September 28: My avid reader has recently chastised me for the lack of new posts over the last months. Herewith, a few reasons (excuses ?) why there have been no recent posts:
While some work was underway at the time of the previous post, much has been done over the Summer and into the early Autumn. The cottage was opened May 7 and, as I have previously mentioned, I had to spend a good deal of time sorting out the inside to make it (barely) livable. I assembled and set up some outdoor furniture and planter boxes before worker mate Roy arrived to start on the real construction. We lifted the corner of the cottage and levelled the porch floor before framing in two sides to accommodate new windows in what would become the new kitchen. The exterior was covered in Tyvek and then trimmed out after the windows went in. We also levelled and replaced the bathroom floor so that the new fixtures would have half a chance of being level.
The bathroom floor was tiled and the living room and bedroom #3 floors were painted. The southeast corner of the front porch was disassembled when we found that the supporting column for the roof was more or less hanging by a thread. We fixed up the underpinning and after the better part of an afternoon “engineering”, we had a new support in the corner. The deck boards were replaced, eliminating the rotten plywood that passed for a porch, and the railings were removed, repaired, and treated to a coat of fresh paint.
The first week of August saw the construction of the new septic tank and field. Even though it is an Aquarobic system, which relies on a smaller tile field, I am still shocked by the size and extent of the finished work. It’s huge, and a number of smaller trees came down as John Archer and his crew did their best to maneuver a full size excavator in the outdoor equivalent of a closet. Some work is still to be done to try and protect the roots of some of the trees that may have been impacted as the work progressed.
The plumbers and electricians were next. I now have a bathroom with a clawfoot bath and, after many months of using a composting toilet, a working toilet. There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the first real flush. The electricians repositioned the breaker panel and roughed in plugs and fixtures for the kitchen.
At this point, we are left with a few small jobs before the cottage is closed for the season. We need to create Winter protection for the new kitchen windows and the new French door to the front porch. We need to do a small bit of work on the porch itself, and then get everything in the cottage in place for the Winter.
Closing is an inevitable but melancholy time for me. This year feels a bit different because the cottage hasn’t been a cottage in the traditional sense. It’s been a construction site. With the help of my good friend Roy, I’ve accomplished a lot that has been very rewarding (and expensive). But this hasn’t been a typical swimming and sitting in the sun vacation. Rather than thinking of the fun times we might have had over the Summer, this Winter I’ll be trying to figure out the next steps: How to finish the kitchen and bathroom; how to create a new dining room in the old kitchen; how I want to build a back porch and new home for the barbeque; how to finish my bedroom. Who knows ? I might even find a few moments to update this page. Time will tell…