WINTER AT FIVE ACRES

One of the beautiful things about winter at Five Acres is that the snow, when it falls, tends to stay in place, perfectly clean and neatly draped over the landscape, until spring comes and thaws it. One of the less beautiful things about winter at Five Acres is that some of the snow, when it falls, tends to land on the driveway. Driving off the property is easy: it's downhill. Getting back onto the property can be a challenge. You need to gear down to first gear and then gun the engine a bit, praying you won't slide sideways into one or the other of the large wooden gates that I never bother to close. I like shovelling, for about five minutes, so it may be spring before I ever get the driveway shovelled. Before it snowed, I had bought batts of insulation for Bleak House. They were huge and heavy, and I left them in the carport. But as the snow started coming down and the temperature dropped, I began to worry that chipmunks might take refuge inside the batts and be unable to get out again. So I started to scheme about the best way to get the insulation down to Bleak House. Realizing that there's a toboggan in the garden shed, I thought I could slide them down one at a time on the toboggan. I got the toboggan out, loaded one of the bags onto it and slid the toboggan over to the top of the first hill, just beyond the driveway. I hadn't counted on the fact that, just before the snow fell, it had rained heavily for a couple of days. I pushed the toboggan out onto the hill. Naturally, as it descended, the load of insulation tipped to one side and landed on the snow. I headed down the hill to load it back onto the toboggan. That's when I found out about the sheet of ice covering the hill, about one foot below the snow. I descended more quickly than I had intended, and only partly on my feet. By the time I'd reached the bottom of the hill, I was splayed out on the snow like I'd been involved in a tragic but not fatal skydiving misadventure. Some of my language was not fit for the ears of small children. I looked longingly back up the hill at that nice, warm house, and that's when it occurred to me that eventually I'd have to get myself back up the hill, and if I needed help doing that, my mobile phone was inside the house on the dining room table. I reloaded the insulation on the toboggan, made the executive decision to go the long way around Pond One, where the ground was flat, so I wouldn't have to wipe out on the next hill and possibly end up in Pond One, which is not yet sufficiently frozen to support me. I made it into Bleak House with the insulation, and without further injury, brushed the snow off me, and surmised that if I insulated quickly, I could always shelter in Bleak House till spring came and melted the snow and ice. And that's when I discovered I'd bought the wrong width of insulation. I'll still be able to use it, but I'll need to cover it with vapour barrier. However, Bleak House is starting to look pretty excellent, at least on the inside, and once it's insulated I think I'll be able to continue working on it during the winter. I just have to string a rope between the trees to enable me to pull myself uphill if needed. Stand by for photos.

BLEAK HOUSE: The Laws of Subtraction and Gravity

 I'm pleased to report that the extension to Bleak House is history.

If you've been following along, my last post showed the peaked roof was the last remnant of the bump-out still in place, and removing it was turning out to be a lot of work.  Four layers of asphalt shingles adds a lot of weight. A few days ago, I laboriously removed one side of the roof and discovered three field mice huddled inside the remaining side.  I decided to give them a one-day Stay of Eviction so they could find a new home, but cold weather set in and my heart is not so hard as to evict someone on a cold day.  Also, cold weather makes me lazy. 

Mother Nature has rewarded my kindness with two warm days, today and tomorrow, so this morning I went down to see if the tenants had vacated the roof.  They had.  As an added bonus, gravity had assisted me by loosening the rusty nails holding the remainder of the little peaked roof to the outside wall of Bleak House.  I gave it a few mighty pulls and the entire thing, wood, nails and asphalt shingles, crashed to the ground.  The wood is going in the fire pit. The shingles are going into yard waste bags, after which they'll be hauled up to the Belwood Transfer Station for disposal.

Here's Bleak House without the bump-out:

I'm  pretty excited by this progress.  It was more work than I imagined it would be.  I really like that it has a house number on the right side of the doorway.  I think it would be funny to close off the doorway permanently but ask my brother to paint a trompe l'oeil door there instead.  But the smart money says I should get a roofer to re-do the asphalt shingles before it snows again. We'll see how I feel in the morning.

BLEAK HOUSE: Back To The 80s.

Five days ago, I was contacted via social media by someone who told me she has a family connection to my property. It turns out her late father owned this property for about 35 years, right up until the date of his death in 2010.

I still have no idea how she came to be in touch with me. I'm guessing she must have done a Google search on the names of members of her family and hit upon my blog, which mentions the names of former owners.  From there, it's a hop, skip and jump to social media, and thence to me.

I was glad to hear from her, because I'm inquisitive by nature, and very curious about this property.

She searched through her old photographs and came up with several photos that were taken on the property. Some were particularly fascinating.  First, her Dad looked exactly as I imagined he would look.

Two photos were of Bleak House.  The first she dates at approximately 1980.  Can you see it there, on the far side of Pond One?  This is before the bump-out was added on.  Also absent is the screamed-in porch, though close inspection shows pillars in front of the door, so the entrance must have been partly sheltered.

The second photo dates from 1984.  It shows the extension and the full-size screened in porch.

The third photo that really caught my attention was one of the big house on the hill.  I would not have recognized it.

You see what looks like a separate little building on the right side of the photo?  That is no longer there.  In 2005 a very striking two-storey addition was built onto the house. Like the whitish-looking house you see in the photo above, the board-and-batten exterior is now stained dove grey, but the very tall second storey has a sharply angled roof, huge windows and tons of skylights, making it both modern and rustic at the same time. 

A picture is worth a thousand words

 And yet from the street, you'd scarcely notice it behind the tall Brandon Cedars that line the west wall.

As for Bleak House, I now know what I'm planning to do: I'll take it right back to its original sweet glory, with the pillars out front narrowly sheltering the entrance. 1980 was a good year. 

I'm really grateful to SRW, the family member who contacted me.  I look forward to speaking with her at length in the near future.

BLEAK HOUSE: Going Back In Time

 On November 4th, everything changed.  By everything, I mean the weather.  We'd already had snow twice, I was back to wearing my motorcycle jacket all day and everywhere.  But on November 4th, summer returned, and it still hasn't left.  Let me tell you, it was like I'd been shot out of a cannon: every minute from crack of dawn till the sun abruptly set at five p.m., I was outside doing heavy stuff.  

I finished sawing up an apple tree on the north property line.  I  put my motorcycle away in the basement.  I moved all my piles of firewood from around the property to the carport.  I split logs.  I gathered and bagged twigs for kindling.  I had a bonfire on the island.  I cleared the entire south property line.  I put away my gardening tools.  I painted the eaves on the south side of the house. I brought in the boat and put it away in a newly-swept-out shed.  I cleaned the carport.  I sharpened my chainsaw multiple times.  I even had a sunny afternoon with a large cup of coffee and a date square sitting on the bench on the island.  There was no stopping me.

And every so often, I'd go over to Bleak House and do a little more work on demolishing the walls of the little bump-out. It was tough sledding.  It was impossible to get a secure footing and even more impossible to avoid all the nails.

It's been a glorious week: the kind of week I'll look back on in February with huge delight.  

I think tomorrow is the last of the warm days, so I'm pleased to tell you that I finally finished demolishing the three walls of the bump-out on Bleak House. All that remains is for me to take down the little peaked roof.

You see that little opening just below the point of the peaked roof?  I cut that out so I could see if the exterior wall of Bleak House had been left in place.  Luckily, it has.  But this little peaked roof has been home to squirrels or chipmunks or something.  They've made a nest in the fibreglass insulation and left a ton of droppings up there.  Tomorrow I'll start removing the four layers of asphalt shingles and take a chainsaw to the wood underneath.

Remember, a few posts ago, I was saying how horrifying it was for me to go inside Bleak House?  It's actually quite comforting to be in there now.  Best of all, for a reason I'll explain in my next post, I'm feeling quite confident in what I'm doing to this little building.  I now know for certain that I'm bringing it back to its original form.  Stay tuned, if you're curious to learn how I can be sure of this.

BLEAK HOUSE: The Disappearing Bump

 It's Hallowe'en and down at my little haunted house on the hill, I was waffling about whether to get back to work. I don't like working in the cold and this morning the thermometer read seven below zero.  I woke up to frost all over the ground.  Even the ponds were frozen, and some Canada Geese were acting as icebreakers on Pond Two. Eventually I decided that I'd go out and split some logs in the carport and if it went up to five degrees Celsius I'd get to work on Bleak House.

By two p.m. it was warm enough.  I got to work.

My job this week is to finish tearing down the bump-out on the west side.  It was an addition to the original house and I'd like to have a word with whoever constructed it.  This is what I'd like to say:  a four-by-four is not the same thing as two two-by-fours.  No matter how much you like pounding nails into two-by-fours,  could you please just get up off your backside, go to the lumberyard and buy yourself some four-by-fours for the corners, next time you want to frame out a tiny addition to ... well, just about anything really.  Thank you.

I spent at least an hour alternately pulling nails out of two-by-four framing, hammering them all the way in, and bending them into an L shape.  It was the most wasteful waste of time.  Here's the scene of the crime.

Ripping the wood siding off the addition is not too difficult, but avoiding all those nails in the framing is almost impossible..  I wish a giant magnet would swoop down from the heavens and suck all the nails out.  I've got an electric reciprocating saw and two chainsaws on the job, a claw hammer and a crowbar, yet progress is glacial.

Here's a view from the rear:

And here's a general view of the demolition site from half way up the hill.   On the left is the stump of the maple tree I had to take down.  I'm beginning to wish the maple had crashed down on the roof and demolished the entire building.

I don't think I realized how much lower the interior of the bump-out is than the outside of the building.  Here's a view down into the excavation.  This chilling aspect gives you an idea of how badly I want to demolish it.

At a certain point as I proceed with my labours, the shingled roof is going to collapse.  It's got four layers of asphalt shingles on top of rotting plywood.  That stuff can hold a lot of water.  But I hear in about ten days it's going up to 15 degrees, and I can't wait to show you how excellent the interior of Bleak House is beginning to look.  

Stand by.

 

BLEAK HOUSE: Gutted!

I bet you thought I would quit.

Yesterday I realized that it was going to be hard to replace the roof on Bleak House because one branch of a nearby maple tree was closely overhanging it. I studied the problem and realized that my only option was to take the tree down.  This maple tree was half way up the little hill into which Bleak House is cut.  There was perhaps a 30 degree window of space for the maple to fall after I cut it.  If it fell to the right, it would crash through the roof.  If it fell to the left, well, frankly, it wouldn't fall.  It would get trapped in the branches of another maple tree beside it.

One of the ways I relax is by watching YouTube videos of chainsawing techniques, so I knew precisely the sort of cuts I'd need to make.  The pressure to do it right was on a little bit, because some workmen were excavating on the property to the north of me, and I knew they had a clear view of what I was doing.  It wasn't a huge tree, maybe 22 feet high, with a ten inch diameter.  So I planned out my cuts, took the chainsaw to it, and in five minutes the tree came down perfectly in the perfect location. I expected a round of applause.  None came.  I cut it up the branches, put down the chainsaw, and went into Bleak House.

I always knock on the door before entering.  This is a bit superstitious, but I'd rather give any visiting wildlife notice of my arrival so they can make a swift exit.  

And then I decided I'd finish the job of gutting the little house, then and there, if it killed me.

The electrician is coming tomorrow to put in a new outlet so I can plug in power tools.  I wanted it to look presentable for him, so he doesn't think I'm a slob.

It took me two or three hours, but I'm thrilled to report that it's done and dusted.

You'll notice that I used some of the wood panelling to block off the little bump-out addition to the left of the window.  I'm planning to tear that down from the outside.

And here's a view in the other direction.

This is the north wall.

This is the south-west wall, the scariest wall of all.  I imagined it was going to be much worse.

And this is the east wall.

Today is a milestone.  I've hit rock bottom.  Nothing I have to do to Bleak House will be more horrifying than the work I did today.  From this point on, it's going to be uphill all the way.  Tomorrow when the electrician comes, I'm going to tear out all the old electrical wiring and start repairing the exterior shell.  I look forward to having a light and the ability to use power tools.  And I've decided on an exterior colour scheme.  The walls are going to be cream-coloured and the roof is going to be green.  I'm thinking of doing the inside in cedar shiplap.  But let's not get ahead of ourselves, shall we?

BLEAK HOUSE: Beyond the Screamed In Porch.

I was dreading my trip down to Bleak House today.  In fact, I avoided it for so long, I had to put my work jeans into the dryer to warm them up to encourage me to put them on and get to work.  That did the trick, and by two p.m. I was masked, wearing eye protection and walking bravely through what I now call the screamed in porch.

First, I'll tell you that leaving all the windows open was brilliant.  The little house is much less oppressive now that air is circulating.  It's also brighter, and that's important, because all the electrical power to the house is shut off.  Here's a photo of the view out the south window onto the little hill into which the house  is built.

So that's a cheering-up sight.  I'm delighted to say that all the news today is good news.  I finished pulling the sheets of panelling off the walls of the first room, and made a couple of excellent discoveries.  First, there is a partition wall separating the two rooms.  Removing the panelling from the partition wall was incredibly difficult.  Eventually I realized why: because it was covering a wall that is actually in good condition.  My heart soared when I absorbed this happy news.  See that?  It's dry, it's white, and it's in good condition.

That wasn't all the good news, either.  You see the rotten wooden joists on the wall where the window is?  I bet you think that's a problem, don't you?  It's not.  I know how to "sister" joists to solve that problem, and I have some old-style two-by-fours here that I can use to do the job in no time and at no cost.

Now, you see what looks like moldy white boards at the base of this wall?  I inspected them carefully to see what I needed to do to replace them, and guess what?  They're not boards.  It's a poured concrete foundation wall. You have no idea how thrilled I was to see this.  What I thought were roots that had grown through the wood are not roots at all.  They are probably just a rotten four-by-four.  I'll crowbar that sucker out of there so fast.  You have no idea how much I'm going to enjoy this part.

My nephew Sam dropped by this morning to pick something up. Because he often works in the plumbing trade, I asked him what was the fastest way of disconnecting the pumping equipment in the second room.  He suggested that I saw through the thick hoses.  As it happened, I had taken a hacksaw down to the screamed-in porch, and it was even simpler that I'd ever imagined to saw the hoses in two. 

See what I did?  That blue tank is no longer there.  Now it's lying on the lawn, waiting to be disposed of.  I'm tempted to call an electrician to help me disconnect the thick red cable running from the electrical panel to the green pump.  I know all the power to the cottage is shut off but it's a pretty thick wire, and it's red, and you know what colour a stop sign is, don't you?

I downed tools at six p.m. as dusk was falling. I can hardly wait till tomorrow.