Springtime Catch-up

Spring is here in full force - flowers are blooming, fruit and vegetables are growing, home renovations will be starting again...

With the start of spring, I also came across a new opportunity for work - and decided that it really was time for a change.  The change in employers (yes, I left my last employer after 25 years) has me working a whole 2 blocks from home.  I walk to work.  I walk home at lunch.  My total commute is about 3 minutes - and that is if I stop to smell the actual flowers on the way.  With this change I have regained 10 hours a week.  

10 hours!

The work week is two and a half hours shorter, but the biggest change is that I am not in my car for an hour and a half each day.  I get up a little later - yes - but I am still out walking my dog in the early morning hours. I feel more rested and less stressed.  There is the "stress" of learning - oh, and there is some stress in that, for the first time in 25 years I am actually on "probation" for three months and there is the risk that I don't make it through - but the feed-back thus far has been really positive.

Spring has hit in full force, though, and this weekend I finally got to the serious gardening that I needed to complete.  I dug out the other two vegetable beds (pernicious weed removal) and ground layered some heavy-duty landscape cloth.  It is woven cloth covered in plastic and I sure hope that it finally stops the nasty weed that I have been battling for the last few years!

Once dug out, weed-barriered, and then back filled with cleared soil and potting mix, in went the vegetables.  Last weekend I planted the Principe Borghese (cherry) tomatoes - four plants this year - into the same bed I had the two plants in last year.  I generally harvest and dehydrate these ones as they store brilliantly and a handful or two makes a wonderful addition to my soups, stews, rice dishes and so on.  Slightly reconstituted, they make wonderful pesto sauce.

I also potted some Genovese Basil - admittedly, it may be too early to have it out, but I also have some seed that I can start in the house and grow in my garden window in the kitchen.  

This weekend was the lion's share of planting efforts. Two kinds of lettuce.

Pole Beans:

Health Kick tomatoes, Red Onions and Purple Haze Carrots (This will be the colour-filled harvest bed)

And two kinds of corn:

I have also put up some pet-deterrent screening to ensure there is no jaunting through the beds (or digging in them) until everything is well established.

I also have two kinds of squashes planted in the little bed out front.

All in all, a very productive day.

Tomorrow will also need to be a productive day  I will need to get the car in for emergency brake repairs, call repair people about my vacuum (something has disconnected somewhere and while the hose has suction, the chassis does not,) call other repair people about my awning (the metal loop that the pole connects to and then turns to open and close the awning has broken off and I need to get that dealt with ASAP,) Do the requisite laundry and weekly cleaning, and also clean out the front bedroom in advance of the next stage of renovations - the new window.

Yes, more renovations are on my table for this summer - but nothing as big as last year's job!  Additional window installation into the front bedroom (for more natural light) and then a full painting refresh in here.

Other summer projects include finishing the pantry shelving and then tricking it all out (paint and flooring) and MAYBE building a Murphy bed with a floating desk for the front  bedroom. Or it may go into the bedroom I'm currently using and I may move myself into the front bedroom - something I will have to decide after the room has the new window and been painted.  It has more closet space, and I think it is also bigger. I'm still on the fence about that, though.

With love across the waters...

Seed Sprouting

Today is the first Saturday in March 2015 – daylight savings time kicks in this weekend and I am looking forward to a sunshine-filled weekend!

Yesterday my latest purchase from Lee Valley Tools arrived – sprouting boxes for seedlings, the size of which will fit beautifully into my kitchen window. I spent a little time last night getting them all put together and later this morning (after the guys came to investigate and discuss the work that will be needed to deal with the challenge that the last window to be installed presented – more on that in another blog post to follow) I went and purchased a couple of bags of sea soil (to amend my vegetable beds) and a bag of potting soil to get my spring veggies started indoors.

They are made of some sort Styrofoam and weren’t difficult to put together – pretty interesting construction, to be honest! 

The idea is that instead of having to worry about direct watering while the seeds are getting going, under the soil plugs there is a water leaching mat that will draw water up from a reservoir base.  There are even little gauges with which to measure how much water is in the base!  Clear plastic caps cover and heat the apparatus like a greenhouse would.

With the new Garden Window in the kitchen, my plan is to get things started indoors now and then, in late April when all possible frost is done, to move everything outside into the raised beds.

So… now I have to figure out what I want to plant!!

With love across the waters…

Soooooo... A Snag.

My house is a very, very, very old house. There’s one cat in the yard… renos can be so hard…

Did you sing that in your head to the tune of the famous song?

Today is windows “day three” and I had a conversation with the contractor today about the big window for the living room.

I have to back the bus up just a little bit, to a conversation we (me and my contractor) had with my neighbour yesterday about his house… evidently, when he bought his house, he had to do some major indoor structure upgrades – I guess that when his house was built, the walls (like mine) were shiplap covered with siding and drywall.  What he told us was that the walls had actually started to separate from the floors and bow out because they were just nailed in, and the nails had rusted out.  Over the course of 100 years, this is something to be expected!

Hm.

They finished up for the day and went on their way.

Today they came back to continue working on the project.  When they arrived, Jeff (my wonderful windows guy) had a look at the side of my house where the windows are to go in and…

Hm.

When you stand at the side of the house and look, it actually looks like the walls are bowed out a little bit. It may just be the ugly vinyl siding, but the likelihood is that it is not. 

So what does this mean?  Well, it means that the final window installation will have to be put (slightly) on hold until further investigation and remedial action can be taken. The remedial action is actually pretty simple.  It’s basically installation of a wall (properly framed) inside the actual wall.  This means it can be insulated.  The current wall will just be bolted or screwed to the old one, to shore up the weakness. It will be built all the way up to the TRUE ceiling height… so really, this just moves forward another project I had already planned for – the removal of the false ceiling in the living room.

With an old house, it is all about give and take.  Projects just DO take longer.  They DO uncover surprises.  They DO cost more.  They DO require more flexibility.  At the end of the day, though, old house projects also have a lot more potential and a lot more opportunity. The reality is that my house has already given me a lot more than I have had to put into it.  I love my house.

In the mean-time, though, here are the finished pictures of the windows that have gone in.

Both done now, trim on.  I need to figure out a curtain or blind...

Inside trim in, now to touch up the paint!

Outside trimmed in and totally sealed

Look how BIG this is!!!

Now… on to the kitchen floor project!

Floor washed.  

So, to finish the flooring part of this project I will have a few things to do:

1. I have about 5 squares I need to peel up so that popped nails can be pulled and screws can be put in.
2. I have to take out some quarter round that is under all of the cabinets and a couple of very small pieces of baseboard still in place.
3. I have to install new squares into the spaces there will be - I couldn't locate anything to match this so have some totally ugly unmatched tiles I can put in.
4. I have to install the NEW flooring.
5. I have to put in baseboards and quarter round to finish the job.

Stay tuned!

With love across the waters…

A Birthday and…. WINDOWS!

So this week has been another shortie at work – I try (every year) to NOT be working on my birthday – a personal birthday gift from me to me…

The universe also decided that this would be a great week to gift me with new windows!  The order had been placed a while ago - and since all of the windows were custom sized (old house, weird window sizes) it took a while for the manufacture to happen.  I got call last week saying they were expecting them in this week and could we get things rolling ASAP?

OF COURSE!!

This round of windows finishes off a total window replacement for the house.  In addition to replacing all of the windows, I also wanted to have the sliding glass door totally replaced (it was old and opened from left to right…) in addition to all of this, I also wanted to take advantage of the work being done and have the window in the kitchen that had obviously been there one upon a time, put BACK in. 

This required a leap of faith on my part. The night before the installation was due to take place I worried. What if they pulled out the square of drywall and what was underneath was nothing but black mold??  I left for work yesterday just hopeful that things would go well.

I arrived home from work while it was still light enough to see what was going on, and promptly looked for the square of drywall they pulled out so I could see if there was any mold – NO MOLD!!!

whew

This morning before I left the house for the day, I grabbed my camera and took a whole pile of pictures… so here is where things were this morning.

 

Stuff in the back yard

New bedroom window

Garden window - HUGE

Straight on the Garden window - back yard

Side profile of the Garden window

Back wall - new window in

What's this now...? 

Solid wood siding under the tar paper and vinyl siding...?

And today they spent the day finishing up the outside stuff and installing the sliding glass door. They put on more tar-paper before putting the (ugly) vinyl siding back on, and all of the windows are “blue-skin” sealed – meaning that it is totally draft-proofed now and also completely weather sealed.  Yay!

Huh.  There really IS no insulation in my kitchen walls!

May be thin, but dry as a bone and NO mold!

Old slider gone, checking out the next part...

Now how gorgeous is this?

Slider in and trim on, trim to be put on new kitchen window

Tomorrow will see the finishing off of all of the trim.  

If time permits, they will also be doing the big picture window in the living room – but that may be a bigger job than we thought, so it may be waiting until Monday…  All in all, a VERY great day… and I came home with the material to complete the flooring update for the kitchen – so once the dust has settled from the windows portion of my project work, I’ll be laying flooring – more to come for that one!!

 

Flooring!

With love across the waters…