Greetings to You.
Here's hoping you had a wonderful Christmas season and are looking forward to a great New Year!
We've been a mix of busy and relaxed.
Christmas brings it's own work but we were able to set aside house construction for a bit and have a little holiday fun beginning with a visit from my mom. She was here Dec 12-19th, so that's when Christmas started for us.
This year we enjoyed an experience we've never had before, we hiked out to the back "35" with a sled and a saw and harvested a couple spruce trees for decorating. Kinda cool to get your Christmas tree from your own property!
The Youngest got one for her room, partly since she has the biggest bedroom which can accommodate a tree, but also because we were trying to make the house as festive as possible for Gramma's visit.
There is a third reason.. we are the proud owners of two Christmas tree stands.
Being I knew we would have a real tree this year (our "backyard" is full of them) I snatched up a stand as soon as I saw one at the Salvation Army thrift store. All the stands were priced $4.99, except the one I picked. Of course it wasn't until I got to the cash that I realize that there is no price tag. I apologized and told her that all the rest were priced for $4.99. She gave it to me for $3.99 since I was honest. Cool! Discounts at the thrift store, I'm OK with that!
A couple days later, I am in the second level of the wood-shed outbuilding. One half of the flooring up there seems a little rickety and so I have "barred" it off with some orange, surveyor tape. All of us have walked across it at some point but I don't need guests falling on through and injuring themselves. Well, I guess I have only ever been up there in the late afternoon when the sun shines in through the west window making the East half look even more dark and scary and so between the rickety floor boards and the darkness I haven't explored that area of the building. Imagine my surprise and slight annoyance after just purchasing a tree stand, when I ventured up there in the morning with the sun shining brightly in the East window and what should I see at the far end of the rickety floor?
A Christmas tree stand!
Well, I didn't stay annoyed for long. Instead I quickly came to the thrilling decision that we'd have TWO trees and left it at that.
Along comes the prepping for Gramma's visit. The newer and much cleaner stand gets used in the bedroom. We'll clean up the dirty, wood-shed one when we put up the main tree later.
All goes well with tree number one. Although I gleaned from that experience that "installing" a real tree is much more work than one might guess.
The day comes for tree number two to grace our living room with it's beauty. I begin to clean the second tree stand only to discover that it had a hole in it and wouldn't hold water. Blah.
That'd be the reason John Smith left it behind in the first place I reckon! haha.
Well, we weren't about to take the first tree down to use the new stand and neither were we about to go without a tree in the living room. So we Macgyver'd a milk-jug into that leaky stand to hold water and after a little bit more "work" (albeit fun enough work) we had a not-quite-Charlie-Brown-but-almost-tree in our front room.
We were ready for Christmas.
Almost ready that is. I still had to put my wood-stove and skills to the test for Christmas baking. Thankfully my list of goodies has considerably shrunk over the years to only three or four special things that we are pretty sure Christmas can't be done without. I am of the strong opinion that far too much sugar is consumed at Christmas and being it comes at us from every which way, I refuse to be the main source, but I will make a couple things to keep up special traditions.
Well, the wood-stove complied. Christmas was safe again this year even with the challenge of making cookies in an oven that is 200 degrees in one spot or moment and 450 degrees elsewhere.
The trick? Small pieces of wood added frequently. DO NOT leave the oven and it's contents unattended. Make use of the timer. Rotate trays often. It was kinda hard not to be overly proud of myself as the baking was turning out. :)
Christmas brought another first for us. It was the first time in 26 years that our family was divided for the celebrations. I can't deny, I shed tears. Thank goodness for Skype and Amazon. Gifts were delivered and we could visit using today's amazing technology.
I had planned to have a Christmas greeting and walk-around video of the house to post on Christmas day, but turns out I had a doozey of a headache and even had to miss the festivities at the S.S.I.L's
The grand tour will have to wait.
But the place is shaping up. We had the neighbours in for "a bit of Christmas" and they were blown away by how much we have accomplished in such a short time.
I'm glad they were impressed. I'm still looking forward to the day we'll have a shower and bathroom sink.
Until then? We are becoming experts at packing our stuff for having showers at the S.S.I.L's. We rarely forget the deodorant or towels anymore and it no longer feels strange to brush my teeth at the kitchen sink.
But here's to the up-and-coming New Year and the day when we'll have more then one source of running water in this house!
And may your 2017 be blessed with something wonderful that you have been anticipating as well!
Cheers!
Thursday, December 29, 2016
Sunday, December 11, 2016
Older than Canada eh?!
According to John Smith, the fellow we bought from, this house is supposed to be 170 years old with a hundred year old addition.
If that's so, part of it is older then Canada!
Canada became a country in 1867. So for almost thirty years before legal papers were drawn up making Canada a true country, people built, lived in this house and farmed the land. Sweat, laboured, bled, laughed, cried, hoped and dreamed. They probably worried about things like crops, having enough wood and food to get them through the winter and prayed for sick loved ones and ailing animals.
Babies were born.
Children grew.
Folks died.
And all the while, it was in the works for the country of Canada to be born.
Wonder how long it took for the news to reach this farm way out East?
Wonder if the people working this piece of land thought it would be a good idea or bad?
Turns out we can't believe everything John Smith told us. He did say after all that this place was "Tight" and that we "Wouldn't see many mice" in this house. Well, not only have we trapped close to twenty we just saw one running across the living room floor the other night! Twenty minutes later the Man-Son saw one up-stairs! So either that was the same mouse with teleportation abilities, or we have more than one.
So, although we want to believe John Smith was correct about the age of our house so we can brag about how OLD it is.....his facts don't add up to the story we heard from our neighbour regarding this place.
The great-grandparents of East and West Neighbours lived here. They are a little unsure whether Great-Grampa built or bought the house, so maybe it was twenty or thirty years old when they moved in? But this is what they do know.....
William & Mary McMillian married, lived here and started a family. Then sadly William died at a young age leaving Mary alone to raise four children.
(Now this next bit of history is where the claims of John Smith don't add up.)
Shortly after the death of her husband a Ship's Captain approached Mary and made a proposition he, being a widower with children himself, needed a "helping hand". He would double the size of her house if she would care for his four youngsters. Being he was "away at sea" for long periods, the children needed a mother. Mary agreed to the arrangement and the addition was built.
See how the seventy year gap between the main house and addition don't jive. If Mary and her husband built the place, she would have been an elderly lady before the addition was built, I don't think she would have taken on anyone's orphan children, no matter how well behaved they may have been way-back-when!!
So either William and Mary bought this house when it was a few decades old or John Smith was embellishing. Being John is on a "drink-daily" plan, he isn't getting my vote!
It's been suggested that we could possibly find out the age of our house at the local governmental offices....but I haven't the time for that.....I'm OK with just saying and knowing that our house is OLD.....over a hundred years old.
I do sometimes wonder about the eight children that were blended together to make one family. How many were girls? Boys? Their names? Who got what rooms? What did they do with their days?
When the Youngest mentioned one day that she was having a hard time organizing all her stuff I suggested she look back to the original children of this house for inspiration. They wouldn't of had much, maybe she could narrow down her belongings? She didn't jump at my suggestion, but it is kinda cool living in a place with history.
Even if you are unsure of all the details it's still inspiring to know that years ago people did with this land the very things you hope to do, live off it.
If they could keep this place up-and-running for well over a hundred years, in the days before running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, refrigeration, gasoline, motor vehicles, grocery stores and fast-food: then there is a good chance, with a little determination and lots of hard work and learning we can figure out how to be less dependent on those things as well.
We have become Stewards of a bit of earth where there will be a mutual caring for one another. What we put into the land will be given back to us. It's part of God's plan and provision.
Round and round goes the circle of life.
It truly is a marvel, Earth, this creation of God's.
It's been recycling long before blue and green boxes and government up-pick programs.
After all this was God's promise to man-kind after the Flood.
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Genesis 8:22
We believe God's promises to be so reliable that we have big plans for gardens and orchards! And we have all winter to map it out.......
If that's so, part of it is older then Canada!
Canada became a country in 1867. So for almost thirty years before legal papers were drawn up making Canada a true country, people built, lived in this house and farmed the land. Sweat, laboured, bled, laughed, cried, hoped and dreamed. They probably worried about things like crops, having enough wood and food to get them through the winter and prayed for sick loved ones and ailing animals.
Babies were born.
Children grew.
Folks died.
And all the while, it was in the works for the country of Canada to be born.
Wonder how long it took for the news to reach this farm way out East?
Wonder if the people working this piece of land thought it would be a good idea or bad?
Turns out we can't believe everything John Smith told us. He did say after all that this place was "Tight" and that we "Wouldn't see many mice" in this house. Well, not only have we trapped close to twenty we just saw one running across the living room floor the other night! Twenty minutes later the Man-Son saw one up-stairs! So either that was the same mouse with teleportation abilities, or we have more than one.
So, although we want to believe John Smith was correct about the age of our house so we can brag about how OLD it is.....his facts don't add up to the story we heard from our neighbour regarding this place.
The great-grandparents of East and West Neighbours lived here. They are a little unsure whether Great-Grampa built or bought the house, so maybe it was twenty or thirty years old when they moved in? But this is what they do know.....
William & Mary McMillian married, lived here and started a family. Then sadly William died at a young age leaving Mary alone to raise four children.
(Now this next bit of history is where the claims of John Smith don't add up.)
Shortly after the death of her husband a Ship's Captain approached Mary and made a proposition he, being a widower with children himself, needed a "helping hand". He would double the size of her house if she would care for his four youngsters. Being he was "away at sea" for long periods, the children needed a mother. Mary agreed to the arrangement and the addition was built.
See how the seventy year gap between the main house and addition don't jive. If Mary and her husband built the place, she would have been an elderly lady before the addition was built, I don't think she would have taken on anyone's orphan children, no matter how well behaved they may have been way-back-when!!
So either William and Mary bought this house when it was a few decades old or John Smith was embellishing. Being John is on a "drink-daily" plan, he isn't getting my vote!
It's been suggested that we could possibly find out the age of our house at the local governmental offices....but I haven't the time for that.....I'm OK with just saying and knowing that our house is OLD.....over a hundred years old.
I do sometimes wonder about the eight children that were blended together to make one family. How many were girls? Boys? Their names? Who got what rooms? What did they do with their days?
When the Youngest mentioned one day that she was having a hard time organizing all her stuff I suggested she look back to the original children of this house for inspiration. They wouldn't of had much, maybe she could narrow down her belongings? She didn't jump at my suggestion, but it is kinda cool living in a place with history.
Even if you are unsure of all the details it's still inspiring to know that years ago people did with this land the very things you hope to do, live off it.
If they could keep this place up-and-running for well over a hundred years, in the days before running water, indoor plumbing, electricity, refrigeration, gasoline, motor vehicles, grocery stores and fast-food: then there is a good chance, with a little determination and lots of hard work and learning we can figure out how to be less dependent on those things as well.
We have become Stewards of a bit of earth where there will be a mutual caring for one another. What we put into the land will be given back to us. It's part of God's plan and provision.
Round and round goes the circle of life.
It truly is a marvel, Earth, this creation of God's.
It's been recycling long before blue and green boxes and government up-pick programs.
After all this was God's promise to man-kind after the Flood.
While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Genesis 8:22
We believe God's promises to be so reliable that we have big plans for gardens and orchards! And we have all winter to map it out.......
Tuesday, November 29, 2016
When You Live in a Very Old House
There are things in old houses that you won't find in young ones.
Floors that are so slanted, children could race marbles on them.
I have a bag of marbles, just gotta find me some children!!
Round things, like tubes of chap-stick, will roll off the nightstand if you don't stand it up-right and will keep on rolling as if in competition with those marbles!
Almost every piece of furniture needs a shim or wedge to stop it from rocking. But even then it doesn't prevent it from looking like it belongs in the "crooked little house owned by the crooked little man". This dresser is so slanted in "person" that my OCD-self has to refrain from paying too close attention. If you look at the right side of the dresser you see that it is closer to the wall at the base of the mirror than higher up.
Square, hand-made nails. How mind-crushing boring would that job have been? Making hundreds of nails by hand! Enough to build a two-story, four-bedroom house!!! I think folks were made of tougher stuff back then....
Door hinges that were made back-in-the-day when there was "pride in workmanship".
Evidence of the time when the house had hydro installed. There were two or three of these holes in every room that was papered. It's how they "fished" the hydro cords to the switches.
Pictures, kinda spooky ones, fall out of the "woodwork" literally.!!!
And when you Google the names on the tombstone you find this picture, the owner of the house, before John Smith, and husband of poor Nellie May (1919-1941) who died in childbirth.
You have the kind of basement that salamanders thrive in. We've found two healthy specimens so far!
The panes in the windows give everything enough of a warp that sometimes you are unable to identify the bird sitting on a branch just outside it. Also, plants may grow between the inside and storm windows.
You have extra chimney holes in the ceilings and floors.
The floor boards, for all that they look amazing and you love their days-gone-by appeal, have massive gaps between them. They were installed before the wood was dry. Now thanks to shrinkage you have to vacuum out the dirt since sweeping doesn't help much.
There are hooks everywhere....as opposed to closets.
Out of a dozen or more doors, very few latch. With the heaving and settling that happened over a hundred plus years, most of the face plates and latch bolts on the door don't even line up with the hole and strike plate on the door frame. (Yes, I had to Google "door knob parts" or else I would have being saying "the thing-a-ma-bob isn't connecting with the watcha-ma-call-it".)
See where the paint is scraped away? No latching there!!
There is horse hair in the plaster. Poor horses. Just how did they "donate" hair?
You call the always-on-the-ready collection of mouse traps throughout the house......
.... "The Trap-line".
The zillions of cluster-flies threaten to turn you into a crazy person. The evil pleasure and wicked laughs you give after a particularly difficult "kill" leave your family worried about your sanity. Having to deal with these flies means there is a fly-swatter on each level and vacuums with long hoses ready for service.
(I know!!! Christmas stocking stuffers!! Everyone can have their own personal fly swatter for their room!! Brilliant!)
There are "layers" and covered-over things. Layers of wall-paper, plaster, drywall, plywood and paneling that covers where doors and windows used to be. Seems like the front door was sacrificed to make room for the modern "water-closet".
The apple tree in the front yard looks older than the house.
Out-buildings are on-the-lean and in need of restoration themselves and full of collectibles (would-have-been-collectibles if they had of been properly stored that is)
There is antique farm equipment in the woods with trees growing through it.
And this car, although not a hundred years old, looked ancient enough to make it in this post. :)
Then there's things like this.....where you have no idea what it was for....
Floors that are so slanted, children could race marbles on them.
I have a bag of marbles, just gotta find me some children!!
Round things, like tubes of chap-stick, will roll off the nightstand if you don't stand it up-right and will keep on rolling as if in competition with those marbles!
Almost every piece of furniture needs a shim or wedge to stop it from rocking. But even then it doesn't prevent it from looking like it belongs in the "crooked little house owned by the crooked little man". This dresser is so slanted in "person" that my OCD-self has to refrain from paying too close attention. If you look at the right side of the dresser you see that it is closer to the wall at the base of the mirror than higher up.
Door hinges that were made back-in-the-day when there was "pride in workmanship".
Evidence of the time when the house had hydro installed. There were two or three of these holes in every room that was papered. It's how they "fished" the hydro cords to the switches.
Pictures, kinda spooky ones, fall out of the "woodwork" literally.!!!
And when you Google the names on the tombstone you find this picture, the owner of the house, before John Smith, and husband of poor Nellie May (1919-1941) who died in childbirth.
You have the kind of basement that salamanders thrive in. We've found two healthy specimens so far!
The panes in the windows give everything enough of a warp that sometimes you are unable to identify the bird sitting on a branch just outside it. Also, plants may grow between the inside and storm windows.
You have extra chimney holes in the ceilings and floors.
The floor boards, for all that they look amazing and you love their days-gone-by appeal, have massive gaps between them. They were installed before the wood was dry. Now thanks to shrinkage you have to vacuum out the dirt since sweeping doesn't help much.
There are hooks everywhere....as opposed to closets.
Out of a dozen or more doors, very few latch. With the heaving and settling that happened over a hundred plus years, most of the face plates and latch bolts on the door don't even line up with the hole and strike plate on the door frame. (Yes, I had to Google "door knob parts" or else I would have being saying "the thing-a-ma-bob isn't connecting with the watcha-ma-call-it".)
See where the paint is scraped away? No latching there!!
Door knobs (or the lack of them) and key holes look like this.
Door frames....look like this.....plus they are surrounded by old plaster....
There is horse hair in the plaster. Poor horses. Just how did they "donate" hair?
You call the always-on-the-ready collection of mouse traps throughout the house......
.... "The Trap-line".
The zillions of cluster-flies threaten to turn you into a crazy person. The evil pleasure and wicked laughs you give after a particularly difficult "kill" leave your family worried about your sanity. Having to deal with these flies means there is a fly-swatter on each level and vacuums with long hoses ready for service.
(I know!!! Christmas stocking stuffers!! Everyone can have their own personal fly swatter for their room!! Brilliant!)
There are "layers" and covered-over things. Layers of wall-paper, plaster, drywall, plywood and paneling that covers where doors and windows used to be. Seems like the front door was sacrificed to make room for the modern "water-closet".
Out-buildings are on-the-lean and in need of restoration themselves and full of collectibles (would-have-been-collectibles if they had of been properly stored that is)
There is antique farm equipment in the woods with trees growing through it.
And this car, although not a hundred years old, looked ancient enough to make it in this post. :)
Then there's things like this.....where you have no idea what it was for....
Anybody getting on the "antique-side" themselves that know what it is? ;)
Monday, November 28, 2016
Random Scandom
If it seems like my blog posts are getting further and further apart, it's probably because they are. Most likely it's because we have left behind the new-and-exciting and gotten down to the old-nitty-gritty. Until we do something different like "buy animals" ....... inspiration may be a wee sparse.
The lack of bulk-material, also makes it difficult to fill a whole blog. We are mostly dealing with small or tedious things. So I've decided that every once in awhile I will fill a post with just random, assorted stuff :)
Closets.
They say when looking at prospective real-estate property you should always check for the amount of closets/storage space. Well, I did notice that three out of the four bedrooms had closets but I failed to notice there wasn't any, anywhere else! No linen, no coat closets, no shelves..... nothing. The fact that the previous owners had stuff EVERYWHERE should have clued me in don't ya think?! So one of two things are going to have to happen ... We either have to narrow down our belongings (again!) or we'll have to add more work to our already long to-do list and build storage places. The decrepit mud room is coming off in the spring to build on a new, sturdy, insulated one so I am going to make sure a coat closet is included! Being we are gutting the bathroom to have a fresh start, hopefully we'll be able to carve out a place for towels etc. But where to locate a linen closet, that'll be a tough one. Maybe we'll all get a "personal" linen stash to store in our rooms.
Wallpaper
Word of advice to anyone considering buying and restoring a very old house. Wallpaper is a great way to hide the imperfections that the walls are covered in, just don't buy wallpaper with lines/stripes. NOTHING is straight in antique houses and pasting lines on the walls will only show that to be the case to everyone who looks at it.
Sigh, here's hoping everyone will be so busy looking at the wood cook stove they won't notice the askew wallpaper. It's like the leaning tower of Pisa around here. But it still suits "old-country kitchen" don't you think?
Speaking of ....Wood Cook Stoves.......it's been a challenge but we have risen to meet it..... I think. That is if we aren't too frozen and cocooned in blankets while watching a movie. We have some learning to do yet, some fans to buy for moving hot air from the kitchen, some weather stripping and insulation to install but we are starting to wonder if another heat source may be needed to keep the far edges of the house warm. A neighbour suggested a heat-pump for the large open concept living and dining room so we are going to look into that.
Bathroom
Now that the kitchen is mostly functional - stove, sink, fridge and counter-top (no cupboard doors or a floor yet)
Geoff has started gutting the bathroom. Ick. Not a fun job.
You just never know what you will uncover when you start taking walls down in an old house. First came off wood paneling that was glued on, not nailed. Then drywall, with wallpaper on it. Next, sheets of plywood, lastly the plaster. Under the plaster was a bit of insulation but there were plenty of gaps too so it was off to the hardware store to restock up on pink fiber-glass. Geoff has discovered where a front door used to be. When this house was built there was no indoor "water-closet" (or really any closets for that matter, see above :) so one had to be "carved out" as the dandy-COOL!-we-don't-need-an-outhouse-anymore-inventions became available. Guess the loss of a front door, which was mostly used only for company, was a sacrifice worth making. Now the guests would use the first side door, family used the second. Our guests can't come in the "guest door" as the skeleton key is busted off and it's permanently locked. So, for this winter the Man-Son covered the whole thing up with plastic and it's stopped the howling. Come spring we'll do something about making it accessible, but for now, if you visit, you are family and you come in the back-side door, OK?!
One final thought on the bathroom, I noticed that Geoff first took out the vanity, then the shower and now it's the walls he's working on, while the "throne" sits there waiting patiently for it's removal.
I joked and asked, "You saving the best for last?!"
.......... which he didn't think was funny...but can you blame him?
That's hazmat-suit material right there!!
Well, I was going to also talk about our new-to-us wringer washer (which is probably a post in-and-of- itself).....
......the garbage we are discovering all over the property now that the foliage has died down.....
............. our water-treatment system........
and how it's not all-work-and-no-play, (Case in point - we were invited to a neighbour's birthday celebration which consisted of his 85 year old mother making him a yummy cake and us helping eat it!! Any excuse to eat cake is a good excuse!)
....but alas.....my blogging time is up, time to stop playing with words and pictures and get back to work.
Stay tuned for more random scandom to be posted sometime in the near future!!
Monday, November 21, 2016
Caution. Construction Ahead.
Construction not just ahead but behind, beside, above, below and all around. We're pluggin' and sluggin' and it's coming along....but in ten minutes I was able to whip up this list ......
How to tell if you're living in a house under "destruction".
Food, dishes and tools are all using the same space. At the same time.
There is always a piece of sawdust or something sharp, sticking into your sock or slipper.
When you sweep the plywood floor that is waiting for flooring to be installed you can never be sure you are getting all the dirt. Between the paint splotches, marks, scrapes, stains etc. you can only hope you are managing to collect the loose stuff.
Many trips are made to the hardware store. Like sometimes three in one day.
Tools and stools are sometimes needed by multiple people at once.
The living room furniture is covered in sheets.
The supper table is set up in the living room. The china cabinet drawers are also in the living room, but the cabinet itself is still in the barn, waiting for either a nice day or for two strong guys to be available at the same time.
The vacuum is not just used for cute little dust bunnies.
The laundry has more work-clothes in it than "town" clothes (What do civilized folk wear? I'm starting to forget)
Your Kijiji searches are for steel doors, windows, tubs, sinks, ceiling fans.
You move the same items DOZENS of times since stuff is ALWAYS in the way.
There is a ladder in your dining room along with a mostly finished bag of insulation. Actually there is drywall in there too and ........well fine, so it's not a dining room just yet.....
The You-Tube videos you hear your husband listening to are usually about home construction until recently when he was listening to ones to help him with winterizing the trailer.
There are at least six cans of paint lying around that come "in a set" with stir stick, brush all wrapped up in a bag to keep the paint from drying, latex gloves and a paint can opener.
The two tables designated for tools aren't big enough and tools will find themselves on almost any surface that is flat.
There are copious amounts of dust. Everywhere.
Bags of garbage are found, well, just about anywhere. With the final goal being as close to the van as possible for that day when another dump run might be made!
There isn't one room that is completely done. Most are being lived in but all of them need something finished, like trim, curtain rods, painting in closets, etc.
Every day you hear "Where's the....?" or "Has anyone seen......"
You find yourself wanting to play hooky and just take a day off, but how can you? There is so much going on, so much to do, so many things calling your name and it's all happening "in your space"!
Must. Keep. Going.
And that is how you can tell if your home is undergoing a bit of an over-haul.
How to tell if you're living in a house under "destruction".
Food, dishes and tools are all using the same space. At the same time.
There is always a piece of sawdust or something sharp, sticking into your sock or slipper.
When you sweep the plywood floor that is waiting for flooring to be installed you can never be sure you are getting all the dirt. Between the paint splotches, marks, scrapes, stains etc. you can only hope you are managing to collect the loose stuff.
Many trips are made to the hardware store. Like sometimes three in one day.
Tools and stools are sometimes needed by multiple people at once.
The living room furniture is covered in sheets.
The supper table is set up in the living room. The china cabinet drawers are also in the living room, but the cabinet itself is still in the barn, waiting for either a nice day or for two strong guys to be available at the same time.
The vacuum is not just used for cute little dust bunnies.
The laundry has more work-clothes in it than "town" clothes (What do civilized folk wear? I'm starting to forget)
Your Kijiji searches are for steel doors, windows, tubs, sinks, ceiling fans.
You move the same items DOZENS of times since stuff is ALWAYS in the way.
There is a ladder in your dining room along with a mostly finished bag of insulation. Actually there is drywall in there too and ........well fine, so it's not a dining room just yet.....
The You-Tube videos you hear your husband listening to are usually about home construction until recently when he was listening to ones to help him with winterizing the trailer.
There are at least six cans of paint lying around that come "in a set" with stir stick, brush all wrapped up in a bag to keep the paint from drying, latex gloves and a paint can opener.
The two tables designated for tools aren't big enough and tools will find themselves on almost any surface that is flat.
There are copious amounts of dust. Everywhere.
Bags of garbage are found, well, just about anywhere. With the final goal being as close to the van as possible for that day when another dump run might be made!
There isn't one room that is completely done. Most are being lived in but all of them need something finished, like trim, curtain rods, painting in closets, etc.
Every day you hear "Where's the....?" or "Has anyone seen......"
You find yourself wanting to play hooky and just take a day off, but how can you? There is so much going on, so much to do, so many things calling your name and it's all happening "in your space"!
Must. Keep. Going.
And that is how you can tell if your home is undergoing a bit of an over-haul.
Wednesday, November 16, 2016
Snap. Crackle. Pop.
That's not the sound of our breakfast cereal, it's the sound of dry wood taking off in the stove. And what a lovely sound it is too!
As you can well imagine we are enjoying the heat from the wood stove after a couple months living with space heaters in a few closed off rooms. Walking bare-foot across the floors at night, to-go-you-know-where, is no longer an exercise in torture.
But heating and mostly cooking with wood is going to take some getting used to that's for sure!
Geoff doesn't think chicken nuggets and hash-brown patties are meant to be cooked in wood-stoves.Getting the temperatures up to over four-hundred degrees is challenging. And so far we haven't done it. It is only the first time using the oven and I am typing this as I wait for the timer to go off, but we are realizing that we have some learning to do.
Thank goodness I don't usually serve such things to my family and this is only a temporary problem, (frozen, pre-packaged food) as we live without a usable kitchen.
But making bread is going to be a challenge. Temperature is supposed to be 350 for thirty minutes. At the moment we have all kinds of coals in the fire box, added a bunch of small stuff, opened the draft to allow oxygen at it and it's all the way up to two-hundred and fifty. Hummmmm. Got a ways to go yet!
I started this post a couple days ago and since then we have figured out that what we need for hotter temperatures is smaller pieces of wood and an already hot stove/oven. ("pre-heat oven" has a whole new meaning!!) I have read before that sticks burn much hotter then logs and that many people the world over use sticks to cook with (of course they have stoves made to utilize sticks efficiently and it's largely cause there is no other option). But even here on our property, there are piles more sticks then logs. We'll have to get into the habit of gathering branches and twigs as often and as much as possible, and it's in the plans to build a rocket stove in a summer kitchen to make use of small wood and branches and to keep the heat of cooking outside in the summer months.
Some things a cook stove doesn't have -
- A handle where you can hang your tea-towel.....need to find a solution to that, since at the moment I don't have cupboard doors to hang them on either.
- A bottom oven drawer, now where am I going to put my muffin tins and such?
- Dials for lowering the heat, when a pot starts to boil, well she is going to BOIL and there isn't a lot you can do about it....except drag it all the way across the cooking surface, the right side is less hot than the left which is where the fire box is.
- An oven light - I may end up with a flashlight in the kitchen?
- A timer or any of those fancy electronic "gadgets" like "Delay cook time"- that's OK, I'll use my IPod to remind me not to burn supper.
- Broil - hummm....and I have those two or three recipes that we enjoy and need to be broiled....
Things a cook stove does have or give...
- Warmer boxes - I put our dinner dishes in there to be warmed and ready for our food.
- Huge cooking surface area - every inch of the cook surface is available. I haven't tried to see if all my pots will fit on the top at the same time, but if they do that means I can cook using all of them at once. (although the "when she boils, she BOILS!" could be a problem if the whole surface is covered)
- Soft butter! This time of year my gas stoves never warmed the room enough to keep the butter soft and the furnace was always lowered at night so buttering toast in the morning was almost impossible, but now that our heat source is in the kitchen!? Soft butter. Nice.
- A kettle that is always ON. Actually it was all we could do the first few days to not keep asking someone to "Turn off the kettle, please". Then a neighbour gave us a gadget, a metal disk full of holes for placing the kettle (or pot) on, to keep it hot but preventing it from boiling dry, we like the quiet most of all. It's not a whistling kettle, but it pops, bangs and hums while boiling and there is always the worry that it will run out of water. (and when you are bringing the drinking water in from a different location you don't want to boil it all away)
- Exercise - stacking wood, splitting wood, lugging wood, scouring the forest for kindling ...Who needs a gym membership?!
- Ashes - I knew there would be ashes, of course, in the ash box and then we would take that box and dump it into the galvanized trash bin outside and "be done with it". What I didn't count on was the "poofs" of ash that float out and about and land where ever they please. I'm realizing that I will have to lower my standards of what the definition of clean means.
- Stacks of wood, boxes of kindling, bags of newspaper and bit and pieces of stuff always on the floor. Again, re-defining "clean".
- Lessons in common sense - when the fire is going the surface is HOT. At least we haven't melted anything, but the "Pass me that pot, so I can put it away" caused a scream and a can't-believe-I-was- just-that-stupid moment. Lesson learned. Thankful for lavender essential oil!!
- Bumps-in-the-night .....that'll take some getting used too. The sounds of logs shifting during burning.It happened once while I was the only one up in the still-dark morning, and I can tell you it gave me a bit of a fright.
But all-in-all, although the learning curve is steep, and although the food isn't always what we were hoping for or of the quality we are used to, it's proving to be a fun and interesting challenge that we are glad we took on.
You'll just have to excuse me if I don't invite you over for supper right away......gotta practice a bit more. ;)
As you can well imagine we are enjoying the heat from the wood stove after a couple months living with space heaters in a few closed off rooms. Walking bare-foot across the floors at night, to-go-you-know-where, is no longer an exercise in torture.
But heating and mostly cooking with wood is going to take some getting used to that's for sure!
Geoff doesn't think chicken nuggets and hash-brown patties are meant to be cooked in wood-stoves.Getting the temperatures up to over four-hundred degrees is challenging. And so far we haven't done it. It is only the first time using the oven and I am typing this as I wait for the timer to go off, but we are realizing that we have some learning to do.
Thank goodness I don't usually serve such things to my family and this is only a temporary problem, (frozen, pre-packaged food) as we live without a usable kitchen.
But making bread is going to be a challenge. Temperature is supposed to be 350 for thirty minutes. At the moment we have all kinds of coals in the fire box, added a bunch of small stuff, opened the draft to allow oxygen at it and it's all the way up to two-hundred and fifty. Hummmmm. Got a ways to go yet!
I started this post a couple days ago and since then we have figured out that what we need for hotter temperatures is smaller pieces of wood and an already hot stove/oven. ("pre-heat oven" has a whole new meaning!!) I have read before that sticks burn much hotter then logs and that many people the world over use sticks to cook with (of course they have stoves made to utilize sticks efficiently and it's largely cause there is no other option). But even here on our property, there are piles more sticks then logs. We'll have to get into the habit of gathering branches and twigs as often and as much as possible, and it's in the plans to build a rocket stove in a summer kitchen to make use of small wood and branches and to keep the heat of cooking outside in the summer months.
Some things a cook stove doesn't have -
- A handle where you can hang your tea-towel.....need to find a solution to that, since at the moment I don't have cupboard doors to hang them on either.
- A bottom oven drawer, now where am I going to put my muffin tins and such?
- Dials for lowering the heat, when a pot starts to boil, well she is going to BOIL and there isn't a lot you can do about it....except drag it all the way across the cooking surface, the right side is less hot than the left which is where the fire box is.
- An oven light - I may end up with a flashlight in the kitchen?
- A timer or any of those fancy electronic "gadgets" like "Delay cook time"- that's OK, I'll use my IPod to remind me not to burn supper.
- Broil - hummm....and I have those two or three recipes that we enjoy and need to be broiled....
Things a cook stove does have or give...
- Warmer boxes - I put our dinner dishes in there to be warmed and ready for our food.
- Huge cooking surface area - every inch of the cook surface is available. I haven't tried to see if all my pots will fit on the top at the same time, but if they do that means I can cook using all of them at once. (although the "when she boils, she BOILS!" could be a problem if the whole surface is covered)
- Soft butter! This time of year my gas stoves never warmed the room enough to keep the butter soft and the furnace was always lowered at night so buttering toast in the morning was almost impossible, but now that our heat source is in the kitchen!? Soft butter. Nice.
- A kettle that is always ON. Actually it was all we could do the first few days to not keep asking someone to "Turn off the kettle, please". Then a neighbour gave us a gadget, a metal disk full of holes for placing the kettle (or pot) on, to keep it hot but preventing it from boiling dry, we like the quiet most of all. It's not a whistling kettle, but it pops, bangs and hums while boiling and there is always the worry that it will run out of water. (and when you are bringing the drinking water in from a different location you don't want to boil it all away)
- Exercise - stacking wood, splitting wood, lugging wood, scouring the forest for kindling ...Who needs a gym membership?!
- Ashes - I knew there would be ashes, of course, in the ash box and then we would take that box and dump it into the galvanized trash bin outside and "be done with it". What I didn't count on was the "poofs" of ash that float out and about and land where ever they please. I'm realizing that I will have to lower my standards of what the definition of clean means.
- Stacks of wood, boxes of kindling, bags of newspaper and bit and pieces of stuff always on the floor. Again, re-defining "clean".
- Lessons in common sense - when the fire is going the surface is HOT. At least we haven't melted anything, but the "Pass me that pot, so I can put it away" caused a scream and a can't-believe-I-was- just-that-stupid moment. Lesson learned. Thankful for lavender essential oil!!
- Bumps-in-the-night .....that'll take some getting used too. The sounds of logs shifting during burning.It happened once while I was the only one up in the still-dark morning, and I can tell you it gave me a bit of a fright.
But all-in-all, although the learning curve is steep, and although the food isn't always what we were hoping for or of the quality we are used to, it's proving to be a fun and interesting challenge that we are glad we took on.
You'll just have to excuse me if I don't invite you over for supper right away......gotta practice a bit more. ;)
Friday, November 11, 2016
All in a Day's Work.
For me, if I had to use one word to describe my daily life at the moment, it would be
LUGGING.
It seems like I do a lot of it.
Lug stuff from the trailer.
Lug stuff to the trailer.
Lug items into the house.
Lug items outta the house.
Lug things upstairs.
Lug things downstairs.
Lug that to an outbuilding.
Lug this from the barn.
Lug heavy boxes.
Lug bundles of cardboard.
Lug bags of garbage.
Lug pails of clean water.
Lug buckets of dirty water.
(This water cleaned only ONE closet!!)
Lug armfuls of wood from one spot to the next getting ever closer to the stove.
Lug loads of laundry to the laundry-mat.
Lug it home again.
Lug countless tools here until they are need over there, and then whatta I do?
I lug 'em.
Where do I start? I'll start with breakfast this morning.
So, the fire had died down over night. To be expected. Geoff starts working at getting it going and being it will be awhile before it's hot enough to boil the kettle and since most of the breakfast stuff is in the trailer anyways, I decide to "lug" the kettle, a jug of water and a couple of mugs, from last night's "tea in the house", out to the trailer. (we've only had six mugs all this time, one each and two extra for guests, so everyone is responsible to know where their mug is)
I open the trailer door and what's that I smell? A wee whiff of propane that's what.
Meaning the tank is empty.
I turn off the oven's pilot light, say a prayer of thanks that an empty laundry basket is there in the trailer and start to fill it up so that I can....? LUG it all to the house. Cause now I am taking the kettle and two mugs back plus all the stuff I need for breakfast. Small plates, spoons, knives, bread, bagels, jam, peanut butter, yogurts, camping toaster and with an "Am I forgetting anything?" I squish, squish, squish back to the house. The jug of water gets left behind, there are more in the house. (In cause you are wondering, No, I did not forget the butter, it was in the house)
Geoff has the fire going. The kettle starts to pop and wiggle as it responds to the heat.
But the bread and bagel aren't doing anything on the camping toaster, except..... dry out.
Plan B - use a cookie cooling rack. Where are those?
In the trailer.
(which is obviously better then being in a box! and they worked like a charm too.)
And that is how it goes.
For breakfast.
Lunch.
Supper.
And two "coffee" breaks a day.
Then there is the work of fixing up an old house.
Some days the only person who could see that you got anywhere is.....yourself.
No one else knows what you had to do to get that corner looking like it does now.
Often "now" isn't even pretty or nice looking yet.
Take scraping wall paper for example.
Some comes off easy and some with immense struggle.
Water is needed for the job. Where is the water? In the trailer.
Need to add vinegar as well. Where's the last place I saw that?
Spray bottles need filling. Over and over again.
Step stools need bringing up or down, cause they are always being used elsewhere at some point. Tools for scraping.... gotta find those.
Then you step off the stool and slip on the wet peeled paper. Gonna break my neck if I don't clean that up! Gotta go get a bag for garbage.
And where is the broom now?
So you finally get all you need, figure out a system and get into a good rhythm.
Spray, soak, scrape, shift stool, pick up garbage, repeat.
And you think, "Now we're cooking!"
Then you come to a random screw sticking out of the wall. Not a nail that you can just pull out like the dozen you have encountered before, but a held-in-tight screw.
There goes your GROOVE right out the window.
Downstairs you go, hoping that a medium-size-plus-shaped screw driver is still on the tool table. It is!! Yay!
Screw comes out. Rhythm begins again. It's just going good when you see a head appear on the stairs and hear a voice say,.....
"You got the plus screwdriver up here?"
Sometimes, it's phone cord stapled along the floor board. You follow it to see where it leads. It takes you to a frayed end. A dud. So that's gotta come out. You try to pull it out with your bare hands, it doesn't budge. You'll need a straight screwdriver and hammer to pop up each staple and pliers to pull it all the way out. You know that cause this isn't your first phone-cord rodeo! Where are those tools? Not on the same level as you are to be sure!! And so you struggle along that line of "endless" staples that have been painted over and are happy-where-they-are and you feel sorta proud and accomplished as you stand up with your "prize"of several feet of old phone cord. You wrap it up to stick in the garbage and look around for the broom, hoping it's still in your vicinity, cause now you have staples to get off the floor, and you aren't interested in picking them up one-by-one. By now the garbage bag is full to bursting and you wonder if you'll get all those wee bits of metal in without them spilling over, but you're thankful at least that it isn't a new bag with a hole in the bottom, cause you have had one of those before too.
You turn to look back at your morning's accomplishment, thinking how much better it looks. To anyone else they see old plaster with cracks, scrapes, many colours, imprints from old wall paper, crumbling plaster in spots, floor boards that are chipped and showing two or three colours of paint.
But to you, it's only several buckets of warm, soapy water away from being primed.
Cause after you scrape, you gotta scrub off residual glues.
Oh, wait, primer isn't next?!
No, mudding is.
Oh, I almost forgot. Then I can prime?
Nope, then we gotta sand it.
Of course!
.......And then we'll probably have to mud a second time.
"Where IS the pail of mud now? you wonder and you kinda doubt that the step stool will still be here when it's mudding time....but whatever....better start looking for the tools and supplies you'll need for the next job...once you prioritize what that job will be, that is!!
LUGGING.
It seems like I do a lot of it.
Lug stuff from the trailer.
Lug stuff to the trailer.
Lug items into the house.
Lug items outta the house.
Lug things upstairs.
Lug things downstairs.
Lug that to an outbuilding.
Lug this from the barn.
Lug heavy boxes.
Lug bundles of cardboard.
Lug bags of garbage.
Lug pails of clean water.
Lug buckets of dirty water.
Lug armfuls of wood from one spot to the next getting ever closer to the stove.
Lug loads of laundry to the laundry-mat.
Lug it home again.
Lug countless tools here until they are need over there, and then whatta I do?
I lug 'em.
Where do I start? I'll start with breakfast this morning.
So, the fire had died down over night. To be expected. Geoff starts working at getting it going and being it will be awhile before it's hot enough to boil the kettle and since most of the breakfast stuff is in the trailer anyways, I decide to "lug" the kettle, a jug of water and a couple of mugs, from last night's "tea in the house", out to the trailer. (we've only had six mugs all this time, one each and two extra for guests, so everyone is responsible to know where their mug is)
I open the trailer door and what's that I smell? A wee whiff of propane that's what.
Meaning the tank is empty.
I turn off the oven's pilot light, say a prayer of thanks that an empty laundry basket is there in the trailer and start to fill it up so that I can....? LUG it all to the house. Cause now I am taking the kettle and two mugs back plus all the stuff I need for breakfast. Small plates, spoons, knives, bread, bagels, jam, peanut butter, yogurts, camping toaster and with an "Am I forgetting anything?" I squish, squish, squish back to the house. The jug of water gets left behind, there are more in the house. (In cause you are wondering, No, I did not forget the butter, it was in the house)
Geoff has the fire going. The kettle starts to pop and wiggle as it responds to the heat.
But the bread and bagel aren't doing anything on the camping toaster, except..... dry out.
Plan B - use a cookie cooling rack. Where are those?
In the trailer.
(which is obviously better then being in a box! and they worked like a charm too.)
And that is how it goes.
For breakfast.
Lunch.
Supper.
And two "coffee" breaks a day.
Then there is the work of fixing up an old house.
Some days the only person who could see that you got anywhere is.....yourself.
No one else knows what you had to do to get that corner looking like it does now.
Often "now" isn't even pretty or nice looking yet.
Take scraping wall paper for example.
Some comes off easy and some with immense struggle.
Water is needed for the job. Where is the water? In the trailer.
Need to add vinegar as well. Where's the last place I saw that?
Spray bottles need filling. Over and over again.
Step stools need bringing up or down, cause they are always being used elsewhere at some point. Tools for scraping.... gotta find those.
Then you step off the stool and slip on the wet peeled paper. Gonna break my neck if I don't clean that up! Gotta go get a bag for garbage.
And where is the broom now?
So you finally get all you need, figure out a system and get into a good rhythm.
Spray, soak, scrape, shift stool, pick up garbage, repeat.
And you think, "Now we're cooking!"
Then you come to a random screw sticking out of the wall. Not a nail that you can just pull out like the dozen you have encountered before, but a held-in-tight screw.
There goes your GROOVE right out the window.
Downstairs you go, hoping that a medium-size-plus-shaped screw driver is still on the tool table. It is!! Yay!
Screw comes out. Rhythm begins again. It's just going good when you see a head appear on the stairs and hear a voice say,.....
"You got the plus screwdriver up here?"
Sometimes, it's phone cord stapled along the floor board. You follow it to see where it leads. It takes you to a frayed end. A dud. So that's gotta come out. You try to pull it out with your bare hands, it doesn't budge. You'll need a straight screwdriver and hammer to pop up each staple and pliers to pull it all the way out. You know that cause this isn't your first phone-cord rodeo! Where are those tools? Not on the same level as you are to be sure!! And so you struggle along that line of "endless" staples that have been painted over and are happy-where-they-are and you feel sorta proud and accomplished as you stand up with your "prize"of several feet of old phone cord. You wrap it up to stick in the garbage and look around for the broom, hoping it's still in your vicinity, cause now you have staples to get off the floor, and you aren't interested in picking them up one-by-one. By now the garbage bag is full to bursting and you wonder if you'll get all those wee bits of metal in without them spilling over, but you're thankful at least that it isn't a new bag with a hole in the bottom, cause you have had one of those before too.
You turn to look back at your morning's accomplishment, thinking how much better it looks. To anyone else they see old plaster with cracks, scrapes, many colours, imprints from old wall paper, crumbling plaster in spots, floor boards that are chipped and showing two or three colours of paint.
But to you, it's only several buckets of warm, soapy water away from being primed.
Cause after you scrape, you gotta scrub off residual glues.
Oh, wait, primer isn't next?!
No, mudding is.
Oh, I almost forgot. Then I can prime?
Nope, then we gotta sand it.
Of course!
.......And then we'll probably have to mud a second time.
"Where IS the pail of mud now? you wonder and you kinda doubt that the step stool will still be here when it's mudding time....but whatever....better start looking for the tools and supplies you'll need for the next job...once you prioritize what that job will be, that is!!
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