Batten Down the Hatches!

First off, let me apologize to anyone who's emailed me and I haven't been the swiftest in replying, if I even replied at all. I assure you that I do read my emails daily, but it's usually a quick check from my Blackberry in between picking someone up from work or school and peeling potatoes for supper. So let this be an update from me on all things house-related, and hopefully I can sit down to email or chat with friends and family individually, at least sometime before Christmas!

We have been very busy. Actually, Rod's the one who's been busiest, I'm just doing my best to lend a hand here and there as needed, and try and keep everything else besides the renos up and running.

A few weeks ago, Rod had a few of his friends over to tear the front porch off the house, and this is the aftermath:

 See the original stone foundation? There were a few holes that some critters had obviously dug in an effort to get in.










Luckily we can burn things here in Beamsville, it'll save on costs associated with taking it to the dump.









Our wonderful doors, awaiting a final coat of paint.

We found these layers from shoe soles underneath where the porch was. I think they're from more than one shoe, as the toe on the middle one is quite pointy. They were all narrow and on the small side though, which leads me to think they're from women's shoes. Also, as you can see on the one on the left, they're quite old, as you can see nail-holes in the heel. I said to Rod that I thought I remembered reading something about a superstition about burying shoes somewhere in your house. Sure enough, after looking it up on the Internet, I learned that people would sometimes bury a shoe underneath the doorstep to keep away evil. I'm not sure if that was the intent here, but we've decided to leave them where they are when we put the new porch on, and perhaps add one of our own to them.

 A view of the house, sans porch.                                                                             

         I took this one today, after Rod, Wyatt and I installed the first upstairs window. It's really starting to come together now. Rod and his friend Don removed the pebble-dash a few days ago, and Rod wrapped the house. He ran out of wrap right at the top, and unfortunately we were caught without it when Hurricane Sandy came calling last week! Actually, they're calling it Superstorm Sandy now, as it was no longer a hurricane by the time it hit us. Regardless, it was one very strong storm. The winds were blowing off the lake, and Rod was running around the house blowing in foam insulation to fill the cracks and crevices. We currently have no insulation in the front walls of the house, so it's pretty chilly and drafty. With some afghans and a space heater it's manageable, but with 100km/h winds blowing rain straight on the house, it's a different story. There was even water spurting in through the keyhole in the front door, which I then stuffed with a tissue. The windows seemed to almost bulge in, and every once in awhile something would hit them from outside. We were joking around, saying "Oh, I think that was a bird." and "That sounded like a fish."  Surprisingly, the power didn't go out, which is a blessing since we rely on it to pump water from the lake. The wind also blew the concrete pineapple off its pedestal in the garden; Rod purposely tipped over the pedestal after that so it wouldn't come crashing down too.                                                             

                                                                               

                                                                

 The aftermath in the side yard. The siding is what Rod had removed from the front of the house, he had stacked it around the side ready for taking to the dump. You can see that it's bent around a wire stake we have on which to hang our bird-feeders. I'm surprised the force of it didn't just tip the stand right out of the ground. Our shed was also blown down, but then I'm not surprised at that as Rhiannon and I had a hard time assembling it in the spring (it's a Rubbermaid shed) and it didn't seem very stable.

 Just a couple of views inside the house, at the mess. We put a bit of insulation in the walls this morning to try and help with warmth. Hoping to have it drywalled and painted by Christmas!

Just a few pictures...

I've taken some pictures over the past six months or so, and thought I'd just share them here.

The first one is of two of four swans who took up residence nearby sometime in February. They were here when we arrived home from our cruise in February. We had a very mild, dry winter, so I don't know if that had anything to do with it. After a few weeks, and if I remember correctly, after a particularly windy night, the swans seemed to have been reduced to just three. We'll probably never know what happened to the fourth, but we enjoyed watching them, nonetheless. It's funny how they can be so beautiful and serene-looking when  apparently they're actually quite nasty! We haven't seen them since the summer began, so I assume they've moved on.

This next picture is, obviously, of Toronto. It was taken that evening when the moon was supposed to appear larger than it usually does, back in May. It didn't look much different to me. That evening though, Toronto appeared MUCH larger than it usually does in our view from across the lake! We can usually only see the CN Tower and a few buildings around it, sometimes the white roof of the Skydome (or Roger's Centre) on really clear days. But this particular evening, it seemed like we could see every single building, right around the lake.

Baby Canada geese! I know they're a nuisance, but they were just so cute! I used my zoom to take the picture of the goslings, and as I slowly approached, they all went down the embankment into the lake and swam away. They're all grown now, and we caught them all down on the rocks one morning bathing themselves. It was fun to watch, only a select few seemed to get to stand on the rocks, the rest had to stand in the water. One fell asleep standing up on a rock. Sometimes they're all standing in the road, and I have to stop the car and wait for them to move before I can continue driving. It sort of reminds me of being in England and having to wait for a flock of sheep to move.

Thirteen Windows

One of our first priorities was to replace all the windows in the older part of the house, the part that will serve as the B & B. Although I'm all for shopping Canadian, when it comes to most building supplies, they can sometimes be half the price in the U.S. as they are here. And, when you're buying thirteen windows at approximately $500 each, that's a pretty big savings. So, lucky to be living just minutes from the border, we ordered our windows and made three trips over to pick them up back in April. We did have to pay tax on them when we crossed the border, but it was still a bargain compared to what we would have paid here.

We installed the window in the office first, as a sort of trial run. It went fairly well, then we did the ones at the top of the stairs and in the smallest bedroom. That was a little more harrowing; Rod was standing outside on the ladder while I was inside the house. The windows have to be installed from the outside-in, so I passed the window through the opening to Rod (not as easy as it sounds! --very  heavy!), who then put it in place and held it there while I checked that it was level on all sides. Sounds simple, I know, but I was shaking by the end of it as I was quite sure that I would accidentally let go and both window and Rod would go crashing down to the ground.

We're now working on the windows in the living room. They're easier than the other three we did, as we're building the openings from scratch rather than trying to fit a perfectly square window into an anything-but-square opening. And, the fact that they're on the ground floor certainly helps. We've got two in, and two more to do. Then the doors, then the upstairs bedroom windows, then off with the front porch, then on with the new porch...and so it goes.

Removing the old windows. The doors were off-center; because there was a post right smack-dab in the middle of the front! We were able to remove it and replace it with two on either side. 

 Framing in two of the windows.

 Two windows in!

 Starting to frame-in the other two windows.

A Lady's Mantel

We don't have a fireplace in our house, but have always intended on putting one in, not a working one but just a pretend one, with a mantel. Me being me, I wanted to buy an old one and see about fixing it up. Rod being Rod, he wanted to build one with my dad's tools. We're doing neither, because we found a TREASURE!

Right now, I'm sitting in my living room, with big band music on the satellite, an empty wineglass to my left and my kitty to my right, and dust absolutely everywhere. The front of the house is pretty much torn off as we install new windows. The dust will have to stay until we're done, I'm afraid. It's been interesting, to say the least. Lots of huge, old rough-hewn beams supporting the house, which we've had to remove and replace as we place our windows and doors in. While taking down part of the ceiling on the enclosed porch, not only did Rod find the old clapboards of the house (which look like they were painted grey), he also found the old molding from on top of the old door, fully intact and still attached to the house. We managed to get it out, and I think it's absolutely gorgeous. Very heavy, so we're wondering what kind of wood it is. It's also painted in greys and blues...I'm going to try stripping it and seeing how the wood is and then guess what? We have our fireplace mantel! Here's a picture of it on its side:

I swear, the picture doesn't do it justice. It's a great find, I promise! I'll post pictures of its progress in the weeks to come.

A Tale of Two Doors

I love taking old things and giving them a new life...old furniture, architecture, my husband.

Ok, that last one was completely uncalled for, he's not old at all, although he and I both are feeling a little long in the tooth these days!

I was determined that we should find an old door to use as our front door, and re-purpose it. One Sunday a few weeks ago we headed up to St. Jacob's to do just that, at an architectural salvage store. On the way though, we stopped at the Aberfoyle flea market to see if our favourite vendor had anything to offer. He did, a set of double doors, in pretty rough shape, for $475 for both. Although it seemed like a pretty good deal, we wanted to see what St. Jacob's had to offer so off we went up there to check (while I tend to act--and shop--impulsively, Rod is the complete opposite and prefers to shop around and think about things. He has learnt, though, that when it comes to flea markets, one has to act quickly because that great bargain likely won't be there the following week). In St. Jacob's, they didn't have any suitable doors, nor did they have any double doors like the ones we had found at Aberfoyle. We asked the owner if they ever came across any, and he said that they were pretty rare, and if they did ever get any in, the stores in Toronto and area usually snapped them up. He was glad to give us their names though if we wanted to check them out. I asked him how much the stores in Toronto generally sold the double doors for, and he said they ranged from $1500 to $2000. We couldn't get out of there fast enough, mostly to get back to Aberfoyle before it was too late but also because as he was talking to us about double doors he somehow managed to drop the F-bomb into the conversation which, surprisingly, offended our very delicate sensibilities.

We raced back to Aberfoyle, all prepared to negotiate for the doors, which we ended up getting for a never-before-heard-of bargain price of $450. Yes, we are the KINGS of bargaining!

It IS a good deal though, I think. They had some inserts in them, in the Queen Anne style, which we promptly removed to make them a bit more simple and Colonial. We also removed the horrible, bitter green paint. The bottoms of the doors are a bit rotted, but that's okay because we have to cut off two inches anyway. God...looking at this picture, I think we must have been a little crazy:

 This is the inside of the door; we preferred the simple look of the bottom panel:

 Another view of the outside of the other door. The bottom is in a little better shape on this one:

You can't see it in the pictures, but these doors had some interesting hardware on them. The back plate that a doorknob would have sat against (long since gone) was still attached to the door, and covered with the green paint. We removed it and boiled it in vinegar to remove most of the paint, grime, and tarnish, and then finished it off with a few rubdowns with Brasso. After nearly passing out from the vinegar fumes, it came out great! After a bit of internet research, we found out that it was produced by the Eastlake hardware company,  circa 1887, and the pattern is called Broken Leaf.

That's a picture I got from eBay (the middle picture), I don't have a picture on my camera of it yet. That little door thingy under the keyhole hides another keyhole. On the inside of the door, there was another, smaller keyhole cover, pictured in the smaller picture above, just underneath the left doorknob. That picture includes pretty much everything we've got for the door; although it came with the two keyhole covers, the mortise lock was beyond repair (and the cause of a sprained ankle trying to remove it!) and what hinges there were were also rusted and broken. Luckily, thanks to Charleston Hardware Company on eBay, we were able to come up with matching reproduction doorknobs, a rosette back plate for inside the door, hinges, and a mail slot--not in the Broken Leaf pattern, but similar in style. We also got a mortise lock for only $48 thanks to Rod, who wouldn't let me get the $130 one that was in perfect condition. The cheaper one worked out great with some boiling vinegar, Brasso, and penetrating oil. The reason we got a mail slot was because after stripping off the paint we saw that there had been one at one time, so we thought it would be nice to put one back in to give the Jehovah's Witnesses somewhere to drop off their Watchtower leaflets when we're pretending not to be home. We'll have to add a deadbolt to the door though, as we've no key for the mortise lock.

Today we painted the doors a couple of coats of Sherwin Williams Roycroft Copper Red; I think one more coat should do it. We also picked up the glass from Grimsby Glass, a bargain at $49 for both pieces. We'd like some of that glass that's ever-so-slightly wavy antique glass, but it's hard to find any that isn't obviously wavy and seeded. We just want it to be subtle, so for now we've just gone with regular glass. Here are the doors so far; we just sort of popped the doorknob and back plate in to get an idea of how it will look:

We're very excited! You can just see in the door on the left where the  mail slot used to be. We'll be painting the inside of the doors our trim colour, Stucco by Sherwin Williams. The door on the left, although definitely able to open and shut, will be kept shut and in place by floor and ceiling bolts, called cremones. We still have to find some decent ones; the ones that came in the door were immovable from all the rust. All in all, we figure the doors will end up costing us around $800 when all is said and done. Worth it, I think.

Our colour scheme for the exterior of the house (we've decided to paint the siding, since it's fairly new and we really can't afford to replace it. It's a pretty boring colour though) is pictured below. We used the Sherwin Williams paint colour visualiser, finding the most similar house to ours. We had to 'paint' the shutters the same colour as the siding, as we won't have shutters and wanted them to blend in in the visualiser:

We had to find a colour scheme that went with our brown roof, which is also fairly new and can be neither painted nor replaced, unfortunately...no matter how much I pine for cedar shingles on the roof (sigh). Haha--"pine" for cedar shingles. I didn't mean to write that, honest! Anyway, we thought this looked sort of old-ish. Rod keeps looking at houses with white trim, and although I think white trim always looks nice, it seems so overdone and sort of a timid cop-out. We bought the paint and tried out a bit on the house, and although the "Roycroft Pewter" looks great, the "Weathered Shingle", which is the trim colour, DOES actually look a bit like baby poo. Sometimes it's hard to tell on a six-inch square painted patch though, so we're going to paint one side of the house and see how it looks. If it still looks like something my absolutely adorable grand-nephew Graham left in his diaper, we'll have to look for a softer beige, perhaps. As long as it ties in the brown roof.

Speaking of the adorable Graham, I have to share:

I have to say, I love him even more than my new doors.

Naughty Blogger!

I haven't exactly been keeping up with my blogging, have I?

I have an excuse, we have been rather busy, after all. So now I'll try to update you on just what we've been doing, and why I've been so busy...

Moving day came and went, followed by unpacking, raking leaves, Christmas shopping, Christmas dinners with family, a cruise in February, and generally tearing the house apart and putting it back together. And we still love it here.

We decorated one room, the office, almost completely, to see how our colour choices for the house looked. We were very pleased with our choices, Sherwin Williams Herbal Wash for the walls and Stucco for the trim. Here are some befores and afters of the office:

 This picture illustrates how crooked the ceiling is...or is it the door frame? I can't remember. I think it must have been the ceiling, because if it was the door frame the door probably wouldn't close properly. The darker yellow is a previous colour we found after removing the trim over the door:

 The door with the oval window, we're planning on removing and using as our side entrance door. I'm going to strip off the white paint and hopefully the wood underneath will be decent, otherwise we'll have to paint it:

 The window sill, also crooked. Previous owners had just cut the drywall to fit around it, rather than fixing the sill!

 A diamond-shaped medallion, which Rod removed and replaced with a round one. And, a new light fixture:

 Finished! Rod built the radiator cover under the window; isn't he clever?

 How do you like the desk? I found it in the garbage and fixed it up:

Here's a 'before' shot of the desk. I painted the legs and stained the top: 

The kids are horrified whenever I stop the van to pick something up at the side of the road. I have a couple of dining chairs too, which I painted and reupholstered the seats. My most recent acquisition is a small armchair, which I'll update you on later. Right now it's being kept outside as it smells a bit of cat pee.