Renovations

And in other news, we’ve been pressing ahead with some renovations!

We had one priority for this summer – get the water pipes moved inside so they don’t freeze again this winter.

But once you start one project, it leads to two more. We had a bunch of electric upgrades to do – mostly things that weren’t crucial, but would be so nice – an extra plug in my office to minimize my dependance on power bars, a light above the kitchen sink, a dedicated plug for the oil monitor, adjusting the electrical and light switch in the pantry after moving the pantry door location, a plug on the front porch for Christmas lights, and adding a three way switch to the back laundry room. I know it is only dark here half the year, but crossing a dark room for the only light switch on the far side was just silly!

We had the electricians and plumbers here all last week. I love small towns because one of the electricians is a friend that lives right behind us and everyone is so kind and friendly it made it easy to just sit here in my recovery recliner and let them come and go. They even helped keep an eye on Hank for me (he’s discovered how fun it is to dig in his outdoor kennel!)

Our house has history and we heard more of it this week, like how the house was bought for about $900 and moved into town. How the top peak had to be cut off to fit it under the bridge coming into town. We saw more of the unique features of the house when some of the walls were open. In the kitchen, two of the walls have a double layer of drywall. Behind it is a plastic vapour barrier. Then shiplap wood boards. On the far side of the boards is sawdust for insulation. In some places fibreglass batting has been added, but we couldn’t find the rhyme or reason for where. Then there is another layer of boards on the far outside. Thick walls! Now our water pipes are partially in the walls, and partially along the ceiling. We plan to build little bulkheads to hide them. The bathroom used to have this oversized crown moulding that Jeff removed as prep in advance. I think it could fit right back on and hide the pipes too. Or a bulk head would give us a reason to paint and get rid of a previous home owner’s ceiling sponge “artwork”.After getting up hourly in the winter just to run the water, and still having it freeze, and fuming the house with diesel exhaust to heat up the crawl space to thaw the pipes, over and over again, these unsightly pipes in the house are gorgeous and sexy to me 😍 If these freeze now, we’ll have to be already frozen solid ourselves! So now we have a dishwasher! Wahoo! We’re still debating if we’ll replace these old cupboards, because they are in great shape and suit our needs just fine. We just need a new countertop to fill the void here:We’ll replace the flooring some year to come too. The fridge has been moved across the room which makes a huge difference to both space and the amount of sunshine that comes in (blinds closed to keep the heat out today – we are at 32C and under a heat advisory!)! We’re going to order a new fridge with an ice maker so we had the plumbers put in a water connection behind it for us. Over on the right, where the fridge was, we’ll be putting a shelf so we can move the microwave into the kitchen from the laundry room.

We have a new range hood ready to be installed too. The plumbers will be coming back to rig up the exhaust for it. I’m eager for that new range hood exhaust so when Jeff fries up moose, the smell goes right out the back of the house, rather than lingering and soaking into my bath towel 😜

Then, we need to paint! Jeff’s been busy starting to patch all the drywall holes. This paint colour wasn’t one we chose, and it doesn’t suit us at all, so time for a change. Any suggestions before I go right back to the green palette I usually hit?Everything in the house is covered in grit and drywall dust right now. I can’t do much to clean up yet, so poor Jeff gets to do everything.