Made in the shade ...

While Mike toils under the house I've been working out in the yard.

We have a lot of re-grading to do to bring the house up out of the ground (at some point someone back-filled the yard too deep against the house and the moisture has started rotting the sill plates of the exterior walls). Because of all of this work we had pretty much resigned ourselves to the fact that we wouldn't really have any gardens this year. However, sometimes things take an unplanned turn that makes for a nice surprise.

A few weeks ago Mike asked me to move some hostas that were going to be in the way of some excavation work. The only place that was available was a spot under the trees at the front of our property that had been used as an area for dumping some of the excess soil.

So one afternoon the girls and I headed outside to tackle the task. Maia manned the rake for a short time until she gave up and relegated herself to the position of wheelbarrow and tool manager. Ran was content to pick rocks and provide snacks (a delicious combination of gold fish crackers and granola bars ... mmmmm!)

This is what we started with (my FB friends will have already seen the first two pictures) ...

and by the end of the afternoon we had this ... we were so pleased with the results.

The garden is now filled with several mature hostas, periwinkle, lily of the valley, ferns, astilbe and moss. Everything was reclaimed from somewhere else on our property except for the ferns, which our neighbour gave us and six small moss plants which I bought.

To take things one step further I have been adding some rock over the last week. The bed is now outlined with a beach rock border (the rocks were recovered from under the cottage last summer when we had our crawl space dug out). I have also laid a flag stone path in the clearing that cuts through the trees at the front of the yard.

While a garden was not part of the plan for this year it sure is nice to have at least one patch of pretty out in the yard.

We are just gutted ...

For a couple of weeks I've been telling people that I'm going to update the blog so I guess it's time I actually did! You might want to make yourself comfortable. There's been a lot going on so this entry is long!

I would say we are now in the thick of the main floor demo. With the exception of the family room and the powder room the main floor is pretty much gutted.

The kitchen/dining area reno began with moving with built-in dish cabinets in the dining area. I love the usefulness of these cabinets and didn't want to see them disappear completely. They are now sitting in our future pantry (in the former back hallway) where they will become, no surprise, my pantry cabinets.

When we pulled out the cabinets we discovered an original cottage wall. We will be salvaging the material to maintain the rustic look. The wall will be partially opened up to allow a view out to the lake from the dining area. The lower section of the wall will remain and will be covered with the original boards that we are saving.

Next we started the demo of the main kitchen area. This was a tedious process that required a number of sequential steps.

First, the penninsula of base cabinets had to be removed in order to get to the flooring. It is now sitting in our living room and helping to serve as part of my temporary kitchen. Mike then ripped out the strip hardwood flooring that we absolutely hated. As he started pulling up the subfloor he made an interesting discovery. There were layers of old newspaper under the floor.

The papers dated from 1937. There were articles about the Spanish civil war, local tourism (from the London Free Press), sports, fashion etc. Unfortunately most of the paper had fused to the floor and it was almost impossible to salvage more than just small pieces. In some areas the ink had actually transferred onto the floor boards. In this picture you can see where the floor says Chevrolet from a car dealership's ad.

Taking a break from the work for a little fun ... one of the benefits of living in a house under construction ...

Once the subfloor was removed and the paper scraped we had to rid the walls of this lovely faux brick. It was made from some sort of wood fibre and was adhered to the drywall. Everyone got in on the act ...

Another interesting discovery was made as the walls came down in the dining area (although not nearly as amusing as the old newspapers).

The walls were a mess of random strapping that had been slapped up to support the panelling and drywall. We also discovered that the north wall of the house had been insulated with blown fibre insulation. You may notice in the picture that the fibre had settled in the wall cavities and there are several pockets in the wall that had virtually no insulation (no wonder we had big heating bills this past winter!). And what a heck of a mess to remove! Mike spent hours knocking it out of the wall, shovelling it up and then vacuuming the remains.

One cool thing about opening up the walls is we are able to see where original windows and plumbing and a door once were. It's fun imaging what the cottage used to look like (and kind of sad).

The remainder of the cabinets have now been removed except for the sink area. Mike is having to reroute some cabling and remove several old dead-ended wires. He is squaring up the studs and will hopefully putting up some drywall in the next week or so (and obviously insulating the exterior walls).

Mike has also been working hard at levelling the subfloor. This is a tedious job that involves a lot of work in the crawl space cutting out old supports and reinstalling them in a more appropriate configuration.

Stay tuned for pictures of our beautiful new cabinets. Here's how they look now ...