Snake Fence

Well, not really but that is one of its names. We decided we would try to do something to set definitive boundaries for the dog. We have been doing a little perimeter training, but it will be much easier now with borders on both sides. We wanted something that looked like it had been here awhile and we wanted to reuse materials. We had to build something that didn't require posts to be set in the ground. These fences are traditional for this area so it seems like a perfect solution.

The first challenge was finding the cedar rails. There aren't as many huge cedars around as there were 100 years ago. Luckily, we found a farmer who had taken down some fencing as he no longer kept livestock. That is not such an easy task.

Nobody makes split rails anymore, due to the labour involved, the lack of sufficiently sized trees and the ease of availability and affordability of metal wire fencing. And the beauty of these, to me anyway, is that they are lichen and moss covered in places. So after a little research on how to build it, and the good nature of a neighbor who accompanied Andre to get all 100 rails loaded and delivered with said neighbors truck and trailer, here we are.

Good Morning

One of us, or both of us, are out the door early every morning with the dog. The house looks so nice, nestled in its green surroundings with the trees shadows being cast upon it as the sun rises in the sky. Thought we would post a picture now that we have a little bit of green to contrast all the hard surfaces.

I still think we need a bell mounted in a cupola on the roof!

Life Without Air Conditioning

So the big question everyone asks is how is it without air conditioning?? Not bad. The hottest the house has been was 26 degrees. That was the week of stink-hot, where the outside temperature was 36 degrees or more. For those nights, we ran a small fan in the bedroom for he who gets real hot. So even though it was warm in the house, compared to outside, it was pleasant enough.

What we have learned is that the house takes a while to get warm, but conversely it also takes a while to cool down. With no cool evenings, it stays warm, but on nights like one we are expecting tonight, where they are forecasting under 20 degrees, it's very nice. We open the windows at night and catch a breeze. First summer in years that I haven't had a sore throat and head-ache all summer long.

So rather than the hum of an air conditioner, we go to sleep listening to crickets, loons on the nearby lake and frogs. Big fat frogs!!

This guy was sitting on back stoop last week. Haaarrrumph!!

Work Report

Finally got back to installing base-boards and door casing in the main bath-room. I have been waiting for a day that is not too hot, so that I can do the cutting outside. Less of a mess to clean up. So that room is now complete, aside from the plaster painting.
Crack filling on the outside began today. Thought I would attempt the biggest crack first, which was a settlement crack. Of course, it was dead centre of the wall, on the long side of the house, exactly behind the propane tanks. But it is done. So now the plan is to go another winter and see if the patch stays before painting the exterior. Saves having to patch after painting. It's not that the patch will fall off, but the majority of the cracks occurred over metal strapping. So we are not sure if the metal strapping will cause the new repair to fail come freeze up. Only time will tell.
Mixed two colors of sanded grout together and came up pretty close to the existing plaster color, so aside from the texture being slightly different, it's difficult to tell where the repair has been done.
The garage has been tidied, re-arranged and gussied up, and gets lots of compliments from visitors. Even the birds thought so, as we had a pair of grey-crested fly catchers nest on one of the rafters. The two babies fledged today.
Screen doors are on the radar for next week.

Natures Bounty

Who has time to worry about house stuff. First there were the wild strawberries and then the raspberries hit. We have had so many nice raspberries that I have almost given up trying to keep up with them. I have made wild raspberry jam and have freezer bags full. This without leaving the yard!

There are several black raspberries too, but they are too finicky to try to pick several so they get eaten as found, but I can't wait for the blackberries to ripen as we are thick with them too. I love berries!!

Speaking of the garden

As I mentioned back in May, I have been experimenting with a bale garden. This is it, wrapped in netting and flagged so the deer don't run into it, ready to be planted.

Here it's in its infancy. It has been suggested that you keep the hay cut, so that it is not competing with the planted crop, but the dog likes munching on the long sweet grass, so I leave it. I planted a couple tomatoes, squash, herbs, beans, cucumbers and some edible flowers - nasturtiums. They have been slow to start, but I was speaking with a local farmer who is growing soy beans in last years corn stalks and he tells me to be patient.

Well I have been very patient, and it is paying off.

We have had some cherry tomatoes, there are a few beans, and yesterday I made a big batch of pesto sauce with the basil. There will be a few peppers too! Cool.

Oh Deer Two

Can't believe all of June and most of July are gone and we haven't posted anything. We've been busy trying to grow things. Forget about grass per se. We've got green stuff that needs regular mowing, but it's not grass. It's crazy weeds that choked out the newly planted grass. And whatever grass blades were strong enough to find their way to the surface were promptly scorched by the sun and shriveled in this relentless heat we have been experiencing.

In addition to crazy heat, we have also been vandalised by deer. I hadn't planted a lot and thought a safe route would be to use potted plants. Wrong! This is my one and only hosta I planted. It was "Sum and Substance", supposed to grow to a huge size and be sun resistant. The deer have returned and munched up the last bud they left the first night.

This is my potted portulaca. It was beautiful until a couple nights ago. Seems they nibble on it to start and then return to finish it off.

I'm thankful I protected the garden.

Oh Deer!

Today I took a walk in the back of our property. Had been going back there kinda doing my own nature inventory. Spring was amazing for ephemeral wild flowers. I have about 20 different types of spring flowers which I photographed over the past few weeks, but hadn't been back there in awhile. First the black-flies were crazy and now it's the deer-flies, but I put on my bug-proof ensemble and in I went.



Not a flower in-sight. The forest floor is crispy with dried up leaves except for a couple of low lying areas. Plenty of different kinds of ferns, but that's it for interesting foliage. I wasn't too quiet, tromping around whistling and cracking branches, as the neighbor recently told me he had seen a small bear back there. All of a sudden, a deer jumped in front of me and froze. OK - we both froze. I slowly took my camera out of my pocket and she scuffed the ground a couple of times, snorted and then whistled a short loud squeal. HOLY CRAP!!! I figured now would not be a good time to try to get my camera on and set and focused. She flinched first and with a giant leap was gone in the direction from which she came. I changed my course of direction and figured that was enough exploring for this afternoon. I was happy I didn't have the hunting dog with me, who was home nursing her wound.



Anyway, of all the wild flowers I've photographed, I thought I would share this one. These are very rare white lady slippers, which I was shown just down the road from here.

Green Acres is the Place to Be

It's just not here!! Cripe, we wonder if it will ever rain. Seed and sod are down, but since then we have had record heat and no rain to speak of. And we ran the well dry on our first night of watering 'cus we are city slickers who weren't familiar with wells - but now we are. All is back to normal in the water department. We won't do that again. If any grass grows, it will have to be on Mother Natures terms. It's more of a mixture of hay and clover we sowed anyway and the sod was just along the top of the rock wall for immediate erosion prevention. Once established, it will have to fend for itself, as lawn watering is a waste of a precious resource.

The Fix is In

Last summer, due to all of the rain, we had significant erosion where the septic tanks were installed. We stuffed the crevices with bags of chopped straw and decided to deal with it this spring. So after having called landscaping companies and had mini-seisures at their rates, we called back our excavation company that did the site work. They repaired the area by building a retaining wall, then re-arranged our rocks out front but first installing geotextile to prevent erosion, built us a small ramp behind the garage to allow the little tractor access for yard maintenance, trenched and buried big-O for the downspouts, covered the fill with topsoil and lastly gave us steps up to the front entrance. That will do for now thank you very much. We quickly layed sod along the rock and seeded everywhere else, and we are now the only people hoping for rain this long weekend.
Once the sod and seed have taken, we will trim off the landscape fabric left exposed. Rock garden anyone...

Open House

On Sunday last, we participated in the Ontario Straw Bale Building Coalition Open House. It`s a once a year things where home-owners open their homes to interested and curious town-folk.

Andre was away for the weekend, but Deirdre came up from Peterborough and together we greeted over 30 neighbors and new friends. And none of them noticed that our home is not completely finished, so yeah! for us.

That was Sunday. The place looked restful.

This was what it looked like on Tuesday.

Bale Garden

I read on the web that it is possible to do some raised bed gardening using conditioned straw-bales as the media. So back to the farmer I went for 6 more bales. Basically, using Urea at gradually reducing potencies, one can speed the decomposition process, so that come planting time, the bales are sufficiently rotted to allow them to be planted into.
These are my bales being prepped. I have fastened soaker hoses to them to make the watering process simpler. Hopefully in a few weeks time I can report plant growth. Looking to grow tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, an assortment of herbs, and squash or melon. And I hope to be more successful than I was with our syrup making. Don`t ask.

Back into building mode

One last item that was outstanding before our occupancy permit inspection was a hand-rail and a back to the bench on the front deck. We likely could have passed without them, but the insurance company was particular about their absence, so that was item one.

Then Andre and I tackled the garage, yet again. Most of the boxes have now been emptied except for my shop tool related stuff. No use getting that out and about until I actually have shop space. We built a series of shelves to store the miscellaneous stuff on and while I was building those, Andre was busy installing insulation, vapour barrier and sheathing on the wall of the garage the shelving units would be fastened to.

After that, we built a small platform for the screened gazebo to get out of the bugs. We experienced black-fly season for the first time ever. Holy smoke! Not that we have a lot of time for sitting around now, but we have our afternoon cocktail out there everyday.

We're back!

Not that we went anywhere, just been living the life of leisure. We've been keeping busy cleaning up dead-fall and construction related scrub piles that we did nothing about last summer. We have made countless trips to the dump with the little trailer loaded up with sticks and logs and branches.
Still no painting to report on though.

Living Off the Land

Well, not quite, but here is our first experiment with the 100-mile diet. This is more like the 100 yard-diet. We decided to try making maple syrup. The first part is easy. Drill a couple of holes, pound in taps and hang buckets. We have a large bucket ready to pour our sap into, and then we will freeze it until we figure out how to cook it.

Our options are the barbeque or the small camp-stove we lived off over the summer, or a fire-pit in the back-yard. We are on the hunt for the appropriate materials to cobble something together and to figure out what to use to cook it all in. The ratio is something like 40 to 1, so I expect at the end of all of this, we may yield a cup of syrup. But it will be amazing syryp, cause we made it ourselves!!

I only hope we tapped a maple tree and not an oak!

The Paint Boss - The Paint!

Ok, so I'm no Herve Villechaise.

We decided to try a few colors of milk paint to see which colors we liked for all of the interior stucco walls. It's hard to choose because it's an open concept and the stucco will be meeting several different colored walls which have already been done. We would like to find a color that will work with everthing, as this is not something we want to have to do very often.

Milk paint is a powder so it gets mixed in the blender which I knew I kept for 31 years for a reason!! Ha! But I think I will check out the flea markets for a second one, to maybe speed up the process. Andre had the paint on the wall before I could mix up the next color. So here is our test wall, of which we are not liking any of our choices. I ordered different colors today, so we will have another go at it on another wall next week.

Our conundrum is we like rich dark colors, but with the milk paint, it would be easier to use a light color. We wouldn't require as much product or effort to get complete coverage, as if you miss spot with a light color it doesn't show as much as it would with the richer shades. But we don't want the place to feel like a cave on dark days. And we need a color that won't clash with the pine ceilings, which while fairly light now, will darken over the years. Can you see how this would contribute to indecision??

Should be easier to pick a color for the outside. Our only concern there is to not choose something garish that would upset the neighborhood.

It's not all its cracked up to be

So the dreaded day arrived where I would experiment with the crack filling process. Not having done this before on such tiny cracks I wasn't certain which route to choose. In the end, I used sanded tile grout, in a color close to the original stucco color. Not that it matters as the repair should disappear after the paint goes on, but if that takes us a while, I think these repairs will be easier to live with than if I had chosen a bright white grout.

I dug out my modified grout tools, consisting of paint stir sticks, potato masher for mixing, and artists palette knives for application.

This is the size of the crack which is fairly typical. They are stress cracks in the stucco caused by the slightest settling, the drying process and any wood movement, of which if one thinks about, cement and wood probably shouldn't mix. I mean, we ensure there is sill gasket under all the boards that frame the walls and then we installed wooden window sills and plastered right up the to them. So these cracks appeared at the sills and in the corners above the rounded openings. Some are small hairline cracks that we won't fill.

The process was to wet the crack, apply to the best of ones ability the grout, then texture it the same way we did the walls, using foam insulation rubbed over the fix.

This is the end result, about 20 minutes later. Pretty sure once it's painted it won't be seen. Just not sure how they won't reappear. This is not a process I want to be continually working at. Some day, we'll just have to call it done!

The Counters Are In

Well, it's been a while since we last blogged, and have kinda taken a month or so of rest and relaxation. With visits from both of the kids and a quick trip out west for Andre, there is still a lot that needs to be done, but we needed a break from the pace.

We finally received our counter-tops and the sinks were installed shortly thereafter. So we are pretty much functioning like a normal household. No more utility room dishes for us. The undercabinet lighting and stove-hood have been installed and the crown moulding above the cabinets will be installed next time we set up the saw.

I did the measuring, ordering and scribing of the counter-tops to fit the undulations of the bale wall, and it actually all went pretty smoothly. We are pleased with the outcome.

The bathroom vanity counter-top arrived the same time and the mirror we ended up using is one we recycled from the old bedroom suite. It works for now. Some day those trim pieces in the corner will be installed rather than leaning against the wall.

We love these floors

Today we went dog-walking with some neighbors who have blazed a trail through their 13 acres. It was snowing and blowing and the snow had to have drifted a foot deep in places. They own a standard poodle around the same age as our dog, so the dogs are nicely matched in size and energy level and did they romp. Afterwards, we all came back here. We reassured our newly minted friends that they need not worry about snow on the floors. And sure enough, in no time, the dogs and floors were dry. Couldn't do that in our last place. A damp mop and any spots from puddles are quickly dispensed of. Talk about care-free livin'!!

Decorating Dilemma

My neighbor suggested we paint this cream to match the cupboards and run the counter over it. I think there is a business opportunity to be had designing dog-crate covers. Opinions or suggestions??

The Living Room

We weren't certain how the furniture would fit in the new space. Well we knew it would fit, but would it be too small for the space, too close to the kitchen space, wrong for the room. It seems to fit. We haven't added anything new to the mix and wonder how long the white carpet will stay white with doggie in the house. But for now, it works. Artwork and wall paint to be added later.

The Couch Potato Room

I had to post this picture as proof that all is right with the world again as that is football that is on the telly. This room is "the den". It is the furthest back room of the house and faces only the trees. In here, we are oblivious to anything that might be happening outside, especially after dark. This house is sound-proof. It's like a little cocoon. We hear no wind, no traffic, nothing. It's very restful.

The Entry Way

We built a large foyer as the only other homes we've owned had none. This has to be our favourite design decision. How nice to be able to greet people or arrive as a group and have room to move. This shot is looking into it from inside. We rarely close the interior door.

The On-Going Kitchen

This is an Ikea kitchen. When we ordered it, we were told we could expect it within a couple of weeks. That was 12 weeks ago. There are still panels that can't even be ordered as they are out of stock, they have no idea when they will be in-stock again, and we are left to call them frequently to inquire about the status. It would have been nice if they told us that when we placed the order. So we have proceeded by for-going the missing panels, which would go on the side of the pantry and floor length on either side of the fridge to give the fridge a more built-in look. We fabricated our own and no-one seems to notice the changes we made.

The crown is not installed yet, nor are counter tops, sink and the hood-fan. But soon.

When is a house "done"?

Or for that matter, when is a blog done? Andre and I had been talking about how to finish the blog, and it was suggested that at the very least there should be some shots of us actually living in the house. So that's the easy part.
When is the house done? We have talked with so many people who say it's never really done, so que cera cera. I know I have to live in a place a while to determine if something is working or not, and I already feel where I want to hang some art. Just have to get around to it.
So without further ado, here are some shots of the work in progress.