poplar road

As promised, here are the photos of our latest (and long overdue) renovation marathon. The demolition part, anyway. Actual construction is still on hold because it's impossible to get an electrician around here! Richard wanted our service upgrade done by a professional, but since the local electricians aren't professional enough to show up when they say they will, or even reply to a voicemail, I think he's going to end up doing it himself. We can't wait any longer: the new heating system, bathtub, shower, 2 toilets, 2 sinks, and the accompanying faucets et cetera were ordered yesterday and are due to be installed starting the second week in July.

Given the rainy weather and my intense desire to do something destructive on Monday (topic for conversation elsewhere), I decided it was about time we cleared the way for our new ensuite. Allyson and I made a start Monday, I really put my back into it Thursday and Friday, and today Richard and I finished gutting the ensuite and most of the master bedroom. This photo shows the first of two loads that went to the transfer station today. I have twenty photos to post tonight, and hopefully I can use them to provide as much of a picture of the intended construction as they illustrate of the demolition.

Although we're calling this our master bedroom reno, it really starts in the basement. Jason is setting us up with a new heat pump, partnered with a high-efficiency furnace and an instant-on hot water heater. (And yes, we're getting AC.) We spent two hours on the phone with him the other night, going over the plans, to make sure the four zones the house is split into will most effectively heat or cool where we want it, when we want it, and how to do that given odd basement ceiling heights, the more exposed southwest wing, and the overall downstairs layout. What makes the process a bit easier is that in October, Richard almost entirely gutted the basement, removing the drop tile ceiling for easy access to all the wiring and ducting. At right is a section of the west wall of the rec room as it was when we made an offer on the house back in September. Below is the reason Richard ripped out the walls: the insulating value of mouse nests and mouse turd is just about zero (never mind the stench).

When Allyson arrived at the end of May, we decided to install a water filter to help deal with the increased sediment our new well pump was churning up. That gave us an excuse to take down the last of the basement's drywall, in the bathroom we use as a laundry room. The "before" picture from September shows the previous owner's stuff (Note, the photo of the initial tidy up when we installed our washer and dryer is in the first October entry.) After Allyson and I got through with the walls, cupboards, shelves, and even the ceiling, it was easy to see where we can put not only the tub and sink in that bathroom (tub in the corner where the laundry sink is, new sink and vanity where the washing machine is), but also how the existing plumbing from above will work for the new upstairs bathroom layouts.

Since taking down the walls did have an effect on our heating bills over the winter, our intentions back in March leant towards finishing the "guest suite" downstairs, and leaving the master bedroom until last. But finishing 1500 square feet from concrete out is more than our budget can stand at the moment, and with the delay in getting the electrical done, it's now summertime and the coolness of the basement is pleasant rather than expensive. Richard has framed the west wall where he set up the new 200 amp panel for the electrical upgrade, and there will be some construction of a mechanical room when the heating system goes in, but the majority will happen upstairs to finish off the main floor.

So, here is that small room – more like a hallway – that leads from the master bedroom back behind the main bathroom and the stairwell. At the end, a four foot wide nook held a toilet and sink, so close together you could almost sit down to wash your hands with your knees against the cheap sheet of wood hiding the plumbing. Two things made that so-called ensuite the second most repulsive room in the house: the previous owners had carpeted the floor some time ago, and the mice had converted the two shelves in the vanity into a mouse duplex. We ripped out the stained carpet – and the toilet with it – the day we moved in, but the rest stayed, with mouse poison carefully tucked into the duplex on a regular basis. I shuddered every time we went in there to consider how to use that space.

Between ensuite and bedroom was a closet along the inner wall, which wasn't deep enough to hang clothes in without walking sideways, but it happens to back on the main bathroom. You can see in this shot how it follows the outside wall to the left of the sliding doors that open onto the back deck. That's directly over the downstairs bathroom, and the kitchen sink and dishwasher are on the other side of the ensuite wall. That concentration of all the plumbing appealed to Richard, so he began thinking how we might alter the existing walls here to accommodate a proper ensuite bathroom with our laundry in it, as well as the main bath, a large master bedroom, and double the amount of closet space.

The next few photos show the demolition project Allyson and I started on the 13th. By Friday, when I took these shots, the cedar siding lining the closet had been ripped out, and the framing for the two pocket doors came out without much prodding. Richard helped me get rid of the sink and then the vanity, which was held onto the wall as much by the wiring running through it to the overhead light as by the nails through the gyproc. That's when the mask went on, as the stench of mice crap was overpowering and deer mice are hantavirus carriers. Gyproc dust isn't much fun either. (But I do like ripping it out almost as much as putting it up.)

The view in this first photo looks into the master bedroom through the wide opening left by removing the closet's pocket door. Call it the master bedroom, but this portion of it is actually going to turn into a dressing room: closets all along the east wall, white French doors to replace the old sliding doors at left, and a new wall on the right, bumped out into the room by about three feet to create a hallway the width of the French doors. Some artwork, a padded bench, and mirrored closet doors, and it will be a very relaxing, bright and airy space. As the demolition photos continue here I'll indicate again which walls are going where.

Looking in the opposite direction now, through what was the pocket door to the closet, first the shelf and siding were all stripped away and the second pocket door to the ensuite pulled out, the sink and tiles disposed of, and then drywall removed and more of the framing as well. If you put your eye to the tiny hole made by the electrical socket facing outward in the bare back wall, you'd be looking over the kitchen counter at our dining room. The plumbing in the corner connects to the dishwasher and the kitchen sink. The left side of the ensuite section is going to be ripped out further next month, removing the wall facing into the stairwell, so Richard can access the plumbing for our new four-foot wide shower insert that will fill that end of the room (with an inch to spare!).

Rather than a rectangle the width of the shower, however, we wanted space for our stackable washer and dryer to be close at hand, a good-sized sink and counter with storage, and room to add a window to let in some daylight. Richard's bright idea is to bump out the wall between this room and the main bath (the left wall of the closet area), taking over the space occupied by the bathtub. He will also bump out the wall of the main bathroom, three feet into the existing master bedroom, so that the tub in the main bath moves from the back of the room to the side. In the ensuite, the combined area gained will give us enough room to put the washer and dryer and the toilet on opposite ends of the inner wall, and counter on the outer wall beside the shower.

From the new dressing room, looking towards the doors to the deck, the bumped out west wall shared by the two bathrooms will intersect the north wall a few inches from the edge of the sliding door. A new pocket door to the ensuite bathroom will open from a central position rather than the right. The dressing room hallway will end behind the viewer, opening into the new master bedroom area and a new doorway. I hope that makes sense… I suppose I could scan Richard's sketch of the floor plans if anyone's interested.

Here is how we finished up with the demolition today. Richard removed the insulation in the outer wall, propping up the ceiling layer after some of the yellow blow-in stuff fell down on him accidentally. We continued tearing drywall out around the sliding doors, and began removing the cedar siding covering two of the master bedroom's walls (see below).

I still have to yank out all the nails on the studs on all the outside walls, where Richard will increase the studs to 2x6 to allow for thicker insulation, just as he did in the great room. This is the first area where we've taken down the ceiling, but judging by the rodent damage it's necessary. He's also redoing light fixtures and fans so ceiling access will be important. Hopefully we don't have to redo the subfloors before laying the heating pads and tiles. I bought four tile samples yesterday, three of porcelain and one of slate, to see what might work in the new bathrooms. The actual floor space in both will be small, luckily, so we can afford to do underfloor heating and nice tilework. Both the shower and tub are one-piece acrylic enclosures so no tiling (and no grout-scrubbing!) to worry about with those. We got the coolest faucet for the master bathroom, something very sleek and high end that the showroom was selling the floor model of at a discount since it's been discontinued.

The trick with the bathrooms will be in the timing; we have to install the shower in the new ensuite and be able to use it before we rip out the wall and tub in the main bathroom, but still keep the toilet accessible in the main bathroom because there won't be one in the ensuite until the new wall is up. And we'll wait until the last possible moment to tear down the wall between the existing master bedroom and the guest room closet, since we don't want to lose our guest room – and closet space - for longer than necessary.

There are bound to be a few more surprises (such as this junction point hidden in the wall behind the dry cedar siding), and certainly a lot more work just to remove what we don't want, but it feels after today as if we've got our momentum back.

If the sunshine in tomorrow's forecast sticks around, there's more yardwork to do, and Richard's extension to the deck for the barbecue needs paint and a roof. And the neighbours provide lots of distractions - goats getting through fences, visits to share fresh vegetables or equipment, and a tour of the construction here and there - but next month there's time: we've decided to cut short our usual July vacation and spend it at home on this project. I'm glad, it's nice to be at home.

Richard's sister, brother-in-law, and two dogs came up for a short visit this weekend. We celebrated Colleen's birthday with a decadent lobster and clam boil followed by Richard's best ever apple pie. (And BBQ'd salmon with quesadillas for lunch, eggs benedict for breakfast Sunday morning, and clam chowder made from the leftover clams and stock to finish off the weekend of eating). The weather could have been better – the gorgeous hammock Colleen and Jorge brought was dripping wet most of the weekend – but between storms the ground dried enough for a game of bocce, we enjoyed our lobster out on the lawn, and had a couple of visits with the goats and sheep, and the neighbour with his growing pack of tiny dogs (more puppies are on their way, he says, and Smoky the llama is due soon, too).

Colleen and Jorge's border collie/Jack Russell terrier cross followed her herding instincts when it came to the goats, so she was better off on this side of the fence, but she's also a very talented mouser and had a great time digging and pouncing in the tall grass and weeds at the back corner of our property. Both dogs didn't quite know what to make of the lambs, which Jonathan points out are not quite bright enough to recognize a threat, and therefore stared down the smaller dogs with mild curiosity.

While we were out back with the animals, Jonathan drove his pickup over to take home the last of the large railroad ties that were holding up the bird pens east and north of the barn. The goats, let into the yard just for a little while, made short work of the weeds. With the grape vine nearly covering the remaining chicken pen, it's looking much better in that half of the yard. This angle is from the northwest as I was watching Maisie hunt mice. I'm hoping we get lots of grapes!

When the sun came out on Sunday morning Jorge wandered around with his camera, capturing rain on the poppies and other plants, and I took a few with the digital as well. Amazingly, some of our fruit is nearly ready to pick. Still don't know whether we've got a hybrid gooseberry or a blackcurrant; there's no blackcurrant scent to the leaves, but the berries are definitely changing to black. No flavour, so it's hard to tell. Couldn't resist a few more shots of the poppies myself, that gorgeous red, and the white-flowered bush I'm calling mock orange because it's got that heavenly scent.

It was a very relaxing weekend, a good break before we grabbed our hammers and crowbars for some demolition on Monday. I'll have photos of the start of the master bedroom reno soon. Summer seems a long way off, with more rain in the forecast right through to the weekend. Hard to believe the "midsummer" soltice is next Tuesday. Twilight here lasts past eleven o'clock and dawn is at four, but it's been too overcast and cool so far to enjoy the late evening light. A good temperature for ripping down old drywall though. The next reno marathon is just around the corner when we take some vacation time in July. I'm looking forward to another transformation.

Richard says I'm in denial. I have not fully accepted reality. Apparently, I'm a country girl now. But aside from the sound of Daisy's baritone leading the alto goat chorus out back, most days it feels like suburbia here, with a little extra dose of the good life: truly clean air (no stink of manure, thank you very much!); friendly, helpful and generous neighbours (with some oddballs thrown in for laughs); prolific fruit trees and flowering plants to make my garden a source of joy; and now, my very own post office box number instead of "general delivery".

Got the notice from the post office today, and will spend some part of the day tomorrow sending our new mailing address out to everybody. Oh, and finally, my connection to the outside world: my dial-up is back to normal. I even downloaded a long overdue 56 mb OSX update in the middle of the day today while Allyson and I made a grocery run. Last week I was amazed if the connection stayed up for 20 minutes. Today, it was on, downloading away for several hours. I got all my updates downloaded, almost 100 mb worth, and Allyson checked and sent e-mail as that was going on, without a single howl of despair. (There have been a few in the last two weeks, let me tell you.) Last night I even helped a neighbour order a couple of books on Amazon, and it actually worked! Hurrah! (Why order it here? They don't own a computer. Okay, maybe we are in the country. But you could as easily call it a retirement community. With pocket gophers instead of golfers.)

Relief aside, in a month if all goes as scheduled, I will move on to high speed two-way satellite, a new internet service being offered in July. For what I'm paying now for a dial-up phone line and unlimited access, I can get upload and download 75 times faster. Now that will bring me back into the 21st century. It does get a little sleepy in our neck of the woods.

Anyway, many of you could care less about what plants are turning up in my garden (although I'm guessing you'll take a sudden interest when all the apples, apricots and cherries ripen, hmm?) and you may have seen quite enough of our four-legged neighbours, but I'm not such a country girl yet that I haven't stopped being charmed by the flora and fauna. So for Lael and Mom and others who can appreciate the baby horns on my new friend Billy the Kid, or how a columbine looks like a Chinese dragon, this post is for you.

Here is what the grassy half of our back yard looks like these days. Last week the temperature hit 35 several days in a row and things dried up fast, but we've now had cooler weather and two days of rain, so the grass desperately needs mowing again. At the left of this picture is the giant patch of weeds which never got mown over and grew into yellow flowering stalks three feet tall. They're all over our garden. Once you start pulling them up, they reveal quite the network underneath, one pocket gopher hole after another.

We haven't yet seen a pocket gopher (just a bunch of Stoney Flats marmots), but you won't believe what we saw last week. Richard was building an extension to our deck, to house the new barbecue. I was watching a hummingbird dive through the air over and over, checking out the tall posts we'd put in on either side of the new bit of deck. Just as I was pointing out the bird to Richard, a movement over in the patch of weeds caught his eye. Shhh, he says, look at that. One of the three foot high stalks was wiggling. He and I got closer and called Allyson over. This was no wind, it was just the one stalk. It shook as it slowly disappeared into the ground. A yank or two, more wiggling and the sound of determined chewing, and it went in another foot. We watched that thing quivver and shake straight into the ground with only a couple of inches of flower heads showing in less than five minutes. So the next time you're watching cartoons, believe it, those rascally rodents really DO pull things under just like that!

I've now managed to pull up two thirds of the yellow weeds in that plot, and anywhere I found them in the side garden. Here is a shot of the side garden if you were to turn around from the gate where the above photo was taken, and look in the opposite direction (south and a bit west). We didn't have time to roto-till this patch this spring, and I'm glad, because in addition to the berry bushes, irises and daffodils along the wall at the back, we've discovered the whole plot is full of poppies. Red, scarlet, orange, pale pink and almost white. (Allyson says I could start a new career.) And in amongst them, something like daisies, though we're not sure as they haven't opened up.

This view looks northeast towards the back yard (note the white of the garden shed beyond the apple tree) from the lower edge of the same side garden, across the tops of the irises with one of the gooseberry bushes at right. Turns out only the smallest of the three bushes is currant, the others have fat green berries with faint stripes and a pointed tip, just like my grandmother's gooseberries at the cabin in Pointe du Bois. Now if I could just remember what Mummi did with them. There's a website called HistoricFood that has many old English recipes like "gooseberry fool", but most of the recipes listed there are too finnicky for me. Suggestions, anyone? These small photos show the gooseberries (left) and the currants, which have just started to turn red since the hot weather.

Against the house itself the lupins are blooming, with those gorgeous palm-like leaves, quite striking with the purple chives, bearded iris, the last few lilacs and deep pink wild rose. And there's something growing in next to the label "purple alum", which started out with purple stalks, but now it's a gigantic pale green thing with 1" thick spiny stalks and leaves the size of rhubarb. It's looking almost jungly, and last year's dried husks were over six feet high so I'm beginning to worry it's going to choke everything else out. We'll see if that has to come out. The rule so far is, if it looks unusual or it's getting flower buds, let's let it grow and see if we like it.

One thing I didn't recognize soon enough was a nasty choking vine suspiciously like morning glory. I think it's wrapped itself around the grape vine out front, but there's so much other tall bushy stuff around the base – not to mention more of that ultra-prickly rose – that I can't get at it without ripping the grape vine to shreds in the process. It's literally what you see is what you get for now. The obvious weeds are coming out - like the one that develops small, very effective burrs - but otherwise it's just keeping up with the grass and the watering. With the new, properly sized pump in our well working the way it should (without filling the pipes with sand and silt), we can leave the sprinklers on overnight without tripping the breaker, or run the hose and the washing machine at the same time. (And with the filter Richard added for the house, our water tastes even better. It was a bit of a trial at first, though, clogging the filter and then the pipes with sand every 48 hours. New plumbing is luckily on the list when we redo the bathrooms.)

Now here is something I did attempt to get rid of, noticing there was a lot of it and assuming it was a weed. Wild, yes. Weed, not really: it's Canadian columbine, and it's stunning. As mentioned above, the flowers look a bit like the heads of dragons with those spurs coming out the backs. They start out red and fade to purple, but they've lasted a long time and despite the number I ripped out in March, there's quite a patch of them in the border beneath the deck. They move in the slightest breeze, though, so I haven't been able to get a good closeup - same goes for the poppies. Both these plants have seeded themselves, but I still expect it will be a challenge to save them to move elsewhere when we do get around to digging up these beds. So I'm enjoying them now as much as possible.

Another plant, growing haphazardly in the front courtyard and beneath the fir at the far end of our deck, has turned out to be a fragrant flowering shrub that I am guessing might be "mock orange" although that's a name that gets used incorrectly a lot. Whatever it is, it smells heavenly. So I was leaning around some cuttings and junk to try to get a whiff of the flowers on the bush near the deck. I looked down to see if I could balance in a clear spot on the rock wall, when I noticed it wasn't so clear... this stripy little fella was sunning himself and I nearly stepped on him. Garter snake, Allyson decided, although the ones I remember playing with as a kid weren't nearly this gorgeous in colouring. Deep chocolate brown like the earth in the shade, golden yellow like the dry grass, and stripes of bright scarlet like the cones and weed stalks. He both blends in, and stands out. At least I'll notice him the next time I'm wandering around in sandals in the long grass. I'm not opposed to snakes, but bright colours in nature generally mean trouble of the poisonous variety, so until I get confirmation that he's harmless, I'm watching my step.

And now, onto the mugshots we can't get enough of on Poplar Road, starting with my new buddy, Billy the Kid. He was the first of the ten kids to join the flock of goats, and a loner where the rest are twins. He's the largest, the friendliest (all those cuddles with Bev!) and has little horns coming in that he likes to test against our legs and get scratched. The other little ones run away, but he heads straight for us. Cheeky little thing. Hopefully he'll be a little less aggressive than his dad, Neru, whose horns have caused more than a few bruises. (And less stinky.) For now, the Kid is cute.

Here's another cutie who likes a good scratch round the ears. Daisy's two lambs are very skittish, but she was a 4H sheep and can be very friendly when she's had a few carrots. When she starts calling her twins with that low baaa, it gets all the goats started until they're all running down the hill like a pack of streakers, making a racket.

baaaaaaaa...

meeeeeehh...

maamaaaaa!

And as of a couple of days ago, Jonathan let his new herd join Daisy and the goats - the Barbies. These short brown Barbados sheep get curly horns on them like mountain goats, and can jump just about any fence if they put their collective minds to it, but they won't get much bigger than this. Allyson caught them mowing Jonathan's front lawn. Note the chicken wire protecting his fruit trees, otherwise the goats would strip the bark off them and eat all the leaves they could reach. Sheep aren't as fussy eaters as goats, being satisfied with grass or straw when the goats would rather eat the tender stuff, but they will eat grass right down to the roots, so Jonathan rotates all his animals to keep the grass cropped but healthy. When he saw the lawn tractor come home in our truck, he called up to tease us about unfair competition for his sheep. I still can't get over them eating our tree after Christmas. Blech.

Got carrots? Couldn't resist posting this shot of Scorpio with a carrot dangling from his mouth, looking like he's got it stuck up his nose. His teeth (of which they only have a bottom row, it's just a plate on top) aren't very big yet so this quarter-section was too much for him. Cam, his mom, was only too happy to eat it for him. She responds well to the nickname "greedy guts", and can spot a carrot from a mile away. Unlike Scorpio, she can crunch an entire carrot down in seconds, sucking them back much like that pocket gopher in the weed patch. She'll get very close in pursuit of carrot sticks, but still won't let anyone pat her or scratch her under the chin. Scorpio allows it if he's distracted - or maybe his fur is so thick he doesn't notice.

We haven't been down to visit the llamas yet this week - they're holed up in their favourite summer spot now, beneath a spreading fir at the bottom of the hill. They've got the right idea: shade. Allyson and I both got a bit sunburnt last week, and Richard was wilting in the heat putting the extension on the deck. It hit 35 in the shade outside, and 30 inside. I'm going to take a look at the trees out back and see where I might be able to hang up Richard's Guatemalan hammock. We've got clouds and rain in the forecast for this weekend still, but by the time his sister gets here next weekend it should be perfect weather to swing in the shade with a good book. And lots of bugspray - these mosquito bites are driving me crazy. The rest of those weeds have got to go, it's an insect breeding ground. Perhaps I need to ask Jonathan if his Barbies can come over and play. Hah. Richard gets back Saturday, and promises to teach me how to run the lawn tractor. We saw Dorothy, our seventy-something neighbour on the east side of us, riding around her entire yard today, so it can't be all that difficult. With the grass cut, it starts to look positively suburban out there (if you ignore the barn). Anyway, time to hit the hay. Or count sheep? (Sorry.) Good night.