Roof and windows, walls & doors

Great! We now have a front and a back door, and windows! A procession of trucks has been lumbering up our well-rutted farmhouse road and the most recent delivery, our Elite brand windows, have now been muscled into place by the Wanless Construction crew. This was a completely smooth operation, except for some cliffhanger moments when hefty double windows were handed up to a single second storey worker weighing considerably less that the windows he was hauling in.

Meanwhile, our dedicated puzzle solvers Randy and Louis of Mac Roofing continue to piece together the jigsaw of our multi-angled steel roof. Underneath the roof is not the usual flimsy tar paper but an underlayment called DELTA-TEK, an ultra tough membrane that repels water but still allows the new wood of the roof to dry and breathe. Randy has found he likes this new product from Cosella-Dorken and says he'll use it again.

By now, Bob and I have smartened up to the fact that if you don't tell tradespeople exactly what you want, good chance you won't get it. So hours have been spent poring over plans and plainly marking/noting each and every outlet, switch and light fixture, appliance and suchlike to be installed, an exercise that left me totally limp and drained from decision-making overload.

In fact, there still are a great many decisions left to make, the biggest one being the furnace, which will impose a major wallop in the wallet if we go geothermal. I will add that this decision should have been finalized long ago (but was not mine to make.) Intense heat has settled on the countryside and desperation has finally driven a few workers to splashdown in our pond. That's where I'd like to be -- if I didn't have to drive to town and choose a toilet and light fixtures. As I occasionally say, next time around I will come back as the family dog... so I have time to stop and smell the flowers.

Coulda been us!

On the afternoon of June 23 while driving to the farm to check on progress (or lack thereof, our construction team having absconded to a neighbouring farm to work on another new home), I noticed a very black, ominous, and sulphurous looking cloud boiling away on the horizon.
Safe in the relative comfort of our trailer, I looked through the window to see the monster heading toward us, intent on doing damage. A wall of water slapped into the farm buildings and as the trailer began to rock violently in the wind, I finally wondered... "is this a tornado?  And in that case, what ought I to be doing?" Duh!

However by the time this bright thought occurred, the rain had diminished to a dull roar, and Bob was coming through the door of trailer. He had stopped into the local SPCA and the wind pressure was such that he couldn't even open the door of his car. We checked. Other than the occasional branch lopped off a tree, no problem and the barn and house still had their roofs.

Yes, we were survivors of the Midland tornado, which ripped along nearby highway 12 demolishing buildings and trees. We were lucky. Mother Nature always seems to have a special hate on for trailers. This time she chose the trailers beside Little Lake park, fortunately most were weekend residences vacant at the time, but it could so easily have been me blown away in our trailer to the Land of Oz.

But back to business. By now the tempo has picked up. A full scale, sit down meeting with our contractor, instead of the usual-off-the-cuff quick commentary while running through the house.  A procession of contractors pitching air-to-air and geothermal heating systems. A kitchen contractor, Jim Lansing, who was very nice not to laugh at my bad hand-sketched kitchen plans. A huge number of decisions, made on the fly, which we may just regret afterward, about where to put items like washers and dryers, doors and the like. And a first meeting with our roofers, Randy and Louis, who are attempting to put on our complex multi-angled roof. Now, all they - and we - need is a few days of no wind and sun, to get this job on the road, because not much can be done until the roof is on and the house closed in. A good thing we have them to blame for the slow progress, because, by dragging our feet and not getting our act together for electrical, decor and heating decisions, the finger now is starting to point to us!

The ominous sounds of silence

While renovating their Toronto house a few years ago, friends of ours rented a tiny one-bedroom apartment. When it came time to move into their new, highly modernized home, they experienced a strange reluctance -- the reluctance of people who have discovered how liberating it is not to have much stuff, or much more than a couple rooms to worry about, and a very good excuse to eat out at restaurants. 

Except for always finding one another at the kitchen sink, I expect Bob and I will feel the same on leaving our trailer, which has pared life down to its basics - so basic that getting rid of dirt is now just a matter of a stiff broom and an open front door.  I arrived at the farm late Thurs nite. More progress -- the breezeway between garage and house has been constructed and plans that always looked kind of weird to me now seem completely comprehensible.

However, the next morning, instead of the usual sound of hammers at 6.30, there was only bird song. Silence is beautiful, that is, until you connect it with the fact that nothing is happening. Our work crew, it seems, has moved up and on to build a new house 2 concessions over for Brian Ritchie, the son of our neighbour Dave. They are taking advantage of the fine weather and the break that opens up because you can't do anything much more until the roof goes on. This may be sooner than expected. As of today, Monday, the steel for the roof had arrived and the roofers will soon make the scene.


The individual who didn't make the scene as expected on Friday morning, or even Saturday for that matter, was our electrician Paul. Just as, unusually well dressed, we stepped out of the trailer Sunday morning to go to church, he appeared. Walking a house with an electrician and making critical decisions is bad enough when you're in good shape, but just try it when you're starving. We left him to walk the property while we went to church. Soon we were back and since he was still there we ignored stomach rumbles and went through the tough job of deciding on lights and outlets. Found out, during the process, that we had better get our act together and do some space and furniture planning! Not that I have any confidence in my ability to do this type of thing...

Above: a new breezeway now covers the space between house side door and garage. 
Bob trims back the red pine that has dropped some limbs to the crane and other machines. 

The Septic Tank Mountain

Well, I promised to warn folks about dumb things we did/ shouldn't have done when building a house in the country and here's a good one: don't build a septic tank mountain.

The blame is not really ours. While it may not show up on the accompanying photo, the installer of our septic bed saw nothing wrong with creating a huge hill to accommodate the septic instead of properly preparing this area with sand and then excavating downward. Problem is, there is now no economical way to fix it except to try to landscape around it, and the hump, as we call it, makes this  lower field, one of the few arable places on our farm, unusable.

Can you tell that I am ticked off?  How did you guess!  This is the type of thing that a contractor should discuss beforehand and sort out with the homeowner, who just may have plans that don't include  a ski jump in the backyard!

Other than that, the second floor is now shaping up with a spectacular view from the deck that takes in Georgian Bay including the ski runs across the lake at Blue Mountain, and from here, you can't see the backyard bump at all.

Son Greg, visiting from Brazil, takes in the great view from the 2nd storey.  

House trussed & taking shape

Like giant pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, and definitely not one of the quick and mindless variety, the roof trusses for the house and garage were assembled on Friday. Less than ideal conditions, i.e. mostly streaming rain, did not cramp the style of contractor Peter Wanless and our intrepid crane operator.

A real show of skill: contractor quickly sorted out out what went where and attached the rope; crane operator lifted the individual trusses way up and over roof and trees, turned them to face the right way, dropped them into the outstretched hands of the installer, then dipped the crane to undo the rope and traversed back to the field to pick up another truss, all in one rapid, fluid and almost continuous motion. Neat!

In the supersatch conditions of Friday, the work ploughed on without any concessions to the weather, even wet weather gear, except for "the contractor's raincoat", a handy garment made by cutting head and armholes in a garbage bag. My shoes squelched through the mud as I walked the distance between barn and trailer carrying the essentials for our new home. After all this time moaning about the lack of rain, however, who can complain?

The Shape of Things to Come

Last week was frame up time, which can bring both both shocks and surprises. That's when you see exactly where the doors and windows are, and how big rooms will be when completed. That's when you discover you should have paid more attention and taken off those rose colored specs when surveying plans, in order to make sure that big, bulky objects could be easily taken into the cellar from the foyer or that the refrigerator would fit in that exact corner.

But aside from a few minor blips, all is going well with encouraging evidence of even quicker progress to come. Beams and trusses were delivered before the weekend. They are now awaiting the crane that will lift them into place -- a job I would like to watch, if anyone ever phones to tell us when this is going to happen! With multiple projects and crews to supervise, a popular contractor like Peter Wanless is continually yanked in different directions and customer contact, unless you are on the spot he is, might be a little low on the priority list.

The trailer we temporarily call home is slowly being set up. After the dust/dirt of our occasional stay in a house under construction, small things get us excited, like.... Lights! a working refrigerator and stove! Hot & cold water! Unfortunately, very soon the the flow of water dwindled to a trickle and then stopped. Plumber blames electrician and vice versa, but expect the finger pointing soon will stop in favour of getting it fixed.

As May draws to a close, phenomenal weather ... star studded nights, fireflies winking, roses blooming, , and daily the sun keeps blazing, turning our tin can home into a very hot pressure cooker that only a turkey would hang around, so I am mostly out doing chores. Rain this week? I sure hope so.

Two platforms for success

Well, this was definitely one memorable Victoria Day weekend.

Son Greg, seen here with his lovely & long-suffering wife Carolina, graduated PhD from U Texas in political science, with many kudos for his thesis on freedom of information legislation is South America. All the friends and family members who attended helped turn this long awaited event in weird and wonderful Austin into not just a Big Occasion but a Blast.

Back home, no time to recuperate before exchanging finery for jeans and scooting off to the farm. One big draw: the arrival (finally!) of our mobile home, which provided great entertainment for the neighbours in its travels along County Road 4 and across our fields. My admiration for the driver who managed to deposit it in the comparatively tight space

in the barnyard. If you can overlook the pretty awful decor including nauseatingly pink carpet it should be a comfortable enough place to hang out during the construction months, even featuring a second bedroom for adventurous guests. Bruiser surveyed it and has already decided his favourite place is the kitchen.

If you live in the country, then do not expect to arise at normal, civilized city hours. I woke up not to the sound of birds but hammers at 6 a.m. being wielded by a crew of three young guys, Tyler, Tom and Jeremy, who were putting the final touches to the platform that forms the base for the house. Next, the

walls, and then, shortly, the trusses will arrive. The garage as well is rapidly taking shape lacking only roof and siding. However, there was little time to contemplate this progress. Very shortly we were rushing to get ready for the next stage, where our construction/demo crew equipped with crowbars broke through the walls of the old house in order to frame up the new entrance. Once more the tarpaper and ancient Typar revealed walls that can best be described as crumbly. Surprising that no wind ever came along to blow the whole thing away!

As well as acting as mule moving stuff, I put on my gardener hat to plant, in what remains of the garden, some exciting tomato varieties with exotic names like Big Belgian and Striped German. They were a present to us by friend Russ Brown who grows them from seeds only to give them away to us and other tomato afficionados. Bob and I also were waterboys, hauling water from our pond to save trees. Most of our maples trustingly put out leaves this spring only to be blasted by a sneaky late frost, with the result that thousands of baby leaves litter our driveway. This happened before and the maples will replace them, given enough moisture, but other than the occasional cloud, so far there's no sign of rain this dry, hot spring....