan and Nina are hard at work ordering seeds from Johnney's Seed Catalogue. Guess I'll have to get him one of those T-shirts saying: Life is simple....eat, sleep and garden!
We did make progress on the house construction too. The biggest change is in the downstairs bathroom where we finally got most of the plumbing done, got the framing up for walls and ceiling and got all the gyproc in place. It is now ready for final mudding, cabinets and counters and painting. It is going to have a nifty pull down ironing board.
We also got a big batch of lath prepared for cabinet front infill and it is drying in the bay window room to be ready for use. Trim on doors in kitchen and bath has been installed. Mudding on gyproc has progressed. That particular task seems to take a long time and make a big mess. We will be glad when that is finished and we can give all the walls a coat of primer paint.
Plumbers came in for a couple of days and finished the major part of the piping, drains and venting systems. All that is left is installation of sinks and other minor jobs. We will have an outdoor shower on the back deck which will be very nice for summer use after gardening.
The last week of January has been very exciting as a series of blizzards have passed through. We had a big snowstorm on 17th, a few days of respite, then another big storm on the 21st-22nd that really dumped a load of snow. We typically get 30 mph winds with gusts to 50 mph. The snow comes along horizontally. Big drifts are created in one place then as the wind changes the drifts are moved to another location. At the end of the last storm the final resting place of a 6 foot drift was in our driveway! Between the snow plow and our wonderful farming neighbor at the end of the point, James Trefry, we got it cleared enought to get the car out.
So, at end of 10 months we are still doing just fine. By the end of February we hope to have gyproc all mudded and sanded, trim on all doors, windows and loft edges, and be ready to do some painting and work on cabinets and counters. In between we will keep up our activities with TREPA, do some line dancing, enjoy our neighbors and community, and take some time to do things we just feel like doing.
February has turned out to be a turning point month. We feel we are now more into creative construction and finishing than into tearing out and basic structural work. What a good feeling to have counters going in and finish paint going on. Looks like the last 10 percent of the work is the part that finally shows.
At the end of January we went to Connecticut to see Dan's family. We started from Yarmouth at 5am on the 28th in a snowstorm and drove to Digby to catch the ferry. Once we got across the Bay of Fundy into New Brunswick and Maine we hit clear skys and dry roads and the weather cooperated the rest of our trip down and back. We spent a few days in CT visiting and packing some of Dan's belongings into the van. We took another day to visit friends in VT and headed back to Canada.
We had a good experience at immigration/customs at the border. Immigration gave Dan a one year visitor pass while papers for permanent resident status are being processed. That is much more comfortable than the six month passes he had been getting. We had prepared a master list of all goods which Dan will eventually bring into Canada. They keep that list at the customs station and check off items as they come in. Anything on the original list comes in duty and tax free. Now we can make multiple trips to the storage unit in CT and get that cleaned out and moved to Yarmouth.
We finally got back home on February 5th and spent the next couple of days unpacking and reorganizing. Dan's futon couches have turned the 'daybreak' room into a very inviting space. Then it was time to get going on construction again. Dan and his helper, James, worked on trim and cabinets. We pulled back one of our contractors to spend a full week finishing the sheetrock job. At mid-week we finally got to move sleeping quarters into the master bedroom, a major milestone. By the end of the week all the rooms but one were done and the house looked like we had had a snowstorm inside. We spent the whole weekend cleaning from top to bottom. But no more sheetrock dust!
On a trip to Halifax on the 21st, we spent most of the drive discussing decorating details. Stopped by Lee Valley Tools to pick up 'butcher block' counter tops. By the time we got home, we had made many decisions about paint colours, wall paper locations and the designs of the base cabinets under all the sinks. These decisions are now being acted upon, and each day brings another completed touch to a room. Feels good!
Our friend Nina moved into her farm on the river just three miles away. She and Sue are doing a Yoga and exercise program and walking over 5 miles a day. Sue does line dancing regularly and Dan and Sue are doing couples line dancing once a week. It's lots of fun and gets us to meet a whole new group of people. Sue actually made it into the Halifax Chronicle Herald in a photo titled "Line Dancing Queens"! We went to a wonderful concert of Acadian music at the church in St. Anne du Russeau (we think that's a neat name for a town). The church is a magnificant wooden 'gothic' structure with full decoration of gold leaf and paintings inside. The concert had a full Acadian choral group and the Nova Scotia Symphony playing to an overflow crowd. The French and English don't seem to have any of the political tensions here that exist in other areas of Canada.
Plans are developing nicely for the wedding. We invited Joan, the caterer, out for lunch last week and have plans pretty well in place for the reception/picnic in our back yard. Monday we have our second meeting with the Minister to work out details of the ceremony. Sue has started looking for dresses.....this time NOT at Frenchy's! (the famous local bargain shop) Our neighbours gifted us with wine making equipment so we can make our own label for the wedding. If all goes well we will be in production soon! This will be a new experience about which we have heard many tales - both good and horrific.
The weather seems to have broken into a Spring like mode but we are not counting on it to last. We had snow on Easter last year. The days, however, are getting noticeably longer and the sun is rising closer to the east each morning. It is wonderful to sit in our 'daybreak' room and watch the sunrise over the river. Sue says it often looks like the tundra in the NWT when the sunrise hits the marsh/water just right. The cats are all doing well and starting to go outside for longer periods each day.
We are looking forward to our one-year anniversary of being here next month.
On March 25th we celebrated our first year anniversary of being in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. We had a potluck supper with about 20 people. The group included the first people we met here, our neighbors, friends from the community, and our contractors. It was nice to bring together the diverse group that has grown up around us over the year and had some connection to our house and its renovation.
We made some great progress in March. Things we do now are starting to show and give the place a bit more of a 'finished' look.
One of our major tasks was getting counters in the bathrooms and kitchen so we could have the plumbers come back and put in the sinks. We got that done early in the month so the plumbing is now finished. The kitchen counters are mostly butcher block and the baths upstairs have counters made of wood recovered from old walls. We finished building shelves in the pantry so we have much more storage space than before.
One of Sue's major joys is the dish drying rack we built into a kitchen closet. This is a closet with racks for washed, but still wet, dishes. It has an open bottom with a drip tray, a grid for utensils above that, and racks for dishes and glasses in the rest. Sue washes the dishes, hits them with a rinse, and puts them in the closet to dry. No tea-towels needed. Above the sink we installed the lovely stained glass done by Sue's daughter, Karen.
Sue has been busy painting. She has done a great job finishing all the walls with white primer to give the house a consistent finish. It is much better than the raw sheetrock. She also painted the floor in the master bath and some of the trim. We are experimenting with colors to see what we like best. We have a combination of 'putty' colors, a very dark green and a very dark cranberry that we are using for now. The 'putty' colors will be used on floors and trim to unify the house. Other colors will be used as accents or 'room colors' in the rest of the house. We don't know what those will be yet.
Some rooms have a bit of wallpaper. For our 'daybreak' room we papered a wall with 12 topography maps of south Nova Scotia with Yarmouth on the southwest. It is great to see where we are in context of our region. It is amazing how much open land, rivers, and lakes we have around us, to say nothing of the sea coast. Wow! What a place to be. We plan to have friends help us put map pins in for water access points, trails, interesting buildings, scenic locations, and so on.
Workshop space in the house has been moved back to the garage and shop. That makes the bay window room ready for its final coat of sheetrock filler and painting. Right now the flooring for the kitchen is stored there waiting to be installed on April 10. With the kitchen floor (birch) installed and the bay window room done, we should finally be free of major dust sources.
It is getting warmer here and starting to feel like Spring. The days are getting longer very rapidly and we are enjoying a bit of a warm spell. The cats have noticed the change too and spend more and more time outside rather than in the windows looking out. We know, however,that we can still get a cold spell so it is not time to plant our garden yet. Will start some plants inside, though.
On the social scene, we have been busy: Sue to an environmental conference; both of us to line dancing every week; opera recital; and a choir and dance program. We get together with friends frequently for dinner and conversation and see our neighbours almost every day. Sue has been doing yoga and walks with our friend, Nina, and Judi, our neighbor across the street. Plans for the wedding are developing nicely. I spent several days reorganizing our web site to make it easier to access the photographs. The permaculture portion of the site is still being developed. The address for any who would like to visit is http://home.klis.com/~chebogue.
We feel very pleased with the progress we have made on the house and in developing a community of friends in the last year. Things have gone well according to our 'general plan' to be in the house for the winter and have it ready for our wedding in July. We have a reasonable 'to do list' and are looking forward to progress over the next few months. It is great to be at the stage where each day's work makes a visible difference.